Amrita Mainthia describes herself as a realist. The 21-year-old senior at Syracuse University spent the fall semester as managing editor of The Daily Orange, SU’s student paper. The role demands judging each story on the facts alone, an approach that fits Mainthia’s outlook on life:
“The fairy tale thing,” she said, “is not my cup of tea.”
Even so, there’s one story whose resolution might challenge that approach. It involves a mystery that would be especially fitting to solve on Valentine’s Day. To get it done, Mainthia needs our help:
She’s trying to find out who painted “I (HEART) U CAROL” in 4-foot letters on a water tower at the Morningside Reservoir, near the university.
The chances are good that you’ve seen those letters. Whoever put them there planned it well: They are clearly visible on a tower at the peak of a hill behind Manley Field House and Coyne Field. The lowest parts of the letters are at least 10 feet off the ground, just above some fragile casing that encircles the cement wall of the tower.
The person who painted the message either dragged a ladder up the hill, or somehow balanced — paint in hand — on the narrow casing.
The result? A statement that can be seen every day by the thousands of pedestrians and motorists who pass through the busy crossroads at East Colvin Street and Comstock Avenue.
Mainthia and a few of her classmates began wondering about the message in their freshman year. “I was walking with my friends and we looked up and saw it and we started asking questions,” recalls Mainthia, who grew up in California. “Why did (the painter) do it? What inspired it? How long has it been there?”
Noting the detail in the work — the red heart, for instance, has a small white streak to approximate a glint of light — Mainthia and her companions even discussed why the artist elected against putting a comma between “you” and “Carol.”
Mainthia made a promise to herself: Before she graduated, she would somehow discover the story behind the herculean effort that must have gone into message. Her research, however, kept leading to dead-ends. Graduation is not all that far away, and Mainthia is still searching for someone with the key to the tale.
We relayed her questions to Deborah Somers, commissioner of water in Syracuse. As you’d expect, Somers declined to celebrate or speculate about any graffiti on a city water tower. She isn’t sure how long the message has been there, but she said her staff routinely paints over graffiti at Morningside. The worst area is at the bottom of the towers, scene of a hodgepodge of initials and vulgarities intermingled with more artistic efforts.
To reach the towers requires climbing through a hidden jewel of a city park — Morningside, with its long stone stairway, was once the site of an unsucessful city experiment with bobsledding — and graffiti artists have made the trek for many years. A wooded hillside is dotted with rusty paint cans. Told about the “I (HEART) U CAROL,” high above the ground, Somers’ immediate concern was how easily someone could have fallen and gotten hurt.
Regardless of whether the message is romantic or profane, Somers said, the city does not want anyone painting graffiti at the towers. If the police catch someone in the act, she said, “We will prosecute.”
As for Mainthia, she had a reason for sharing her quest with The Post-Standard. In the 1990s, we did a piece that sought the source of an enormous message – W.S. (loves) C.E. — painted on the standpipe at the Woodland Reservoir. The truth, in that case, was profoundly romantic: The artist, whose name we agreed not to divulge, went to the standpipe on a February night, painted the letters high above the ground, then returned to his nearby apartment. He set up a telescope in his living room, with one end pointed at a window offering a view of the standpipe.
On Valentine’s Day morning, he asked his girlfriend to look in the telescope.
Mainthia wonders what led to the message at Morningside, and she hopes this column might cause the artist to come forward. She has no idea how the mystery might end: Did Carol expect to see her name on the wall? Was it the result of a longtime romance, or an act of unrequited love?
Whatever the truth, Mainthia intends to write the story for The Daily Orange. If the artist or artists come forward, she promises - as do we - to protect their anonymity. While Mainthia said she is prepared for any answer, you catch a a hint of whimsy in this tough young journalist:
She wonders, just maybe, if that heart could be for real.