Chicken Soup for the Soul of America (2 page)

As we witnessed, heard and read about, these inspiring acts at the site of the attacks and in our own communities, schools and homes, heroism began to take on a deeper meaning. Patriotism became something more tangible to all of us. Reaching out to members of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds, caring for our neighbors and spending time with our families became more pressing priorities. What it meant to be an American living in a free country became more precious to us than ever before.

As these stories of heroism, compassion and service began to emerge, so did the hundreds of e-mails urging and encouraging us at
Chicken Soup for the Soul
to compile them into a book.

With the many stories that are now coming to light of victims placing a last phone call of love to their family members or spouses, of the many individuals who gave up their own lives to stay back and assist others, as well as the heroic efforts of rescue workers, I feel it would be a moving tribute to these individuals if these stories were collected and bound into a book in their honor.

Lori M., Orlando, FL

I am writing from Canada, knowing of the heavy hearts of all Americans. We, your neighbors to the north, are also observing the tribute and remembrance of those who lost their lives in the atrocious acts of September 11. Our hearts and prayers go out to those who grieve the loss of loved ones. I think that a compilation of stories from those so affected would help bring healing to the nation and the world.

Denise S., Canada

And so we have responded with this offering. Compiling and editing this book has been a difficult and challenging task. We wanted it to be the best book we had ever done, and we wanted to get it to people as quickly as possible. While this put tremendous pressure on all of us, it became a labor of love like no other book we had ever done. We hope we have succeeded in creating a book that will honor those whose lives were lost, comfort those who survived them, acknowledge those who stepped forward to help their fellow Americans and contribute to the healing of the enormous wound that was inflicted upon our national psyche.

In compiling this book we collected and read thousands of inspiring and poignant stories that were worthy of publication. There simply isn't space to include all of them. We are also acutely aware that there are many thousands of other stories that didn't surface in our research that also merit telling. We can only hope that we have achieved our goal of representing the broad range of experiences that deserve telling with the ones we have chosen.

Our intention was to create a collection that would indeed facilitate the healing of our nation—both individually and collectively. We know that this book will not necessarily stop you from shedding a tear; in fact, many stories may make you cry. But know that when you do, you will not be crying alone. We hope that when you put down this book you will be uplifted, encouraged, inspired and a little more aware that we really are all in this together—one country, indivisible, with a passion for liberty and justice for all as we pursue the fulfillment of our individual and collective dreams.

1

SEPTEMBER 11,
2001

T
oday our nation saw evil . . . and we
responded with the best of America.

George W. Bus
h

A Time of Gifts

N
o act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

Aesop

The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in equal measure. We often assume, therefore, that such a fine balance of results must emerge from societies made of decent and depraved people in equal numbers. But we need to expose and celebrate the fallacy of this conclusion so that, in this moment of crisis, we may reaffirm an essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some crucial comfort too readily forgone. Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by ten thousand acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the “ordinary” efforts of a vast majority.

We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior. I have stood at Ground Zero, stunned by the twisted ruins of the largest human structure ever destroyed in a catastrophic moment. (I will discount the claims of a few biblical literalists for the Tower of Babel.) And I have contemplated a single day of carnage that our nation has not suffered since battles that still evoke passions and tears, nearly 150 years later: Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor. The scene is insufferably sad, but not at all depressing.

Rather, Ground Zero can only be described, in the lost meaning of a grand old word, as “sublime,” in the sense of awe inspired by solemnity.

In human terms, Ground Zero is the focal point for a vast web of bustling goodness, channeling uncountable deeds of kindness from an entire planet—the acts that must be recorded to reaffirm the overwhelming weight of human decency. The rubble of Ground Zero stands mute, while a beehive of human activity churns within, and radiates outward, as everyone makes a selfless contribution, big or tiny according to means and skills, but each of equal worth. My wife and stepdaughter established a depot on Spring Street to collect and ferry needed items in short supply, including face masks and shoe inserts, to the workers at Ground Zero. Word spreads like a fire of goodness, and people stream in, bringing gifts from a pocketful of batteries to a ten-thousand-dollar purchase of hard hats, made on the spot at a local supply house and delivered right to us.

I will cite but one tiny story, among so many, to add to the count that will overwhelm the power of any terrorist's act. And by such tales, multiplied many millionfold, let those few depraved people finally understand why their vision of inspired fear cannot prevail over ordinary decency. As we left a local restaurant to make a delivery to Ground Zero late one evening, the cook gave us a shopping bag and said:

“Here's a dozen apple brown bettys, our best dessert, still warm. Please give them to the rescue workers.”

How lovely,
I thought,
but how meaningless, except as an act of solidarity, connecting the cook to the cleanup.
Still, we promised that we would make the distribution, and we put the bag of twelve apple brown bettys atop several thousand face masks and shoe pads. Twelve apple brown bettys into the breach. Twelve apple brown bettys for thousands of workers. And then I learned something important that I should never have forgotten—and the joke turned on me. Those twelve apple brown Betties went like literal hotcakes. These trivial symbols in my initial judgment turned into little drops of gold within a rainstorm of similar offerings for the stomach and soul, from children's postcards to cheers by the roadside. We gave the last one to a firefighter, an older man in a young crowd, sitting alone in utter exhaustion as he inserted one of our shoe pads. And he said, with a twinkle and a smile restored to his face, “Thank you. This is the most lovely thing I've seen in four days—and still warm!”

