Empire State Building's lights mark Ukraine's independence (09/05/04)

Empire State Building's lights mark Ukraine's independence

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - The Empire State Building, one of New York City's most prominent landmarks, paid tribute to the 13th anniversary of Ukrainian independence on August 24 by lighting the top 590 feet of the 1,453-foot building in the colors of the Ukrainian national flag.

It was the first time the building was lit to commemorate Ukraine's independence, but a mistake made earlier that day left the colors of the national flag reversed. Instead of what should have been blue, which represents the sky, on top of yellow, which represents the country's wheat fields, observers saw the building's 204-foot tall spire, as well as a number of floors under it, lit yellow with a large section of blue below the yellow.

A correction was made the following day after some 25 phone calls and four e-mail messages were left with the building's public relations office on the evening of August 24.

A spokeswoman for the Empire State Building told The Ukrainian Weekly that the lighting mix-up was an inadvertent error.

"I was very upset, angry and disappointed to learn that the colors had been reversed on the tower Tuesday evening," said Lydia Ruth, the building's director of public relations and special projects coordinator. Mrs. Ruth is the person behind the building's lighting schemes and the one responsible for granting any specific requests.

But, in this case, the mistake was apparently made well before the lights came on for the night. It takes six of the building's staff electricians four hours to manually prepare a lighting scheme for the night. Their mistake was not known until hours after they had left for the day, when night settled on New York City and observers saw the Ukrainian national flag turned upside down - which in some instances is a signal that a nation is in distress.

"Fortunately, the tower was scheduled to be white Wednesday evening, so I was able to reschedule the Ukrainian Independence Day lighting tribute for Wednesday evening and this time the colors were displayed in the proper sequence," Mrs. Ruth said in an e-mail message sent in response to one of the original complaints. That e-mail was subsequently provided to The Weekly.

Mrs. Ruth, who has been working at the Empire State Building for 19 years, said it was the first time a lighting request to commemorate Ukrainian independence had come to her attention.

Iryna Liber, executive secretary of the Ukrainian American Youth Association (SUM), said she wanted "to do something new for Ukrainians to celebrate independence." She said that after getting the all-clear sign from her organization, she asked the Empire State Building if they would light the building with the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Mrs. Liber personally paid for a helicopter ride that night to photograph and videotape the building.

"When Ms. Liber first contacted me about the lights for Ukrainian Independence Day, I was so pleased to be able to accommodate the request," Mrs. Ruth said in her e-mail message.

Yurko Pylyp, one of the first people to notify the Empire State Building of the error, said he called because he was very disappointed with what he saw that night. He called the mistake "representative" of other issues he has faced, saying Ukrainians, for whatever reasons, "get 98 percent done but can't get that last 2 percent right."

"Well, I just thought that this time we needed to get it a 100 percent right," said Mr. Pylyp. He is the person to whom Mrs. Ruth sent her e-mail apology after she received his phone call on August 24.

The following night the building was properly lit after electricians corrected the error.

Mrs. Ruth told The Weekly that the top portion of the building - the tall thin mast which is actually a lightning rod - can be lit by switching on panels of fluorescent tubes containing five colors (red, yellow, green, blue and white). But on the setback roofs, there are large white spotlights with metal frames and large color gels in various colors (red, blue, green, yellow, orange, lavender, purple, pink and aqua) that cover the frames; the lights are then pitched toward the building's facade so that the colors are projected onto the building, Mrs. Ruth said.

Mrs. Ruth plans to honor Ukraine every future August 24 by lighting the building with blue on top and yellow on the bottom. "Since one of my best friends from Harrisburg, Pa., my hometown, is Ukrainian American, this lighting tribute is special to me as well," she said.

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