Ordinary Heroes

by Joseph Pfeifer

  I was starting to recognize patterns. Under stress, groups turn to their own because that’s who they are more comfortable with. I’d seen that dynamic play out on the street at major fire scenes and emergencies, even car accidents. To overcome it, I dealt with the local police precincts, talking to lieutenants and captains to break down these barriers.

  After my promotion to captain, I often covered Engine 40, Ladder 35, in the Lincoln Square area. There, I met Ray Pfeifer, a young firefighter. Though our last names were the same, we weren’t related. A tall muscular guy with tousled blond hair, Ray was the unofficial mayor of the firehouse, with a big personality and so well connected that he knew how to get anything done. The two Pfeifers became good friends.

  A lot of firefighters don’t want to work in Manhattan. They can’t afford housing, and heavy traffic adds hours to their commutes. But I loved it. Instead of inspecting warehouses, we’d check out a loft, Lincoln Center, or a luxury high-rise office building. We’d do night inspections of theaters while a production was going on, standing backstage at plays no one could get a ticket to, making sure the doors were open and safety procedures were being followed while watching the actors onstage.

  I put in as permanent captain for Engine 40, Ray’s house, but another captain got it. I was assigned to Engine 307, a busy firehouse in Jackson Heights, Queens, a mixed neighborhood with a majority Latino population. The company next to us was Ladder 138, where I met Orio Palmer, also a captain.

  The area was overpopulated. Two families would crowd into an apartment designed for one. We’d see illegal apartments in the basement, storage of combustibles in unsafe surroundings, and other circumstances that created dangerous fires.

  Throughout a firefighter’s career, going down a hallway or into a staircase is one of the most dangerous things you can do. When you are leading a team, there needs to be a high level of trust. Firefighters must believe you are not going to ask them to do anything that you wouldn’t do.

  In one building, I was taking firefighters down an interior stairway into a basement fire when something didn’t feel right. Sensing sudden extreme heat, I pulled everyone out. Fire roared up the stairs. I learned another unit had opened a cellar door in the back, feeding air to the flames. We managed to retreat with no injuries, but I was furious at the person who did that and didn’t tell me. They could have killed my unit.

  Over the years, I learned to combine knowledge with experience. I worked in busy firehouses and went to many fires, which is the best teacher. But no two fires are alike, so experience is not enough. For me, this meant spending twenty-five hours a week studying fire procedures and laws for promotion tests as well as to be a better fire officer.

  Kevin had decided to take the FDNY test in 1989. Though Kevin loved being a paramedic, he wanted the adventure and excitement of firefighting. I helped train him and some of his friends. As with me, it took two years for the FDNY to call him up. I attended his swearing-in ceremony and graduation from the fire academy and felt enormous pride in my kid brother. Assigned to Ladder 108, a fairly busy house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Kevin continued moonlighting as a paramedic.

  I made battalion chief in 1997 and bounced around Manhattan firehouses a bit before I got assigned to Battalion 1, with quarters in the Duane Street firehouse. As a captain, you hear everyone’s problems; only the serious stuff comes to you as a chief. I was still in the firehouse yet in a middle-management position, the best of all worlds. But the responsibility for the safety of dozens of firefighters at a fire is not something to take lightly.

  I loved being a battalion chief. My brother and I were having the time of our lives in FDNY. Promoted to lieutenant in 1999, Kevin had been assigned to Engine 33 on Great Jones Street in NoHo (North of Houston), sometimes referred to as the Bowery U, since NYU was just down the block. It is a historic firehouse not far from Duane Street. We’d run into each other on multiple alarms.

  Joining the FDNY had worked out perfectly for Kevin. NoHo was an exciting neighborhood for a single guy. His firehouse had a good reputation. He had bought my aunt Nell’s house, two houses from where we grew up. Though he had not yet married, he had girlfriends.

