Do the job. Put one foot in front of the other. Get on the rig.

Thoughts on the 20th anniversary of 9/11

On Monday, September 10th, 2001 Father Mychal Judge, the openly gay FDNY Chaplain and Franciscan friar, gave the homily at a dedication ceremony for Engine 73/Ladder 42 in the Bronx. 

Father Judge said:

“We’re in a new century…100 years from now, who knows what this will all be about? None of us, we can’t begin to visualise or realise. But God knows…It will all come back up and then pass again. That’s the way it is: good days, bad days. Up days, down days. Sad days, happy days. But never a boring day on this job. You do what God has called you to do: you show up, you put one foot in front of the other, you get on the rig and you go out. You do the job, which is a mystery and a surprise. You have no idea when you get on that rig — no matter how big the call, no matter how small — you have no idea what God’s calling you to, but he needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us…”

Father Judge was killed the next morning. He was the first certified victim of the attack on the World Trade Center. 

In the months following the attacks, the firefighters who had responded that day were interviewed. One, Firefighter Bertram Springstead, recounted his conversation on the morning of 9/11 with probationary — or trainee — firefighter John Tierney.

Springstead recounted:

“We get on the rig. We’re going down. The probie, John Tierney, he was off duty before we got out. Something wasn’t right that day. I knew something was wrong and I turned to him and said, ‘John, do me a favor, don’t take this run in. Just stay here. You’re off duty, you’re not getting paid. Just go home, man. Just go home.’ But who is not going to jump on the rig? So he jumped on the rig.”

Probationary Firefighter John Tierney was one of the 343 FDNY members killed on September 11, 2001.

Tomorrow marks 20 years since those attacks.

I’m not going to wax lyrical about how that day changed everything, or how it brought people closer together. It was the most terrifying day of my life, that’s for sure (and I wasn’t even directly impacted). And the city and the country were never the same afterward. 

But to be honest, after everything that has happened in the last month, I’m not really in mood for platitudes.

Everyone who was alive and above the age of infancy that day remembers where they were when the planes hit. I was in New York, where I worked as a news assistant on the Metro desk of The New York Times. I was at home in my Brooklyn apartment, which had bedroom windows that looked across Carroll Gardens and the East River to the Twin Towers. It was primary day in the race for mayor, and I was still in bed because I was tasked with doing legwork (AKA reporting on the street for the journalists compiling the stories in the newsroom) at polling stations in Brooklyn that afternoon. I was awoken by a phone call from my manager, in hysterics, in the Times newsroom, and I rushed to get there. The 45 minute trip took me several hours. We all worked late into the night. When I finally arrived back to my apartment, early in the morning on the 12th, everything in my bedroom, including my bed, was covered in World Trade Centre ash that had blown across the river and through the open windows of my room.

In 2006, I went to work for the New York City Fire Department as a speechwriter for the Fire Commissioner. Much of my work revolved around writing about the attacks themselves, the impact they had on staff and their families, and the herculean efforts the department made to rebuild after losing 343 firemen, including First Deputy Commissioner Bill Feehan, and Chief of Department Pete Ganci — a shocking loss of top brass unheard of in emergency response. For the five years I spent working at the FD, I was consistently impressed with the quality of the people there. In particular the firefighters and fire officers, most of whom had either lost a friend or family member and/or had narrowly escaped death that day. And before 9/11, many of them had also spent a career pulling New Yorkers out of burning buildings throughout the ’70’s, ’80’s and ’90’s, when drugs ravaged communities across New York. These men — because all the ones I knew were men, all from working class New York backgrounds — put their lives on the line. And not only that: they studied, they trained, and they helped rebuild a city that had been broken many times before those planes hit the towers.

And just look where we are now. 

Yesterday, an obviously decrepit, corrupt old man gave a speech attacking 80 million American citizens and telling duly elected governors to get out of the way, in an unprecedented assault on the American people and the very idea of federalism. This just days after the federal government was exposed as having funded dangerous “gain-of-function” virus research. Yes, the very same government that wants to mandate vaccinations as a “cure” may have helped create the sickness in the first place. Who really benefits? 

And this same malevolent old man just last month abandoned millions of Afghans to a grim fate at the hands of the Taliban. Let us remember, Biden has been in government almost continuously since 9/11, was the ranking minority leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 9/11, and at the time of the invasion of Afghanistan said “whatever it takes, we should do it.”

So where are we now, Joe? 

Where are we now, my fellow Americans? 

Are we better off than we were on September 10, 2001, when Father Judge spoke his prophetic words about our new century? 

Was Probationary Firefighter Tierney’s death honoured in the handing over Bagram Air Base to the Taliban?

Are the Afghan people better off? Are the men and women who serve in the military better off? 

What exactly have American tax dollars, American blood and American sacrifice been for? And I say “American sacrifice” but, I think we all know who has carried the biggest load these last 20 years. And it ain’t Joe Biden, his cohorts in the establishment, or their families.

I know, I know. It has ever been thus. I suppose if there is some small silver lining in the sorry state of the American nation right now, it’s that the malfeasance, venality and arrogance of its managerial class and political establishment have been laid bare for all to see.

While the “regular people”, the rubes and the Deplorables: they do the job. They put one foot in front of the other. They get on the rig.