I'm a New Yorker and I wasn't a Hero on 9/11

[fayhunter]

Snips:

One day a little girl with a piece of paper was in front of a wall plastered with tributes to the lost. She was with a police officer who was holding a roll of masking tape. She lifted the little girl onto her shoulders and handed up the tape, and the girl stuck her piece of paper on it. The paper had a great big heart drawn on it, kind of like a big border. The little girl must have drawn it before writing in these words...

But looking back, in spite of the incredible acts of bonding and kindness and hard work during those weeks and months, we were not really heroes.

Do you know anybody who really is a hero?

Full Article

[marybourg]

1. Yes. We all were. To some degree or another.

It's a nice article; different from what you might think from reading the above.

[fayhunter]

2. Agreed.

Maybe I should have have put in other snips.

[lapucelle]

3. My FDNY husband...

His firehouse wasn't far from the WTC, and his company was first due, so they got there early.

He had already been in one of the towers to evacuate people and was getting ready to go in a second time when the the first tower came down.

He volunteered for weeks to sift through the debris at the dump on Staten Island looking for remains.

He was the FDNY liaison to one of the widows who had four children and was pregnant with her fifth. (It was so early in the pregnancy that she didn't know yet that she was expecting. Her husband never knew.)

My husband's company got back to quarters late and stayed up the whole night. They were shocked the next morning to see so much sunlight. They had never realized that the firehouse stood in a shadow cast by the Twin Towers.

[fayhunter]

4. Wow

That is an incredible and uplifting story. I am so glad I got to read it.

[lapucelle]

6. And I learned theses details little by little

because heroes don't brag. (Their partners and parents do, however.)

When my husband got sick with unexpected and unusual symptoms, he wasn't covered by the special programs that had been put in place by the government to monitor and treat first responders. There were dozens like him, and the my family was in dire straights just trying to afford the $800 a month in medication not covered by insurance.

That's when our senator stepped in and fought for medical monitoring and treatment for the first responders who had fallen through the cracks due to their unusual ailments. She also persuaded pharmaceutical companies to donate the medications at cost.

Hillary Clinton is my husband's 9/11 hero.

She didn't brag either.

[smirkymonkey]

5. Thank god for people like him.

I was in Greenwich Village that day and watched them come down. I was not a hero. Just a horrified citizen doing the zombie walk back home uptown. Your husband was a true hero.