Ordinary Heroes

by Joseph Pfeifer

  I also needed a break. In late fall, the state of Hawaii invited the families of NYC firefighters and police officers killed in the WTC attacks to the islands to relax during the first week of December. Hawaiian Airlines donated two airplanes and crews. Hotels provided rooms, and everyone on the islands offered the “Aloha spirit.”

  Sun, sand, and surf, far away on an idyllic Pacific island—the invitation was tempting, but at first I refused. I felt guilty leaving lower Manhattan. Then I suddenly changed my mind. The Aloha spirit was too welcoming to resist. We needed to get away from the stress, the endless sadness. Ginny, Christine, and Greg were thrilled. As a family, we had never been to Hawaii. It was the longest plane ride we ever took.

  As soon as we arrived, we were greeted by a news crew that wanted someone to speak on behalf of the families. I was the highest rank among the FDNY attendees, so I felt a responsibility to step forward. I thanked the Hawaiian people for their generosity—not of their pockets but their hearts, something far more valuable.

  Wherever we went, Hawaii took care of us. We went to luaus, snorkeled coral reefs, and learned to surf. We met the governor and the mayor of Honolulu, who showed us the Hawaiian spirit. Tom Brokaw wanted me to do an interview, but we were surfing. I turned him down.

  While we were in Honolulu, Christine and Gregory practiced with the local swim club. The Honolulu Fire Department got word of this and took us to the sparsely populated North Shore of Oahu. As we drove up to a dark brown wooden house, we were greeted by eighty-one-year-old Audrey Sutherland. When she was a young, divorced mother of four, Audrey had explored the wild northern coast of Molokai on solo three- and four-mile swims, and later by kayak. Addicted to the experience, she took her kayak all over the world to discover remote coastlines. In 1980 and 1981, she paddled her kayak alone 850 miles from Ketchikan to Skagway in Alaska, journeys that became the basis for Paddling North, her third book, a classic in solo seagoing adventure writing.

  This slender woman with white hair had lively eyes and a compassionate spirit. Audrey gave us something cool to drink and pointed out Jocko’s Beach, where we could go surfing. This beach was a short distance from the famous Banzai Pipeline, a worldwide mecca for serious surfers.

  I knew we were in trouble when I learned that the beach was named for her son Jock Sutherland, a surfing legend. The six- to eight-foot waves were beyond my kids’ and my new surfing skills. Seeing this, one of her sons took us boogie boarding with fins instead. We swam two hundred yards offshore through the breaking surf, ducking under the white water to catch giant waves, screaming with excitement. Every ride was a solo adventure with nature. Onshore, Ginny watched and thought we were crazy.

  During our visit, Audrey—a font of wisdom on self-reliance and optimism—was teaching us something she learned from her adventures, which was to take on challenges with confidence and believe we were going to succeed. In the surf, we tackled big waves, remembering Kevin’s adventurous spirit on the Hobie Cat.

  When we were leaving, Audrey dubbed us her “New York family” and gave us a copy of her first book, Paddling My Own Canoe, published in 1978. It included lessons for this 9/11 family: “The only real antidote for life’s pain is inside us. It is the courage within, the ability to build your own fires and find your own peace.”

  That day, enjoying big waves on the North Shore of Oahu, was the beginning of finding strength in each of us.

  I couldn’t totally get away from 9/11. In the middle of the week, I was asked to make a short speech on December 7, 2001, in honor of the sixtieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. For two days, I racked my brain but couldn’t come up with anything to say.

  The day before the remembrance, all six hundred family members were shuttled to the USS Arizona Memorial for a private tour. The battleship, sunk during the attack, still sits at the bottom of the harbor as a reminder of those who died. As I stood at the memorial, I noticed that oil was still seeping to the surface from the Arizona. I watched as 9/11 family members spontaneously took the leis from around their necks and tossed them into the water. At that moment, I knew what I had to say. I started writing my speech on a napkin at lunch.

