Where Angels Dare to Tread
In the blurred hours after the 9/11 attacks, I sent out a brief edition of NextDraft. In part, I wrote, In the coming days, there will be much analysis about the performance of the U.S. Intelligence agencies, investigations into these acts and undoubtedly, severe and swift retaliations. But for now, the focus must be on downtown New York, where people wait for word on what will undoubtedly be grim, horrific, and historic numbers of deaths. Twenty-five years later, I suggest we return to Ground Zero once again, to mourn the loss and celebrate the lives of those first responders who ran into collapsing towers while everyone else was trying to run out.
+ In The Atlantic, Sally Jenkins cuts through the rubble of a quarter century’s worth of politics, wars, conspiracy theories, rage, and history to zoom in on the life of one family. “Twenty-five years after the attacks, ‘Never Forget’ is a T-shirt slogan. A third of the American public is too young to recall that day. Anniversaries have become rote rituals in which politicians describe scenes they did not witness and national unity that no longer exists. To get beyond the benumbed abstraction, it’s necessary to remember with specificity. September 11 was a lived event. One way to recall it meaningfully, then, is through a life.” Kevin Dowdell was a firefighter who was known for taking extreme risks to save people under extreme distress. “The bigger the fire, the calmer Kevin acted.”
+ But this was different. As his crew reached the site of the towers, “a torrent of debris fell from the buildings—shredded metal and insulation, chunks of concrete, shivering glass shards—amid an earsplitting clamor of sirens and screaming. Torsos, luggage, and aluminum scraps of 767s were strewn on the sidewalks. What looked like splashes of red paint on the plazas were the remains of jumpers who had pinwheeled from the upper floors of the North Tower. Kevin ran into a stunned fellow lieutenant named Robert LaRocco, from Ladder 9, who had seen a severed forearm with a perfectly manicured hand. LaRocco managed to get a call through to his wife. He told her, ‘It’s raining people.'” It was raining people, and still Kevin and so many other first responders ran toward the destruction. Kevin Dowdell often told his sons, “Don’t sit on the sidelines. Make things happen. Do things.” Little did they know that one day, doing things would include searching for their father amid the unthinkable ruins in downtown NYC. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Man Who Refused to Sit on the Sidelines.
