Reluctant Hero: A 9/11 Survivor Speaks Out About That Unthinkable Day, What He's Learned, How He's Struggled, and What No One Should Ever Forget (26 page)

All these years I was asking, why? I flailed, prayed, and begged for answers. There were no answers, except one: I don’t need answers. I just need to do the next right thing. I just need to remember what was good in the first place: help people. Stop looking for meaning. Stop looking for the
why
. There is no answer. There is just the doing.

All those years I struggled to find a “message.”

All those groups I spoke to, all those survivors I met, the television shows, all the kind words showered on me. I was only
hearing
what the message was but not remembering what the
feeling
was. I’m talking about the feeling I got seeing the many, many acts of kindness that day by people you’ll never hear about and people I’ll probably never see again. The Hasidic man who wiped my soot-covered face, the Asian man who charged bravely up the stairs to aid a firefighter when everyone else was heading down, the hundreds of firemen who made everyone feel like it was going to be OK, when they knew it wouldn’t be and they wouldn’t be. The
feeling
I had when I asked Tina if she needed help and she answered “yes.”
That feeling
was where the message could be found.

The message of 9/11 that desperately needs remembering is no more complicated than
We’re in this together.
The
this
means this office, this classroom, this street, this town, this country, or wherever you find yourself standing. And we need not wait for the next fire, the next explosion, or the next tragedy to find that out or to act that out.

That’s what was bothering me. It seemed all anyone took from 9/11 was what we had lost. And in doing that, what we also lost—obscured by the mists of political posturing, spiritual grandstanding, and, understandably, buried beneath ceaseless waves of grief—were my actions and the selfless acts of so many others. What we lost was a window of opportunity for all of us who survived—whether you were a survivor who was in the Towers or watching on CNN in Des Moines—to stop and reassess who we were, where we were going, and who we wanted to be. What traumatized me as much or more than the day itself, was how quickly that window closed.

It was as if 9/11 happened, and then, for only a brief moment— during and shortly after the tragedy—the world stopped being a discordant mass of a billion competing and conflicting agendas and remembered its common humanity. But then the world quickly, unconsciously returned to business as usual.

That killed me. I really believed 9/11 would stand as a titanic wake-up call for everyone, everywhere to become better people. But just seconds after the alarm went off, incredulously, heart-breakingly, I witnessed the world fall back to sleep. The media grew more scandal-obsessed, politics became more divisive, corporate greed reached new levels of egregiousness.

That’s
the world that was calling me a “hero” for what I did.
That’s
the world that was asking me to be on its television programs, talk to its children, and testify at its hearings. And at the same time, that same world continued to move in diametric opposition to the “heroic” thing I did. That’s what confused me.

I was there in the Towers, surrounded by the unspeakably real death and destruction, but also witness to incredibly true and present acts of sacrifice and heroism.

On 9/11 I didn’t check the political affiliation, classify the social rank, or evaluate the business advantage of the woman I saw marooned in a wheelchair. Neither did the man who sensed my panic under that truck and assured me I’d be OK. Neither did the firemen. I was there. I saw it. I know how much good we have in us. How much we are capable of doing for each other. How quickly, if we really want to, we can remove the masks, shed our team uniforms, forget what side we’re on, and
be in it together.

All this time I hadn’t been focusing on the right stories—the stories of people who, like me on 9/11, got up, went to work, expected nothing, and acted the only way they knew how to, which made them heroes. And the way they chose to be heroic made perfect sense to me.

I admired Chesley Sullenberger, who refused an invitation to go on
The Today Show
twenty-four hours after he heroically landed a jet plane on the Hudson River, saving his passengers and crew. The media couldn’t understand why he was “unavailable for comment.” I did. The man just went through a traumatic, life-threatening experience. His wife would not take questions either. She and their children just learned that Sullenberger had narrowly escaped death—something they must’ve feared every time he took to the skies. They did not want to bask in glory, in fame. They were in shock. They were questioning the very meaning of life, the value of existence. When Sullenberger finally did take some questions, he said, “I was just doing what I was trained to do. Doing my job.” He did not self-consciously seek anything in his heroic moment. He simply acted in the only way he knew how, which was a state of mind and a state of action he inhabited every day prior to that moment.