  At the Punchbowl Cemetery for the commemoration, the family members from 9/11, who represented 2,977 victims, were seated behind the podium. In the audience of a few thousand were World War II veterans and family members of those killed on December 7, 1941. The surprise attack had killed 2,403 Americans, including 68 civilians, and injured many more.

  I talked about how these two generations mixed together for the first time at the USS Arizona, as the oil that seeps from the destroyed battleship gently washed over the delicate and fragrant flowers of the leis tossed in remembrance by the 9/11 families.

  “Sixty years ago, families and friends experienced the tragedy of Pearl Harbor and World War II,” I said. “We, the families of firefighters, police officers, and rescue workers of 9/11 know what it must have felt like for you, the relatives and surviving friends of the heroes of Pearl Harbor. Those of us from New York City here today are living those same feelings of broken hearts, endless tears, and continual nightmares of America being attacked and losing the ones we love.

  “Like sixty years ago, the enemy did not count on America uniting to fight aggression. And today, a new enemy did not count on America and all the people of the world uniting to fight terrorism.”

  As I’d left the Arizona memorial the day before, I had seen a rainbow. “Perhaps it was a rainbow of Pearl Harbor and World Trade Center heroes shining down on us. The heroes we will never forget. It was a rainbow of hope that today’s 9/11 generation is just as united as the 1941 generation in the belief that America stands for freedom for all.”

  The audience was in tears, making it difficult for General Richard Myers, who had recently been named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to follow. But he reminded us of why we should never forget our brave men and women in uniform, both civilian and military.

  The week ended with a beautiful luau. We ate traditional Hawaiian food and watched hula dancing. The message was clear: we are all in this together, and by supporting each other, we would get through it. When I looked around, under a cloud of despair that hung over so many families who’d lost their hero first responder, there was a glimmer of hope. I was the lucky one to be with my family, and I took a picture with the Hawaiian dancers who symbolized the Aloha spirit.

  The four of us being able to relax in the warm waters of Hawaii became the solution to our sadness. Getting away and having family time together, without other distractions, had been a rare privilege that we needed.

  When we got off the plane at JFK Airport in New York, I was hit with the faint but unmistakable smell of Ground Zero. It was a musty odor of damp cement and smoke. Most people would not even notice. But a firefighter’s sense of smell is keen. From being down at the Pile, I knew that the odor meant that the underground fires were still burning as the recovery operation continued. We were back to reality.

  14

  BECOMING

  We returned home a little tanned and rested. I was immediately swept back into the routine work of a battalion chief, watching over my four firehouses. Yet nothing was routine anymore. We continued to recover bodies at Ground Zero and attend endless funerals of firefighters as we entered the Christmas season.

  Christmas Eve arrived and Santa Claus seemed a little less jolly. At my sister Mary Ellen’s home in Connecticut, we showered my two kids, Christine and Gregory, and her three children, Meaghan, Caitlin, and Scott, with gifts. But nothing would make up for the loss of Kevin. My parents especially seemed like part of their hearts had been torn from them. I made a slideshow of pictures of my brother so we could remember the good times. There were some smiles among watery eyes.

  Seeing the old photos brought home the reality that firefighting had been part of my life since I was eighteen. The FDNY was my social world; every day was n
ew and brought a sense of adventure. There was always something to learn, so it was intellectually stimulating as well. Now everything seemed harder, more uncertain. I needed to find a new path.

  As a young boy, I had thought about how others dealt with difficult circumstances with integrity. After the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy in 1968, my teacher assigned Letter from Birmingham Jail. I read it in my basement bedroom and was shocked by the idea of segregation. But I was more impressed by Dr. King’s willingness to risk everything to stand up to such injustice. Throughout the coverage of his death, news stations would play his “I Have a Dream” speech, which profoundly touched me.

  A few months later, I watched Senator Bobby Kennedy’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on TV. His brother Ted quoted Bobby: “Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not.”

