This is dedicated to my dear friends that I lost, Raj & Cesar!
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” — Fred (Mr.) Rogers
Where were you when the planes hit? When the towers fell? Where were you when, 25 years ago, the world changed forever? Do you remember what you thought? What you said? What you felt?
Most people, I think it’s fair to say, felt grief, anger, and fear. Fear most of all. Fear that it would happen again. Fear that it was no longer safe to fly or be in a well-known public place. Fear that a terrorist attack could occur anywhere, anytime, without warning.
But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, I’ve found that the fear has largely faded and been replaced by something else. Hope. Resolve. Even inspiration. Partly this is due to the passing of time, but I think there’s another reason, too. You see, in the years that followed, more and more stories started emerging from the aftermath of September 11. Stories demonstrating all that is good and great about humanity. Stories proving that fear will never be as strong as courage or as enduring as kindness.
Stories of people helping.
In honor of those people, I thought it would be good to share four of their stories with you today.
The Window Washer. For Jan Demczur, the day began like any other. One of the World Trade Center’s many window washers, he ate breakfast in the lobby of the North Tower before taking the elevator up to the 70th floor with five other men. But before they could reach their destination, three things happened. First, the elevator began to rattle. Then, it came to a jarring halt. Finally, it fell.
The first plane had just struck the North Tower.
One of the men managed to push the emergency stop button, but their trouble was just beginning. It was like something out of a horror movie. None of the other buttons would get the elevator to move, and when they reached someone on the intercom, all they were told was that there had been an accident…before the line went dead.
Then the smoke appeared.
Together, the men were able to pry the elevator doors open…only to find a solid wall of sheetrock on the other side. On the wall was the number 50, which meant they had fallen all the way to the 50th floor. A floor the elevator was never meant to stop at.
It would have been so easy to panic. So easy to freeze. Fortunately, Jan did neither. Instead, he took stock of what he had to work with: A bucket, some cleaning supplies…and a squeegee. “Maybe this will work,” he said.1 Jan removed the blade from the handle and began to gouge the sheet rock, trying to break his way through.
Imagine that for a second. Trying to scratch and scrape your way through layers of drywall, in an elevator shaft, as more and more smoke leaks in…with no knowing what’s on the other side. It seems like a hopeless situation, but Jan did not let it deter him. As one of the other men, Alfred Smith, later said, “He kept working at it. It was like he was meant to do it.” 1
But then came a heart-stopping moment. Jan’s hand grew tired. His grasp slackened. And the blade slipped…down the elevator shaft and gone forever. But still, Jan did not stop. He switched to the 6-inch squeegee handle, resorting now to brute force. “It was like he had a willpower that we are going to get out of here,” Smith said. 1
Finally, Jan made a fist-sized hole near to the other side. The men kicked and punched through one last inch of sheetrock…to find themselves staring into a restroom. They squeezed through one at a time, where a group of firefighters told them to leave as fast as they could. They raced down the stairs to freedom…escaping with only five minutes to spare before the tower collapsed.
As one of the other men later put it, “[Jan] was the man of the hour. I think of him as a guardian angel.” 1
The Guide. Roselle was asleep on the 78th floor of the same tower when the first plane struck fifteen levels above. She awoke to chaos.
A study found that over half of the people below the impact did not immediately evacuate after the crash. It’s understandable: Nobody would have quite known what happened. To make matters worse, 55% of people soon had to brave smoke on their floor; 54% people had to deal with falling debris. 31% encountered fire, and 15% were left in the dark, on a floor with no power.2 There was also noise, crowding, damaged elevators, and even jammed doors. But Roselle kept her head. She got up and calmly led her owner to the nearest stairwell.
Roselle was a guide dog for the visually impaired.
I imagine there was something very calming about seeing Roselle that day. When everyone else was desperately trying to figure out what was going on, there was Roselle, loyally doing what she had been trained to do. Her owner, Michael, said Roselle’s calm helped him feel like he was in no imminent danger. It must have helped others feel that way, too, because soon, thirty other people joined them, all following this one dog to safety. Together, they made it down seventy-eight flights of stairs. The journey took over an hour…just as the South Tower collapsed.
Even that — even that — did not affect Roselle. As Michael later said, “While everyone ran in panic, Roselle remained totally focused on her job. While debris fell around us, and even hit us, Roselle stayed calm.” She led Michael to a subway station, where they were able to rescue yet another person: A woman who had been blinded by the dust cloud.
