A hero is a man who does what he can
What to read, 20 years after 9/11? Some of the best writing I found is about its heroes:
The story of Rick Rescorla, whose foresight and self-sacrifice saved 2,700 lives.
“People like Rick, they don’t die old men. They aren’t destined for that and it isn’t right for them to do so. It just isn’t right, by God, for them to become feeble, old, and helpless sons of bitches. There are certain men born in this world, and they’re supposed to die setting an example for the rest of the weak bastards we’re surrounded with.”
The better-known story of Todd Beamer, who helped stop Flight 93 from slamming into the US Capitol.
“They said the Lord’s Prayer together in full, and other passengers joined in. Beamer then recited Psalm 23, concluding, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.’ Immediately after, he turned to his co-conspirators and asked, ‘Are you guys ready? OK, let’s roll.’”
This amazing 10-minute documentary narrated by Tom Hanks about the improvised boat evacuation of Manhattan – bigger than Dunkirk, the largest sea evacuation in history. The boatlift got 500,000 people off the island in less than nine hours!
And a heart-rending account by Tom Junod of how the NYPD and NY fire department deal with the loss and hold onto the memory of that terrible day:
“what happened on September 11, 2001 wasn't really a memory there – it was more like an amputation, something you wish you could forget but instead must live with. You have no choice in the matter, because you have to manage the prosthesis and you have to go to physical therapy and you have to stay away from the pain pills. It's not something you talk about every day, but it's something your kids have to see every day with terror and pride, and something maybe their kids dare to ask you about, when they're sitting on your knee. That's where the memory comes in – when you tell the story and try to reassure them, try to reassure yourself, that they can't inherit your limp, only your resolve.”
But 9/11 isn’t about heroes, though it showed us them. It was an act of mass murder that showed us things we didn’t want to see, and still don’t.
And for all the hard questions of how to respond, with the time for heroism long past, the only human answer remains grief:
Where you’ve gone, there will be a
a cello’s goose neck, fingers waiting