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David Goldman/Pool, via Associated Press
LOVE AND LIBERTY Aaron Weisinger, 26, proposed marriage to Erica Breder, 25, in the Statue of Liberty’s crown. (Ms. Breder said yes.) The crown was opened to the public for the first time since 9/11.
At Pinnacle of Liberty, Feeling a Bit Confined
By LIZ ROBBINS and COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: July 4, 2009
For the privilege of being the first people in nearly eight years to climb the 354 steps to the crown of the Statue of Liberty, 30 visitors on the sun-kissed morning of July 4 had to first endure a bit of bureaucracy: red tape and stiff security.
No wonder by the time these huddled masses reached the top of the hot, sticky and narrow staircase, they were indeed yearning to breathe free.
“Absolutely awesome!” declared Tracy Musacchio, 32, of Harlem. But then, upon further reflection, she added, “Intensely uncomfortable.”
A history professor and Egyptologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Ms. Musacchio likened the claustrophobic experience to being inside an underground chamber of a pyramid.
Some wonders, apparently, do come with strings attached.
The visitors, who paid $3 online for tickets to the national monument and $12 more for the 15-minute ferry ride to Liberty Island, said they had won the chance in various ways to be among the first to ascend to the crown. Gathering in a room at the base of the statue before 9 a.m., they first had to wait as politicians gathered around real red tape — a giant red ribbon — four of them wielding an oversize pair of scissors.
Ken Salazar, the United States secretary of the interior; Gov. David A. Paterson of New York; Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey; and Representative Anthony D. Weiner of Brooklyn together cut the ribbon as Mr. Salazar proclaimed, “We are going to open up the crown to the people of America and to the people of the world.”
The statue was closed to the public after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and while the base, the pedestal and the observation deck reopened in 2004, the crown remained closed because of security concerns. For the statue’s reopening on the morning of Independence Day, uniforms were everywhere. Some parts of Liberty Island had the feel of an armed fortress, with officers from the Coast Guard, National Parks Service and the New York Police Departmental Justiceg. Coast Guard cutters and police launches bobbed in the harbor.
Before boarding the ferry at Battery Park in Manhattan, ticket holders had to empty their pockets, open their laptops and pass through magnetometers, only to repeat this experience after they debarked on Liberty Island. There they were herded through large white tents and had to pass through an air sensor that puffed in its search for chemicals, according to a worker.
The well-orchestrated events began just after 8 a.m. with a citizenship ceremony for seven military personnel. The Marine Corps brass band played “God Bless America” and “Amazing Grace,” and Jane Holl Lute, the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, administered the oath of allegiance.
An hour later, crowds were already assembling at the granite base of the “mighty woman with a torch,” as the poet Emma Lazarus famously wrote.
The torch, soaring about 306 feet above the foundation, has been closed since 1916, when German saboteurs blew up a munitions depot at the nearby Black Tom Wharf in New Jersey.
The first 30 visitors on Saturday waited in the pedestal to climb the narrow, winding stairs, many wearing green foam crowns and holding small American flags. They were directed to the sides of the staircase, watching as news photographers snapped pictures of the ribbon-cutting. After some visitors shook hands with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, they began the dark ascent.
By 10:15, they had returned from the crown, sweat-streaked and a little out of breath. For Erica Breder, the experience had also left her speechless.
That is because when she reached the small room at the top with 25 windows overlooking New York Harbor, her boyfriend of three years, Aaron Weisinger, 26, got down on one knee and proposed marriage.
“I was beyond surprised,” Ms. Breder, 25, said in a telephone interview.
The couple had traveled from Walnut Creek, Calif., for a special weekend that Mr. Weisinger had secretly planned for months. After being shut out online and by phone for July 4 tickets, he wrote to the Statue of Liberty Club asking where he could at least propose on the island. As it happened, the club’s vice president, Brian Snyder, had proposed in the crown, and Mr. Weisinger said he helped him get tickets.
Getting the diamond ring through security without Ms. Breder knowing might have been the most difficult part. Mr. Weisinger said he transferred it from his pocket to a friend’s camera bag at the last moment before going through the second set of detectors.
Mr. Weisinger said his great-grandparents had arrived at Ellis Island after emigrating from Hungary and Russia, while Ms. Breder’s father, Peter, had come to New York from Czechoslovakia. He drove a taxi before bringing his mother and wife over.
“That’s why it was so important,” Ms. Breder said. “It’s the perfect place for both of us.”
Al Baker contributed reporting.
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