Three weeks ago today we reported to you from the first sign of crassness from the recovering city. Executives of Metro-North, the commuter rail provider, had ordered that posters depicting the missing, be removed from Grand Central Station for "aesthetic reasons."
Today, just off the main room of that station, passengers stop in front of a twelve-paneled screen placed there by the railroad's employees. There are perhaps 300 missing posters there, four of them depicting John Thomas Andreacchio. On each of them, next to the smile peeking out from under Mr. Andreacchio's mustache, has been handwritten the word "found." He was added to the list of the dead on Thursday.
Another update. The New York Police and Fire Widows And Children's Benefit Fund, the charity to which the fees from these reports are going, has, in the last 26 days, raised about $20 million. Its founder, the former baseball star Rusty Staub, is grateful and overwhelmed. The stark reality however, is that even with this extraordinary generosity, if the fund were to divide the new donations just among those families newly afflicted, each would receive about $49,000. Their website is www.nypfc.org.