  We would help each other with house renovations. But we made a pact not to do any renovations in the summer. Instead, we went sailing. He also introduced my kids to sailing. My rule was, if you could swim across the bay—about a mile—you could go out on the boat with Uncle Kevin. My kids said, “No problem. How fast?”

  In the late summer of 2001, Kevin cut back on socializing so he could study for the captain’s test. He took vacation time and traded mutual tours to get blocks of days off. That’s why it was surprising when I saw him in the lobby of the North Tower. I’d thought he was off duty.

  15

  SAYING GOODBYE

  After being stretched to my limits in 2001, I simply wanted to get back to something that resembled a normal way of life in the new year. My kids returned to their routines of school and swimming practices. At work, I was now just a battalion chief in Battalion 1. Though I would take a ride to Ground Zero during each tour to check on progress, my life appeared to be as it had been.

  On Sunday, February 3, 2002, the guys in the firehouse kitchen on Duane Street were preparing the evening meal as they watched the Super Bowl. I was doing a night tour when I received a phone call from the FDNY dispatcher to report to the Pile immediately. The dispatcher wouldn’t give me any other information, which was a little strange.

  As my aide drove me to Ground Zero, I did not say a word. In my heart, I knew they had found the remains of my brother. That was something every family desperately wanted and, at the same time, dreaded.

  I had made peace with myself walking along West Street, understanding that my brother had been killed. But I knew finding his body would rip off the scab that had formed over that wound.

  The winter night was cold and dark, but the WTC floodlights blazed on the landscape of rubble. When I arrived at the site, I was approached by Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter from Rescue 2, searching for his son, who’d responded as a firefighter on 9/11. Somberly, he told me they had found Kevin. I said nothing.

  The sixteen-acre site, now several stories below grade, looked like rolling hills of rubble scattered with cranes, grapplers, and firefighters. The excavation had an eerie hum coming from the darkness and dust.

  I walked slowly into the Pit, to a stretcher where my brother’s body was covered with an American flag.

  Kevin had been found in the area of the North Tower, wearing his turnout coat emblazoned with his last name on the back. No doubt about his identity. Lying next to him was his eighteen-inch officer’s tool, a special crowbar carried by lieutenants and captains.

  Battalion Chief Bob Strong greeted me. We had been lieutenants together in Ladder 128 and in the same study group for promotions. It was good to see a familiar face. I bent down to peel back the flag and look at my brother’s face one last time. I felt Bob’s hand on my shoulder.

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” he said. Bob was right. Kevin’s body had suffered terrible injuries and five months of decay. I didn’t want that image to be the lasting memory of my brother.

  Engine 33 had been called to respond to the Pile as well. As we gathered around the stretcher, all the heavy equipment shut down. Silence covered the Pile as we bent down to grasp the stretcher. I was at the head of the stretcher on the right, leading my brother home.

  We walked through Ground Zero on a dusty dirt road and then up a ramp from the dark, cold pit, south toward Liberty Street. First responders and construction workers stopped their work and lined the ramp to salute or otherwise show respect. Engine 33 and I walked from the B stairs in the collapsed North Tower where we found Kevin, then past the ruins of the South Tower. In my turnout gear and white helmet, I felt the sadness of carrying my brother and the weight of command.

  We loaded the stret
cher into the ambulance, and I sat in the back with my brother. It reminded me of the times we used to ride in the back of the ambulance together as EMTs in the Rockaway Point Volunteer Fire Department. Kevin had been a teenager then. He’d died at age forty-two.

  A police escort led the ambulance to the morgue at Bellevue Hospital as Engine 33 followed behind, its red emergency lights flashing. It was a bit spooky that we were going to Bellevue, since my brother had worked there as a paramedic before he came into the FDNY.

  The ride to the morgue was the saddest time in my life. Tears streamed down my face as I laid my hand on my brother’s shoulder, totally overcome with grief. Through the rear window of the ambulance, I saw the lights of Engine 33, a reminder of how Kevin loved the FDNY and his firehouse. I wondered how I was going to be able to escort him into the morgue without breaking down.

