Belle Isle is an island in the Detroit River and has been a park since 1879. It has been and is the city’s playground. It hosts the Detroit Grand Prix and there’s a boat race in the section of the river between the island and mainland (though neither was held this year).
This memorial is to remember the 1500 city residents who have died of COVID-19. The city asked families to submit pictures and got over 900 of them. They were enlarged to four feet by four feet and placed around a couple main drives of the island. I think I heard they were spaced twelve feet apart. A little math says such a display would be more than two miles long, though by putting photos on both sides of the road for much of the route the total length was over a mile.
I was on the left side of the one way road, so I’ll start with a view of the left side. This shows how big the posters were.
A break in traffic allowed me to see the right side of the road. This gives a tiny bit better idea of how big this is, though doesn’t close to the enormity of it. This shows maybe 25 pictures out of the 900. There was just no way to capture it all on one picture, no place to stand for that to happen.
Moving slowly past the photos gives one time to think. Each one of these photos shows a vital person. It’s one thing to say the virus killed 1500 people in Detroit. It’s quite another to see the faces of 900 of them. They were alive six months ago. They aren’t now. Detroit was hit hard early in the pandemic when we were all learning about it. But I feel those that died in the last three months probably would not have if our federal response had been adequate. I’m thankful that the state response has been good.
Though I’ve lived in the Detroit area for almost 40 years I think this is only my second time on Belle Isle and the first time was over 30 years ago. So while I was there I also looked around a bit. This photo is off the west end of the island, near Sunset Point looking towards downtown Detroit and the tall Renaissance Center. To the left of this view is downtown Windsor, Ontario, but that picture didn’t come out as nice.
I stopped at the Belle Isle Conservatory, a beautiful building designed by Albert Kahn and completed in 1904. It is, alas, closed for now.
Most of the roads to the east end of the island are closed (I think for maintenance), so the only way was past part of the memorial display, then to the northern road, temporarily set up for two lane traffic. That took me past the Detroit Yacht Club. Then again through part of the display (which went smoothly by staying in a middle lane) and across the bridge and on home.
No comments:
Post a Comment