MIDTOWN EAST — Five days after she was killed in a gruesome elevator accident, Suzanne Hart’s relatives, colleagues and friends remembered her at a memorial service that reflected her personality — elegant and upbeat.
“A beautiful tribute,” friend Amy Hogan said of the service, which lasted less than a half hour and included tributes by Hart’s father, Alex W. "Pete" Hart; her boyfriend, Chris Dickson; and her boss, Young & Rubicam CEO Peter Stringham.
“It was a celebration,” another participant, Giuliana Ciampoli, said. “It wasn’t really a mourning.”
But as they filed out of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Center on Madison Avenue, a few doors down from where Hart died, the mood became somber again. Everyone still seemed numb by Hart’s sudden death. A few held each other and cried.
Hart, 41, was stepping into an elevator at the Young & Rubicam advertising agency Wednesday morning when it suddenly shot upward, doors still open. Her leg got stuck in the gap between the elevator and the wall, and she was crushed to death.
The accident shook the city because Hart was killed doing something that millions do several times a day without thought.
A city investigation is focusing on work done that morning by Transel Elevator, a repair company who replaced computer parts and recalibrated the electrical system, according to law enforcement sources.
But there were no words of anger or blame at the service. Instead, Hart was remembered for her selflessness, buoyancy and bright smile.
Memorial cards featured a large photo of her happy face and a poem by Merrit Malloy called “When I Die” that ends: “Look for me/In the people I've known or loved/And if you can't give me away/At least let me live on in your eyes/And not on your mind.”
On their way to the service, many participants walked passed the scene of Hart’s death, at 285 Madison Avenue, which remained closed. Someone had placed a single white rose among the barricades at the entrance.
Hart, director of new business and experience at Y & R, grew up in the Midwest and in Calfornia, and moved to New York as a graphic artist after graduating from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. She’d worked for Y & R since 2007.
Mourners entered the glass-walled lobby and found a flower arrangement with a large photograph of Hart, and a second arrangement just before entering the service. Family and close friends sat in a small room, and an overflow crowd sat in an adjacent room, where footage of the service was streamed.
John Gembecki, who took landscape classes with Hart at the New York Botanical Garden, said he thought it appropriate that the service remained focused on Hart’s life, rather than her death.
“It was positive, which seemed to be what she was all about,” he said.
Standing outside was Charles Schrader, a handyman at the building who arrived too late to make it in. He remembered Hart coming to work every day “nice, smiling.”
“She was a nice lady,” he said. “A very nice lady.”
More than two hours after the service ended Hart's family left the building, got into a cab, and drove away. Soon they will travel to Lancaster, Ohio, not far from where she was born, to bury her.
Additional reporting by Sonja Sharp
