ON A RECENT FLIGHT FROM LONDON, back in the pre-September 11 era when a transatlantic trip meant an opportunity to relax and read, I took along a reprint of E.B. White’s slim volume “Here is New York,” written in 1949. Delightful read, I thought, paying no particular attention to a passage I have since had occasion to recall: “The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now; in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest editions. . . . In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.” Somehow I didn’t remember that prescient, half-century-old warning even when the World Trade Center succumbed to Islam’s perverted dreamer. But it came to mind last week, when the New York Police Department took my wife, Cita, and me to visit ground zero. To say that television pictures don’t capture the full extent of the horror is to understate the impact of the visit by orders of magnitude. The debris pile is still so hot–1,500 degrees–that when some chunk is removed, allowing oxygen to get in, it reignites. Bright orange body bags are located at scattered points, not so much because the sifters-through-the-ruins any longer hope to find bodies, but in the event that some body part is turned up. So great was the impact of the explosion that brought the buildings down that a huge chunk of the now-famous grillwork that was part of the twin towers is embedded in a building across the street. Stretchers are lined up, forlornly hoping for passengers able to benefit from medical care. Everywhere, makeshift huts, tents, semi-destroyed storefronts are pressed into service. In one, Mass is available; in another, hot meals are dished out to what can no longer reasonably be called rescuers; in still another, cops and firemen slump in rickety chairs, reading the newspapers or staring dully at the smoking pile. Out of one store strides perhaps the tallest firefighter I have ever seen, puffing a huge cigar, which he says clears his throat better than any respirator–a bit of swagger that foretells a quick recovery for the city. But there is another thing that neither television nor the print media has conveyed. Acts of heroism can be captured on the screen, but the calm dignity of the firefighters and cops needs to be experienced firsthand. Police sergeant Richard Kimmler, who piloted us through the ruins, exemplifies their courtesy and toughness. “Yes, sir” and “Watch your step, ma’am” come as naturally to him as his authoritative manner–“I must ask you to turn your back if a body part is uncovered” or (this to a French-Canadian television crew) “You know the rules; any infraction and you are out of here.” Spoken as softly as the statement that his next day off, his first in three weeks, will be spent at the funeral of a colleague. “There are just too many to attend them all.” Magnifying the sense of loss is the fact that cops and firemen tend to cluster in neighborhoods, usually suburbs with affordable houses and decent schools. They know each other; their sisters marry their friends’ brothers; they barbecue together. When disaster strikes one, it affects dozens. Perhaps most impressive were our conversations with cops and firemen who shall remain nameless in this composite recital of their views. They know instinctively that if you don’t hit back, you will get hit again. Colin Powell presents the biggest danger to President Bush’s policy of retaliation and all-out war on terrorism. Hillary Clinton doesn’t really give a damn, sitting in her car, ignoring the president, “so we refused to shake her hand.” It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; there are no liberals digging through the ruins of the World Trade Center. Nor are there any pessimists. Which brings me to Pete Hamill, a writer with a rare ability to capture the essence of New York and New Yorkers. To Hamill, Frank Sinatra epitomized all that makes New Yorkers what they are. Sinatra, writes Hamill, “defined success as a triumph over the odds.” And, in a phrase that describes the men we met, from the bone-weary rescuers taking a quick break to the cigar-chomping firefighter swaggering to his next tour of duty, Hamill notes, “Sinatra . . . found a way to allow tenderness into the performance while remaining manly. . . .[He] created a new model for American masculinity.” Whether they admit it or not, New York’s firefighters and cops, one of whom hugged my wife when she broke down in tears, have retained their tenderness without sacrificing their masculinity.