I read with awe how Liviu Librescu, a seventy-five-year-old engineering professor at Virginia Tech University, heard the gunshots and blocked a door to prevent the gunman from entering his classroom while some students took cover underneath desks and others leaped out of windows. He saved all his students. He died doing it. Liviu Librescu was a Holocaust survivor. If ever there was a person who understood the value of life, and living—a man whom no one could blame if he had chosen not to block bullets with his body—it was Liviu Librescu. But I don’t think Liviu Librescu made any such complex determinations when he heard the gunshots. He simply acted in the only way he knew how, based on who he was, where he’d been, and who he had become as a result of those experiences. I wish I’d known him. I wish we’d all known him. His students will never forget him.

I loved the story of Chad Lindsey, an Off-Broadway performer on his way to work, who jumped down onto the subway tracks to rescue a man who had fallen. After hoisting the unconscious victim back up on the platform to safety, Lindsey—covered in blood and dirt from the track—exited the station, went home, and continued on with his day. Nobody knew his name until one of Lindsey’s friends felt compelled to disclose it to a
New York Times
blog. Lindsey, of course, did not know the name of the man he saved, but he didn’t seem to think it was the most important thing. All the aspiring actor could say was “It was quite a New York day.” And that’s it. There’s nothing else. He was simply being himself. What else was he supposed to do? Who else was he supposed to be? It was nothing to fight about or get famous about.

Not everything is a reality show. Not everything is a brand. Not everything is transactional. Not everything is political.

Looking at my son, and my neighbor—the three of us connecting—it came back to me:
that feeling.

It was the same feeling I got in the forty-eight hours just after 9/11, when the world stood still. We stopped to take care of each other. We paused to take stock of what was really important. We came to each other’s aid without consideration for skin color, political party, sexual orientation, or income level. Ten years later, have we kept the promises we made to ourselves in those first forty-eight hours? Have we learned anything? Did we change?

Do we need the fire to come again to show us what we forgot?

Do we need the fire to come again to show us that the mother who loses her house through a sub-prime mortgage collateralized debt scam could be the same woman who gives
your
mother CPR?

Do we need the fire to come again to remind you that one of the men you are downsizing today may be the man who carries you—or your wife or your daughter—out of a burning building?

Do we need the fire to come again to show you how easily it could be someone you know and love who dies on the bridge when it breaks because we did not fix it when we knew it was broken?

Do we need the fire to come again to remind a cabdriver that the passenger whose fare he’s gouging might be the one who takes a bullet to save him from the carjacker?

Do we need the fire to come again to show us that if we do not care for our veterans, it speaks of how we will care for each other when it gets harder to give
that
care?

Do we need the fire to come again to make it crystal clear that when you’re helping each other down the tower stairwells or getting sick searching in the ashes for other people’s remains, no one will care if you’re for or against same-sex marriage?

Do we need the fire to come again to teach elected members of Congress civility—that it helps nothing and no one to shout “
liar!
” at the president of the United States during his State of the Union Address? Do you really believe that the president— whoever he or she may be—would not wipe your child’s eyes and you would not do same for his child when the fire comes?

I don’t need the fire to come again. I don’t need to be reminded.

I thought I did. But I don’t.

I thought you did too. But you don’t.

I know it’s in you. I know you would do the same thing that I did. I saw it done by so many. I only wish I could make you realize it has nothing to do with the fire. I carried Tina Hansen because it’s what I knew to do
before
the fire. Like Chesley Sullen-berger, like Liviu Librescu, like Chad Lindsey, I just got up one morning—September 11, 2001—went to work and did what I knew to be right. That’s who I was when I met Tina Hansen on the 68th floor. That’s who I want to be again.
That’s who I am.
I just got lost, mixed up, and very scared.