  Those words etched on my mind the idea not to be limited by my circumstances or by anyone else’s expectations. It was the beginning of a budding sense of purpose to speak out for change, even in my small world.

  At age twelve, I joined the swim team at the Central Queens YMCA in Jamaica, and later at the Flushing YMCA. We swam year-round and competed throughout the region. We had an eclectic group: guys, girls, Black, brown, white, all swimming with each other. One of the best swimmers on the team was Reynold Trowers, a Black kid who eventually became a doctor. We looked up to fast swimmers and I tried to be like him.

  That summer, I invited a bunch of kids from the swim team to Breezy Point for the day. The beach had private security; only visitors invited by guests could enter. Worried that my Black and Latino guests might get hassled, I went to the guardhouse and made sure they knew my group of friends had been invited.

  As I began thinking about a career, being a professional firefighter didn’t occur to me, though Queens was a popular neighborhood for members of the FDNY and NYPD. I knew I wanted to find a path that would allow me to serve others.

  Since my illness at age seven, I had idolized Dr. John Scalzo. He and his colleagues had saved my life. For years, I’d wanted to be a doctor, but Dr. Scalzo passed away a couple of years after my illness. If he hadn’t, I probably would have thought more about medical school.

  So I turned to my other role models: priests who were family friends. They were well educated, interesting, and funny. In the late sixties, being a priest seemed like a radical way to make a difference, especially after Vatican II. The focus was on engaging in dialogue with other religions; changing the mass from Latin to English had a big impact on me, making it more personal.

  In ninth grade, I attended Cathedral Prep in Elmhurst; with only two hundred students, the highly rated high school was considered a minor seminary. Since my parents couldn’t afford the tuition, our local parish priest, Father Anthony Mueller, paid for part of my education out of his own pocket. I made As and B+s but was never the academic star—more of an idealistic misfit. I ran track and then devoted my athletic time to competitive swimming at the Flushing YMCA. As part of the required community service, I worked with special-needs kids. I always looked for that different path. But I didn’t read the fine print—the part about priests not getting married.

  After graduating from high school in 1974, I enrolled in Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, Queens, to pursue a degree in psychology with a minor in philosophy. The priesthood was my future goal.

  I lived on campus, about ten miles from my parents’ house, and set school records on the swim team. My teammates and I would rent a Winnebago and drive to Florida on spring break. We would attend Easter vigil at Cathedral, then set off on a wild adventure down south, which gave new meaning to going on “retreat.”

  During the summers, I continued working as a lifeguard at Riis Park, where each area of the beach had its own flavor, a sampling of New York City within a one-mile stretch of sand. The first beach permitted nudity. There were beaches where people gathered as families; beaches where LGBTQ folks openly mingled. African Americans celebrated their roots and music; Latinos did the same. There was also a beach for special-needs swimmers. I worked one of the busiest, Bay 9, which was predominantly Latino, so I got to use my high school Spanish. And every culture brought its own cuisine to the beach. The Puerto Rican and South American families introduced me to wonderful food.

  Like my parents—and like most people in the area of Queens where I grew up—people on the beaches were working class. Despite the crowding, and the multitude of ethnicities, people got along well. Something about being in the water made all the difference.

  The ocean currents could be treacherous, and I made many rescues. With experience, I could predict where and when people would get in trouble. Better to blow my whistle and prevent a problem than have to make a swimming rescue with a torpedo buoy strapped across my shoulder.

  I got certified as a water safety instructor with a specialty in teaching water safety to special-needs kids. One warm summer day, a teenage boy who couldn’t walk because of an accident came to the beach and desperately wanted to go into the water. I dragged his wheelchair into the surf to where I could lift him up, then got him out past the breakers. I told him to stand up in the chest-deep water.

  He looked at me with anger and sadness—like, How could you be so mean? since I knew he was paralyzed.