Stephen Jay Gould

They Took a Vote

V
alor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it until the test comes.

Carl Sandburg

The strength of a country comes from its people. It always has and always will. No matter what pomp and bravado a government shows, the solidity of the nation is directly determined by that of the individual citizen.

America has been shaken to its core by acts of terror. Many, including our president, have said we are strong, that we have resolve and that we will persevere. These words mean nothing to terrorists. Terrorists wait to see the actions of people, of individuals, to see if they will buckle and cower.

The cowards who killed our sisters and brothers, our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters should know what happened on the flight they unsuccessfully tried to turn into a bomb over Pennsylvania. So should the rest of our fellow countrymen and women. In the history of this country of freedom, there has never been an event more emblematic of the values and heroism of the United States of America.

The flight had been hijacked, and was being turned around to be used as ammunition against innocent civilians at some unknown target in Washington, D.C. After some hurried cell phone calls to their loved ones, passengers learned of the World Trade Center attacks. They considered the consequences, then they took a vote together.

In that instant, they validated the great experiment of the United States of America. They voted. They affirmed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, our entire history of freedom, and gave meaning to every soldier who's ever died in the service of this country. Faced with all of the threats that this country stands against, and in their own last hour, these Americans determined their path with a simple act of democracy, of freedom. They voted.

They voted to give their lives to save the innocent people for which the plane was headed.

Think about that for a moment. It's the very definition of heroic. There is something else in that story, however, something incredible that should fill every American with pride. None of those American passengers took command. Nobody ordered them to attack the terrorists. Nobody forced them to follow along with the heroic insurgence.

Faced with death, tyranny, and terror, those Americans voted to sacrifice their lives for others.

September 11, 2001, is a day, as was said of Pearl Harbor, that will live in infamy. Thousands perished at the hands of cowards. We should never forget, however, that it was also the day that a few heroic patriots thousands of feet above Pennsylvania farmland sent a message to the entire world—our commitment to freedom and democracy, in the United States of America, is not wavering, it is not shaken, and it cannot be taken away by any act.

America is freedom.

Bill Holicky

Let Us Be United

September 10, 2001, was our eighth wedding anniversary. My husband, Alan, was leaving the next day for a week back in California to try his last Clean Water Act case. He'd decided to give up a thriving environmental law practice for a year's sabbatical spending more time with family and offering volunteer work in India. We spent the day celebrating our love for each other, planning our future and counting the blessings in our lives. We were so grateful for our life together. Alan always said, “When we wake up each morning, we should feel gratitude for being alive.” And we did.

Alan woke up at 4:30 on Tuesday for his morning flight to San Francisco. As he kissed our five-year-old daughter Sonali and me good-bye, I pulled him toward me, knocking him over. He laughed heartily and said, “I'll return with the pot of gold.”

“You are my pot of gold, Alan,” I said. “Come home safe and sound.”

He assured me he would, and at 7:00
A.M.
, he called to say he had checked in, he loved us, and he'd be back by the weekend.

And then it all began. . . . The CNN announcer confirmed that Flight 93 bound for San Francisco had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. In that instant, I felt a crushing blow. Devastated, with the wind knocked out of me, I could barely get a sound out as shock and disbelief poured through my veins. My heart literally stopped beating and I had to will myself to live. How could my husband, my best friend who I'd kissed good-bye hours earlier, be dead?

When Sonali came home from school, I let her play for an hour before I told her the news. I wanted to savor the innocence of her not knowing Daddy was dead. When she heard Alan's plane had crashed and he was not coming home, she wailed a cry so deep and heartbreaking, a cry I pray I will never hear again from any living being. She sobbed for an hour straight, and then she looked me in the eyes and said, “I am so sad. But I'm not the saddest girl in the world. Some children have lost their mommy and their daddy, and I still have you.”

A few days after the crash, Sonali's brother Chris, concerned that Sonali might not understand what was really happening, asked her, “Do you know where Daddy is?”

“Yes, he's at work!”

Chris was wondering how to handle this, when she continued. “Silly, he's in court. Defending the angels.”

Sonali's courage in the following weeks continue to amaze me and remind me of her dad. One of Alan's final contemplations was a sentence he'd heard in a recent workshop,
Fear—Who Cares?
I know these words helped guide him on September 11.

Sonali and I attended a memorial service at the crash site in Pennsylvania with her older brothers Chris and John. Standing at the fence, staring out at the field and the scorched trees, I couldn't help but notice what a beautiful place it was for him to die. Such an expansive countryside with golden red trees—this is where it all ended for Alan. Sonali picked up some dirt in her hands, folded her hands in prayer and began singing a beautiful hymn she learned in India the previous winter. Everyone stopped to listen to her. Then she held the dirt to her heart and threw it toward the plane.