It took me these last ten years to remember and realize that all I need to do is
what I did
. There’s no grander meaning, no ultimate message. I wasted so much time. I damaged so much I must now repair. But I will repair it. I will make amends. I will use my time. Because that’s the gift of now. I can be that person right now. I can change now. I can act the right way right now, here, sitting in my backyard with my neighbor and my son. We were in this together
.

That feeling.

We’re OK. We really are. In the face of the worst, we were so good. Imagine how good we can be when we don’t have to battle tragedy to get there. I know it now. I don’t need anyone to tell me. I know. I was there. I saw it. I saw how good we can be to each other.

The only reason I got called a hero is because I got caught doing what so many others did as well. There were over three thousand lives needlessly taken from us on 9/11. But you must remember that there were also over one hundred thousand acts—99 percent of them anonymous and undocumented—of comfort and aid and bravery and sacrifice and kindness that day. Those people were
all
heroes. Heroes like there were in Oklahoma City, London, Madrid, Virginia Tech, Mumbai, Bali, Fort Hood, Tucson. Heroes the cameras never saw. And I don’t think it was the first time any of those heroes did those kinds of heroic acts. I bet they did them every day before that moment and still do them, every day, when nobody’s looking.

That’s how I want to move forward with 9/11. I want to go back to doing it, to
being
it every day, with no big deal attached. When we think of 9/11, I want us to remember how for forty-eight hours the whole world froze and took account of the high place that goodness, love, and togetherness can have in our lives. And I want us to remember how easy it is to on that switch and be that person, to be a hero, right now.

That feeling.

That morning
,
in my yard, I stopped searching for meaning and started to live it again. Meaning was right where I was standing. Meaning is in everything everywhere. And there, that morning, with my son and my neighbor, I found relief. I found peace.

I leave it to others to debate what 9/11 means. I’m a survivor of 9/11. And if you’re reading this, so are you. You might not have been in the Towers with me, or near the Pentagon, but you were somewhere. And there is something going forward that we can do with our survival. We can decide right now, together, to be better to each other.

Others can tell the world what is right, wrong, how they know and don’t know and what we should and shouldn’t be doing. Not me. That’s not my job. It never was. If I’m ever going to be a “hero” again, I know what I need to do. I’m going to visit my sister, help my mother, share with my friends, see if my wife needs anything. I’m going outside to be with my son.

I
’
VE BEEN READING
and rereading what I’ve written in this manuscript. I promised in the beginning that I’d try to get it right, to get down all I remembered the way I knew it to be.

As I write these last few pages now, I know the end of this book is not the end of my story. There’s just a little more I need to tell you.

First, you should know that I’m still scared. Things I see and hear and read still get to me. I still have nightmares. But like my father used to tell me, and like I’ll tell my son, when you wake up from a bad dream and the fear won’t let you sleep, try instead to think about the good things you know are true.

Counted among my good things is the story of my father telling the doctors that his first child, born with Down syndrome, would be coming home—his home, not an institution—to live with him. I also have the vision of my Network Plus co-workers helping each other out of that building and making sure everyone made it out, everyone. I have the gift of Brian “Boozer” Wenrich, dusting me off, handing me fresh clothes, and feeding me on my way out of that mess. I have the memory of a disabled boy singing “God Bless America” and the knowledge of what Bethphage does for him and hundreds like him every day of their lives. And I have all those images of the heroes of 9/11.

As much as there is from 9/11 to haunt me and horrify me, I have more—so much more—that ennobles me, teaches me, inspires me, and restores me.

That’s how I find my way back to rest. That’s how I find my way back to the people I love and break free from feelings of alienation. That’s how I let go of the guilt of survival and the anger of victimhood, replacing it with energy—joyful energy— focusing instead on what I am able to give.