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Since the novel coronavirus first hit New York in March, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority lost a total of 136 employees and the agency has now found a way to honor them.
"Travels Far: A Memorial Honoring Our Colleagues Lost to COVID-19" is a new eight-minute video tribute that features the photographs of the departed frontline MTA workers and will run on 138 three-panel digital screens at 107 subway stations all over the city starting this week through February 7. The video will play twice consecutively at 10:30am, 2:30pm and then again at 8:30pm.
Although the screens running the tribute are found inside fare gates, relatives of the honored workers can visit the memorial without paying fare by talking to a booth agent first.
The project also features a specially commissioned poem by Tracy K. Smith called Travels Far, which will screen in multiple languages throughout the video. An eponymous original score from composer Christopher Thompson rounds out the tribute.
"The pandemic has marked an unimaginably challenging and painful time at New York City Transit," said MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick J. Foye in an official press release announcing the news. "Today marks the next step in our ongoing efforts to honor the colleagues, friends and family members who were taken from us too soon. These men and women were the heroes of the transit system - conductors, bus and train operators, cleaners—but they were also mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. We think of them daily and we continue to mourn them with their friends and families."
You can find an exhaustive list of every single subway station set to display the memorial in the upcoming weeks right here and learn more about the 136 people we lost on the website dedicated to the tribute.
Here's the full poem and, below that, the tribute video in its entirety:
What you gave—
brief tokens of regard,
soft words uttered
barely heard,
the smile glimpsed
from a passing car.
Through stations
and years, through
the veined chambers
of a stranger’s heart—
what you gave
travels far.
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