Joanie Abrahams, P.S. 234’s school secretary, and Elizabeth Sweeney, the assistant principal, sat on a rug in the school’s library one evening last month  intently studying one of the colorful origami cranes laid out in front of them. Holding a large needle, Sweeney gently probed until she found an opening.

“We got it!” Sweeney exclaimed, threading her needle through. “We got the first one!”

In the scheme of things, the Origami Restoration Project might seem like a small endeavor. But for the 10 parents and four staffers who spent a night restringing 1,000 origami cranes, their efforts had a special meaning.

“They represent a time in the school’s life,” said Annie Luce, the school’s librarian. “They are part of our history.”

After Sept. 11, P.S. 234 received hundreds of teddy bears, backpacks, letters and other mementos of en- couragement and solidarity from children around the world. But one of the most moving gifts was 10,000 origami cranes from a junior high school in Kanagawa, Japan.

“When we opened the box, we were overwhelmed,” recalls Luce.

Origami cranes became a powerful symbol of peace following the death of Sadako Sasaki, a young Japanese girl  exposed to radiation from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Sadako tried to fold 1,000 origami cranes which, according to Japanese legend, would grant her any wish. She died before finishing; her friends folded the remainder. 

The origami cranes from Japan were hung outside the P.S. 234 library, a cascade of color that nearly swept the floor. “The kids loved it,” Luce said. “They were taught not to touch them, and that it was like a sculpture.”

But at the start of the school year in September, 2003, the cranes were gone—their disappearance never fully accounted for.

The story might have ended there had Heather Church Tsapalas, whose son attends the school, not told the tale to her sister and a friend, Aaron Ward, who were visiting from Burlington, Vt. 

Several months later, Tsapalas  received a giant box. “I remember thinking how surprisingly light it was.” Inside were 1,000 cranes.

Ward, an aikido instructor who happens to be an origami craftsman, had folded the cranes himself, working off and on for almost three weeks.

“I didn’t like the way the story ended,” Ward recalled in a telephone interview, “and I had the know-how to give it a different ending.”

The cranes were hung again outside the library. Recently, showing signs of age, they had begun to droop.

Luce, a former Metropolitan Museum of Art conservator, and Elizabeth Keim, a reading teacher, decided to replace the original cotton string with fishing line, using one-inch pieces of plastic straw as spacers. 

“Keep the order of the cranes,” she  reminded the volunteers. “We are restoring artwork.”

By the end of the evening, the volunteers had restrung all 1,000 cranes and carefully coiled them in four boxes and a basket.

“We are conferring with parents who have hung sculptures on how to hang them,” Luce said. She hopes they can return to their rightful place by the middle of the month.