  “Trust me,” I said. “You can do this.” I pulled him up, and in the buoyant seawater he could stand. He loved it. We stayed in the water for at least three hours. That became a lifelong metaphor for me: Water is the solution.

  * * *

  • • •

  I continued training with the Vollies. The mid-1970s were the FDNY’s war years, as waves of arson swept the city, especially in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem. As people moved to the suburbs, owners who couldn’t make money on their apartments decided to torch them for the insurance money. It was shocking to me, as a member of a volunteer fire department, to learn that landlords and developers were burning poor neighborhoods for profit. News stories of firefighters running into flames to rescue those in danger were a reminder of how brave, well-trained firefighters could make a difference.

  When I was a junior in college, someone brought a bunch of applications for the FDNY to our Tuesday night drill at the Vollies. Tens of thousands of people took the FDNY test each time it was offered, competing for only a couple of thousand jobs. Scheduled for the summer of 1977, the test was like the Olympics: you got a shot at it only once every four years.

  The competition was fierce because it was a popular civil service job. New Yorkers looked on the FDNY as the best fire department in the world, and on its firefighters as the bravest.

  With roots in volunteer fire squads scattered around the region during Colonial times, the FDNY had been founded as an official force with paid, well-trained firefighters in 1865. For hundreds of years, those brave firefighters played an important part in the city’s history. They battled the Great Fire of 1776 during the Revolutionary War, as well as the Great Fire of 1835, which destroyed Wall Street. After the FDNY was founded, its firefighters fought the Brooklyn Theatre fire of 1876 that killed nearly 300 people and the General Slocum ship fire of 1904, in which 1,021 passengers and crew died. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, which took the lives of 146 garment workers, triggered the adoption of New York City’s fire prevention codes. In 1990, an irate person threw a gallon of gasoline up the stairs, killing 87 people at the Happy Land social club fire in the Bronx.

  In 1977, when I decided to train hard for both the physical and written parts of the test, I had no idea that I would be challenged to the limits of my abilities. I joked that I was taking the FDNY test as an insurance policy in case I liked those girls on the beach too much. (By now, I had read the fine print about priests and celibacy.)

  Between swimming, lifeguarding, and the Vollies, I was in good physical shape. But
the FDNY required a much higher level of strength and endurance. The test required applicants to carry a 125-pound dummy up a flight of stairs and back down; hang from a high bar for a minimum of a minute; walk on a four-inch ledge with a twenty-pound pack on your back; and run an obstacle course, then pull yourself over a flat eight-foot wall, not to mention a mile run. The test was more about sifting through applicants than firefighting. I used the college facility to train with some friends for weeks.

  The FDNY did the physical part of the test at the Brooklyn Armory. I was pretty confident I had done well, but when I got my results, there were 2,000 applicants who had scored higher than I did. That meant it would be two years before I’d even get called for an interview. That’s how tight the scoring was. I put a future with the FDNY out of my mind.

  When I graduated from college in 1978, the commencement speaker was Mario Cuomo, who had just lost the New York City mayoral election to Ed Koch; Cuomo would later be elected governor of New York for three terms. A dynamic, inspirational speaker, he talked about a life of service by starting with the individual. That appealed to my desire to pursue a higher purpose.

  For graduate school, I enrolled in the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, Long Island, fifty miles from my parents’ house. A little more expansion of my small world. I planned to get a master’s degree in divinity, with an additional concentration in counseling.

  Every semester, we had to do community work. Most of my peers taught religious education in a parish. In some rich parishes, the men studying for the priesthood were doted on, encouraged with gifts. I had become a bit more radical, pushing the idea of helping the poor, reaching out to those who were hurting. I did my community service in the Suffolk County jails, walking the tiers of the cells, talking to people awaiting trial for all kinds of crimes. The guards opened the door and locked me inside, but I never felt at risk. The people behind bars were willing to tell me their stories and I would listen. I would reach through the bars of their cells to shake their hands.