  I remembered being sworn in as a New York City firefighter in front of City Hall by Mayor Koch in 1981. I was given a badge in the traditional FDNY shape of a Maltese cross. The badge number was 1513, which to me had great significance. It was one of my favorite Gospel readings, John 15:13: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend.”

  I wore that badge until I was promoted to lieutenant. When my brother Kevin became a firefighter, I arranged for him to have my old firefighter badge, 1513.

  Suddenly, in the back of the ambulance, calm washed over me. I thought of all the times Kevin and I had sailed in Jamaica Bay on his eighteen-foot Hobie Cat sailboat. Life was so simple and filled with joy then, and we would fly one pontoon hull in swift winds. I almost felt the warm winds of sailing with my brother fill the back of the ambulance. My brother was home in my heart with my memories of sailing.

  Now that Kevin had been found, we could have a proper funeral. On February 10, 2002, newly elected Mayor Mike Bloomberg attended my brother’s funeral at St. Margaret’s Roman Catholic Church, the first of many such services he would attend.

  “I did not know your son,” Mayor Bloomberg told my parents. He referenced the motto on the face of the church, “Serving God and the Community Since 1860,” drawing a parallel to the sacrifice Kevin and all the firefighters had made. “On behalf of all the people of New York City, all we can say is thank you for giving us Kevin.”

  I followed Bloomberg and thanked the mayor.

  “Your presence here and your support means a lot to us, my family, and the Fire Department,” I said. I was glad he’d chosen to attend Kevin’s funeral, both for my family’s sake and for the morale of the department and the city.

  In my eulogy, I talked about how much Kevin loved his family and his FDNY family. Then I told the story of our last ambulance ride to Bellevue and how I’d turned my grief into good memories with Kevin.

  Several of Kevin’s friends and the officers of Engine 33 spoke. As the funeral ended, his FDNY brothers carried Kevin’s flag-wrapped casket through the church’s doors and hoisted it onto the top of an FDNY engine. My family and I walked behind the rig, followed by members of Engine 33 and flanked by marching firefighters and the Emerald Society band. The bagpipes and muffled drums played “Amazing Grace” as we moved slowly down 80th Street to St. John Cemetery, a one-block walk. Along the route was a line of thousands of saluting firefighters in uniform.

  As we walked, I thought of the last time I saw my brother’s face. He had been so calm as he turned to lead his firefighters up the B staircase.

  16

  THROUGH THE LENS

  The film by Jules and Gédéon Naudet, simply named 9/11, aired on Sunday evening, March 10, 2002, on CBS. In addition to the footage they’d shot that day, the Naudet brothers had filmed an additional 140 hours of reportage and interviews of firefighters.

  When the Naudets had started their probie project, no producer or distributor was particularly interested. Suddenly they had a hot property.

  But they were exhausted as well. Jules and Gédéon spent ten days with their parents, who had moved to Los Angeles, to think about their next steps. They looked at every frame of film and thought about how they wanted to tell the story.

  “It was an important thing for the Fire Department,” Jules said, “showing their bravery and selflessness and heroism.”

  “For me, it was never like history has chosen us to tell the story,” Gédéon said. “It was much simpler. How do we honor the incredible work, heroism, and sacrifice of those guys we started to know?” But, in fact, history chose each of us that day. As Jules puts it, “There is always a witness for history.”

  Most producers just wanted to buy their footage. But the Naudets wanted control of how the firehouse and department were portrayed.

  “It was about our brothers, something to show humanity and to show hope, despite the senseless killing,” Jules said. “We wanted to show that, when it’s important, New York City locks elbows and pulls together.”

  The Naudets ended up making a deal with CBS. They were teamed up with award-winning journalist and news producer Susan Zirinsky, then the executive producer of the show 48 Hours (who later would become the first woman president of CBS News), whom Jules calls their “amazing fairy godmother.”