“Don’t worry,” Michael told her. “I have a guide dog.”3
The Boatlifters. When the first plane struck, professional first-responders all over New York City raced into action. But they were not the only ones. Even as fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars weaved through traffic, something else was streaming towards lower Manhattan: boats.
It started with Captain Richard Thornton, ferrying commuters over the Hudson River. Seeing the smoke coming from the North Tower, he instantly knew what to do. “We immediately just took off. We stole the boat…we didn’t tell anybody,” he later said.4
As they approached, Thornton saw the second plane hit. Despite feeling overwhelmed, he docked his boat at the closest pier to Wall Street. Hundreds of people “swarmed onboard, filling it well beyond its
399-person capacity.” Thornton dropped them off in Hoboken, New Jersey, and then immediately turned back for another trip. But this time, he was not alone. A radio call had gone out for “all available boats.” With Manhattan essentially sealed off, the water was the only way out. So, within minutes, ferries, tugboats, private boats, party boats, and diving boats all arrived on the scene, evacuating hundreds of thousands of people to every other part of New York. It was the largest boatlift in history. Even larger than the one at Dunkirk in World War II, when the entire British army was evacuated from France.5
“I never want to say the words ‘I should have,’” another captain, Vincent Ardolino, later said. “Never go through life saying you should have. If you want to do something, you do it.” 5
The Volunteers. Most people didn’t see the events of September 11 up close. They had to watch on their TVs, hundreds or even thousands of miles away. If you were one of them, you probably remember how easy it was to feel helpless. Hopeless. Like there was nothing that could be done.
Not everyone felt that way.
Take Nick Branham, a young man from Kentucky. By his own admission, Nick had never thought much about others, spending most of his time “hanging out with bad people.”6 But September 11 changed all that. As the day went on, Nick felt more and more like he was being called. “I just kept feeling worse and worse,” he later said. “It was the strongest feeling I’d ever had.” So, Nick took out all the money he had, hopped in his car, and drove 700 miles to New York City. When he arrived, he went up to the first policeman he saw and asked where to volunteer. The policeman directed him to Ground Zero, where he joined thousands of other volunteers, all helping to dig and move rubble. Looking for anyone left alive.
“It was the biggest team effort you’d ever seen in your life,” Nick later said. “nobody was saying a word to anybody besides encouragement.”
When it was over, Nick returned home a changed man. He cleaned up his life, married, had a son. “I really did take a look at my life and see what I could do to change it…and I have. The possibilities are endless of what will come out of helping someone. Any chance you get to help someone, help them.” 6
Twenty-five years later, while the horrifying images we saw that day may still be emblazoned in our minds, it’s the stories of the helpers that live on. It took years of planning for the terrorists to express their hate. But it took regular, ordinary people only seconds to decide to help.
That is the true legacy of September 11. A day that shows us all how courage, kindness, and love can never be defeated. As Mr. Rogers once said: “In times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words. I’m always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in the world.”
The news is always filled with scary stories and images. There will be hard days in the future, affecting families, communities, cities, even our entire country. But when things seem scariest, let us never forget September 11…and always remember to look for the helpers.
You will always find people who are helping.
Antoine
1 “A Window Washer and his Squeegee,” 911 Memorial, www.911memorial.org/connect/blog/Jan-Demczur. | 2 “How did people respond and evacuate in WTC Twin Towers in 2001?” National Fire Protection Association, www.fujipress.jp/main/wp-content/themes/Fujipress/phyosetsu.php?ppno=DSSTR000600060009 3 “Rescue Dogs of 9/11: Roselle,” Cesar’s Way (Archived), www.web.archive.org/web/20120421232007/http://www.cesarsway.com/news/dognews/Rescue-Dogs-of-911-Roselle | 4 “Ferry Captain Answers Call for All Available Boats,” 911 Memorial, www.911memorial.org/connect/blog/ferry-captain-all-available 5 “Boatlifers: The unknown story of 9/11,” Reuters, www.reuters.com/article/opinion/boatlifters-the-unknown-story-of-911-idUS562249878/ 6 “He drove 700 miles to help after 9/11,” The Hufftington Post, www.huffpost.com/entry/nick-branham-911_n_55f2df85e4b063ecbfa3f370