There were only five of these shards, and two were still embedded in the lead that holds stained-glass panes together. Fred kept the shards in an envelope he had picked up in the rubble of St. John’s. That envelope spoke of lighter times. The panel portrays the end of an era: a vanished church, a lost paradise. At top, the bomb-shaped leaded fragment threatens the pre-war lightness, while the bottom shard, shaped almost like a token or metro ticket, is an ominous mocking of normalcy.
