DATE POSTED: November 29, 2023.

“Memory is always about the future. We remember to place today
and yesterday on a trajectory to the future.”

– Jay Winter

On October 27, 2023, the Rituals in the Making research team hosted its first virtual
seminar and discussion on efforts to memorialize pandemic loss in the United States
from the 1918-1919 influenza to COVID-19.

The seminar featured four speakers:

• Rima Samman Whitaker and Travis Whitaker, co-founders of Rami’s Heart
  Memorial, the first permanent national memorial to COVID loss in the United
  States, located in Wall, NJ.
• Amanda Matthews, sculptor and designer of public art, whose artwork was
  selected to become the official COVID Memorial for the State of Kentucky.
• Jay Winter, Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University who specializes in
  World War I and its impacts on the 20th century.

The seminar’s first presenters, Rima Samman and Travis Whitaker, spoke about the
origins of Rami’s Heart, explaining how it went from an impromptu act on a beach in
Delmar, NJ, to thousands of stones bearing the names of loved ones lost to COVID. In March 2021, they held a lighting ceremony:

“The lighting of the hearts was truly the marking of the pandemic for us. But it was also
the beginning of our ritual in the making. It made us realize what impact we were having
on this community, and how we were connected to so many.” – Rima Samman Whitaker

Amanda Matthews described the commemoration effort in her home state of Kentucky,
noting that the “key challenges of a COVID Memorial in Kentucky were to navigate a
nuanced complex and polarized political landscape to try to represent and include a
very diverse commonwealth and to honor as many experiences of the pandemic as
possible.” She crafted her memorial design with the people of Kentucky in mind.

“Most important to this concept are the people of Kentucky and their fear
and grief during this time, yet their hope for better days.”

– Amanda Matthews

Jay Winter reflected on the two presentations that came before him, on these two
different COVID memorials, stressing the power of small-scale, local efforts:
“Commemorative remembrance rituals on the local level… are an act of defiance, a way
of affirming life after the death of those we love. You do not need religious convictions to
make such a gesture. You need courage, I believe, more than faith, and you need
community. You need others to be fighting along your side.” His remarks addressed the
obstacles and aspirations of memory work, the need for “memory agents” like Rami’s
Heart, the Kentucky memorial, and Martha Greenwald’s WhoWeLost.org, and the role
of hope embedded in the need to remember. Following Dr. Winter’s remarks, the
session opened up for questions and answers.

Rima closed the Q&A session, reflecting once again on the importance of ritual in
honoring her brother’s memory and holding up her community. She spoke of the lighting
ceremony and the meaning it holds for her community of mourners. “Candle burning for
rituals can also signify a new beginning. So I think for us, what we have done is, we
have created this ritual, right from old ways. But our new ritual now is gathering
annually, and continuing to keep that memory forefront.”

“But we need to insist that our future is possible. That’s the hope. The hope is to create
a future which makes sense of the past.” – Jay Winter