  They started meeting with CBS editors at the beginning of January. But they had more groundwork to do. The attacks had devastated the FDNY and the brothers wanted to show the survivors and family members that their stories would be treated with respect. Jules had caught the last earthly glimpses of dozens of firefighters who had gathered in the North Tower lobby, about to ascend the stairs to do their jobs. They wanted grieving families to have the snippets of tape showing those last sacred moments.

  The guys in the Duane Street firehouse knew the names of some, and others could be identified by their unit numbers. They painstakingly combed through the footage, and, with the help of James Hanlon, who went around to various firehouses with the pictures, they identified sixty-nine of FDNY’s bravest who had been captured on tape for at least a few seconds. Then they invited their loved ones to view the piece of film.

  Initially, many of the family members were against the project. Rumors were flying that the footage was gruesome, that they had “filmed carnage and body parts and people dying in front of the camera,” Gédéon told the BBC. “So, everyone was very much afraid of what they were expecting to see.”

  But none of that was true. Perhaps in reaction to their own trauma, both Jules and Gédéon had gone into a sort of self-censorship mode. “We never filmed anybody dying or dead in front of us,” Jules said. “We always refused.” In the end, nothing they’d shot was so gruesome they couldn’t include it in their film.

  About two weeks before the documentary was scheduled to be broadcast, they held a two-hour meeting at the fire academy, set up by the FDNY and the unions. The rumors had riled emotions; people were screaming at Jules and Gédéon. They finally had to stop the group meeting and talked to each family member, one by one, showing them the tape of their loved one.

  People began to understand that it was their desire to honor the firefighters’ memory. In gratitude for the department’s help, the Naudets arranged with the FDNY union to set up an education fund for firefighters, spouses, and children from the proceeds of the film. (Over twenty years, they would substantially contribute to and raise $52 million for scholarships.)

  For months, the brothers had been watching the tapes, “hearts bleeding, admiring their heroes,” as Jules put it. The CBS team of editors had embraced the project, feeling their work would be a consecration to those who’d died, to all New Yorkers and the entire country—to all those who had felt helpless that day.

  Mayor Giuliani had demanded to see it first, but CBS and the Naudets refused. He’d see it along with the rest of New York. Very few images had leaked out. I had seen only a few clips. “Their footage—which includes the only visual documentation of the event from beginning to end—is the true Zapruder film of the New York terror attacks,
” wrote their friend and coproducer David Friend in Vanity Fair.

  Producer Zirinsky arranged for the film to be broadcast with none of the firefighters’ rough language bleeped out and uninterrupted by commercials—though there were three short public service announcements—which made for two very intense hours.

  That evening in March 2002, thousands of New Yorkers crowded into bars and restaurants with televisions, wanting to be with others as they experienced that horrible day, this time from inside the North Tower. Few wanted to be alone.

  The Naudets watched the documentary with their parents. I watched it at home with Ginny, Christine, and Gregory.

  I had not shared a lot of details of my experience with Ginny and the kids. The film took everyone, including my family, inside the World Trade Center. We sat in our living room as the narrative played out almost in real time, those 102 minutes from the first plane hitting the North Tower to its collapse and me jumping on top of Jules. Inches, moments, small decisions—do I go left or right?—made a difference in who lived and who died.

  The documentary was followed by emotional interviews of the guys of Engine 7 and Ladder 1: Captain Tardio, Lieutenant Walsh, Firefighters O’Neill, Braithwaite, Van Cleaf, and the rest, including me. The stories of their experiences that day took viewers not just into the tower but into their hearts and minds. The project had started as a film about a probie, but it had become a story about the firehouse and the bravery of firefighters.

  Watching from my couch was surreal, like entering a big flashback, a bad dream that I knew was real. I saw myself inside the lobby talking on the radio, sending firefighters up, and, movingly, seeing my brother taking his firefighters upstairs for the last time.

  “I remember walking down West Street,” I said on camera. “I just remember how much my brother and I used to love being downtown, and doing this job. And how now I didn’t love it anymore.”