Through the Eyes of a Lawman

I’ve always believed that greatness is expressed in moments of time. While we are conditioned to believe the longevity of some endeavor is of great value, I think the opposite is actually true. Bobby Thomson’s blast occurred in one moment on the scale of infinity. A soldier, whose only action was on D-Day, lives in eternity. Winston Churchill’s greatest speech (“We shall fight them on the beaches . . .”) will live forever from that one moment in time. While we are encouraged as a culture to glorify longevity, we owe more to the brief exhibition of courage than the protracted, mundane exercise of respect of service. The Medal of Honor is often earned in one long moment on the battlefield. My grandfather served only five months in battle, encountering the most intense form of elemental combat during World War I. It is what distinguished him as a great American. Among Pearl Harbor’s lost were young servicemen who had never heard guns go off in battle ever before. I offer a salute to those among us who rise to the challenge when the moment is presented. The great Americans who died on that open field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, deserve our immeasurable respect for those few moments of unselfish love dedicated to our belief in the sacrifice of the self for the greater good.
The morning of September 11, 2001, dawned bright and warm with azure blue skies. I was up early helping the Suozzi campaign as a poll watcher for primary day. My eldest child, Robbie, was a New York City police officer assigned to the Manhattan South Task Force, and early that morning, he began his trek into Manhattan on the Long Island Railroad (LIRR).
The attack that was to come that day completely surprised America. Of the country’s some fifteen intelligence agencies, none had actually anticipated the use of jets as missiles aimed at the iconic towers at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The principal agencies, the FBI, NSA, and CIA, were caught completely off guard, despite the fact that there had been a prior bombing at the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993.
Robbie, like his father, had always wanted to be a cop. As a beautiful little boy at age three, he would look at me in uniform and say, “Daddy, I want to be a police cop, too.” Now twenty-seven, Robbie, at 5’8”, was a bit smaller than the other men in the extended family, but he was lean and fit, an established athlete with impressive skills. As a nine-year-old in the Copiague Youth League, he had held the record for the most goals scored in a single soccer game and often was among the leaders in goals scored in the other leagues in which he played in the years that followed. Small for a cornerback, he filled that position on his high school football team. In his first year in college, after an outstanding high school career, he was the starting centerfielder for SUNY Maritime baseball team. On that fateful day in September, Robbie was a newlywed just beginning to plan a family.
As Robbie rode the train to work, it passed through Jamaica station and the New York skyline came into view. At just about that time, approximately 8:46 a.m., the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. The longest day of Robbie’s career and life had just begun. The train, after passing through a long, dark tunnel, terminated at Penn Station in Manhattan.
Robbie’s command building was about three blocks from Penn Station, and he and all the other cops on the trains ran to work. There was confusion as they suited up, but they all knew there were people who needed to be rescued. That was what many of these cops had been trained to do – rescue people. Robbie had been trained in fire suppression and knew how to use the “Scott Pack,” a common tool among firefighters. A compressed air device, the Scott Pack is a breathing aid used in heavy smoke conditions. But time didn’t permit the delivery of the devices for use by Robbie and his comrades that day. They responded in the standard uniform, standing barren without the benefit of those technological aids.
It is important to understand the difference between a rescue operation and a recovery operation. Rescue implies life. The risks taken to save human life can be extraordinary. The cops and firefighters, EMT personnel, the security people, many agents of the state and federal government, and many courageous civilians risked their lives to save other human lives. While some risk applies to recovery actions, the scales of risk used in a recovery operation must favor the life of the recovery people used. The scene that day was a rescue operation.
Robbie and the other officers appeared at the base of the south tower, 2 World Trade Center, shortly after it was struck at about 9:03 a.m. The police mission was essentially to direct people out of the building to safety. When Robbie arrived, the cops were moving people from the base floor of the building to the exits. As he looked up at the burning structure, he could see people leaping from the flames in an effort to escape. Neckties flapped over the shoulders of some of the jumpers. The plane had struck the south tower between the seventy-seventh and eighty-fifth floors at high speed and with an enormous cargo of jet fuel in its tanks. Between 9:40 and 9:52, the police were reporting serious structural changes to the building and finally ordered their personnel to evacuate. Robbie and his squad were directed to evacuate the area at about 9:57 a.m. The south tower fell two minutes later, a little less than an hour after it had been struck.
Before it fell, Robbie ran from the tower with his lieutenant. They considered taking cover under a fire truck parked at the scene after the lieutenant injured his ankle but thought better of it. About forty-five seconds after they began their departure, the building came down with tremendous force. As Robbie looked back, he could see the waves of dust, debris, and smoke rolling in their direction. They tried to outrun the cloud, but it quickly overtook them. Suddenly, they were enveloped in an enormous gray body of matter. Everything was covered, and now they worried about breathing.
Back in Massapequa, Betty and I were in my law office, receiving telephone calls from just about everyone we knew, or so it seemed. We figured Robbie was in there, but we were uncertain as to his mission. The fact that he had been trained in firefighting and the use of the Scott Pack made me nervous, but in the interest of sanity, I put it out of my mind. Just as we got home, the south tower came down. The second, the north tower at 1 World Trade Center, fell at about 10:28 a.m. The TV images were simply overwhelming. With both buildings now reduced to rubble, the television revealed a horrendous landscape.
Betty and I both considered the possibility of the worst, but we assured ourselves Robbie would call at his first opportunity. Tom Ford, a detective and former Marine, stopped at the house, either to allay our fears or to find out the latest. He left in a depressed state that morning. He said to me later in an e-mail “That is a day I will never forget, standing in your bedroom looking up at that TV on the wall and thinking the worst had happened.”