At firehouses throughout New York City, men tough as nails – and probably not accustomed to hanging on to sentimentality – refuse to wipe the names of missing firefighters from the duty roster. If they're worried about preserving a memory, they needn't be. Their friends won't soon be forgotten – not by any of us.
Now that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and 13 other ships of its battle group have set sail, we'll soon be searching for our heroes across the seas. Our service men and women will not disappoint us – after all, they've already had a great example set for them here at home.
At "the dig" – as the firefighters have taken to calling the pile of concrete and steel in lower Manhattan that swallowed up more than 300 of their comrades – officials now acknowledge that the missing are presumably dead. It is time to contemplate, if only for a moment, just what we have lost.
I'm thankful for the footage taken on the ground after the first World Trade Center tower tumbled. A firefighter, covered in dust and ash, had safely made it out and was trying to catch his breath before getting ready to dash back into the still-standing second tower. A television reporter asked the firefighter if he was sure he wanted to do that. The firefighter replied that he had no choice. That was his job, he said, and besides, those were his buddies in there, trapped in the wreckage, and he had to try to save them. And so he marched back into the second tower, pushing against the thousands who were still trying to get out. Moments later, it too fell.
And what were the firefighter's last words to the reporter? "I ain't trying to be a hero."
But he was, and it is no wonder that the kind of people we usually look up to are now, themselves, looking up to the heroes of September 11. In their first game since the attacks, the New York Mets sent their young fans a clear message about who our heroes really are by swapping their baseball caps for ones bearing the insignia of the New York City fire and police departments.
And on Friday, Sept. 21, dozens of stars from sports, television and feature films will participate in a two-hour telethon to raise funds for victims and their families. "America: A Tribute to Heroes" will be simulcast on the four major television networks and a number of cable networks.
The terrorists never expected this. While they were here, they weren't just studying flying and self-defense. They were studying us. And what they learned must have convinced them that their fanatical leaders were right about how we were soft and decadent and materialistic. We would make easy prey.
The bad guys thought that once attacked, Americans would turn inward and just accept the idea that we were no longer the toughest kid on the block. Given their low opinion of Americans, they probably thought that the surest way to defeat us was to kill thousands and terrify and inconvenience millions.
The terrorists were wrong. They saw us in relatively good times – they didn't get to see how we perform in bad times.
Here's the difference between Americans and the enemy we confront. Some have marveled that the terrorists lived amongst us for as long as five years, hatching a diabolical plot to inflict enormous suffering on others that they knew would cost them their own lives.
I'm infinitely more impressed that our firefighters, policemen, paramedics and other rescue workers didn't hesitate five minutes before risking their own lives in what may have been a futile attempt to ease some of that suffering.
Nor did the heroes of ill-fated United Airlines Flight 93 hesitate before apparently fighting back, probably saving thousands more innocent lives. Nor have Americans, since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hesitated to give everything from blood to food to teddy bears and to open their wallets, and their hearts, and contribute more than $100 million to the American Red Cross.
The FBI now warns that the war on the home front may not be over and that dozens of terrorists could still be living among us. If they are, I hope they're paying attention.