So Many Heroes.
Posted By Cliff Tuttle | September 11, 2011
No. 711
Watching the ceremonies this weekend brought it all back clearly. In response to the unspeakable horrors of 9/11, there were so many acts of heroism that they can never be counted.
The idea of standing in harm’s way to help others to safety, while the World Trade Center literally falls on you, is a chilling one. Yet hundreds saw it as their duty. And not all of them were uniformed police and fire fighters.
A week or two after 9/11/01 I read a short piece in the Investor’s Business Daily about a young lawyer (I’ve lost the article and thus his name) who was working as a doorman in the World Trade Center. He had come to New York from somewhere in central Africa and had received a law degree. He hadn’t landed a job as a lawyer yet, so he did the work he could get. People who had escaped from the inferno remember him helping and guiding others to the door, but staying behind to help still others. He could have run for his life, but he felt the call of duty — even as a doorman.
On top of all of the tragedies experienced by victims and their families, was the truth that so many people with the strength to do great service to our Country and the World perished that day with unfulfilled missions. And so, it is to us, the living, that the completion of their destiny must fall.
Ten years have passed, but it is never too late. Let’s roll.
CLT