Blogosphere by K. C. Rhine

NYC Mayor Bloomberg to 9/11 First Responders: No Room for You at 10th Year Ceremony

 
Photo by Thomas F.Franklin

 

9/11 First Responders Excluded from NYC 10th Year Ceremony
Police, firefighters, and other first responders who raced to save lives at Ground Zero are to be blocked from the 10th year ceremonies.

 

By Chana Ya'ar, Arutz Sheva

 

"In a decision that has rocked the world of emergency services, New York City will not invite police, firefighters and other emergency personnel to ceremonies at Ground Zero marking the tenth anniversary of the terror attack that toppled the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed the news in a statement saying that the September 11th memorial ceremony would be restricted solely to family members of victims who died on the site.

“While we are again focused on accommodating victims' family members, given the space constraints, we're working to find ways to recognize and honor first responders, and other groups, at different places and times,” said spokesman Andrew Brent.

There has been an a flurry of outrage over the news. Thousands of police officers, firefighters, emergency medical personnel and volunteers risked their own lives trying desperately around the clock, for days, to extricate victims trapped beneath the wreckage of the massive Twin Towers.

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The Patriotic Valor of Lt. Col. Marilyn Wills and Sgt. Maj. Tony Rose on 9.11.2001 in the Pentagon, Washington D.C.

Father Patrick Ryan: "... evil is a force in the world, and if we don't consciously counteract it, the consequences are tragic."

 

Can We Forgive?
With the murderers gone along with the murdered, maybe the answer is simply to stand against the evil that was done.

By Tim Townsend, WSJ

"I first met Father Patrick Ryan 10 years ago in the shadow of the World Trade Center. I was a reporting assistant for this newspaper and was interviewing anyone willing to stop for a minute. Fr. Ryan had been scheduled to take part in a photo op with then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Instead we both watched United Airlines Flight 175 fly over our heads and disappear into the South Tower.

We spoke about his sister, who had worked for Dean Witter Reynolds in one of the towers some years earlier. The interview was brief, no more than a few minutes.

Fr. Ryan eventually made his way up to a convent on 51st St. and said Mass with the sisters there before hitchhiking home to St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church in Rockaway, N.J., to say Mass again, this time for two of his parishioners who hadn't made it out of the towers.

This year, I tracked down Fr. Ryan, and spoke to him in his office at St. James of the Marches parish in Totowa, N.J. I asked him—the son and grandson of New York City cops from Staten Island—if it was time now to forgive. "You forgive the person behind the act," he said. "You either do that, or your hate eventually consumes you."

Forgiveness is central to the Christian faith. Christ's death represents the forgiveness of man's sin. All men. All sin. And Christians are expected to try to imitate it. "If Jesus could forgive the people who murdered him, there's something in that model that should apply to all of us," Fr. Ryan said. "I don't understand it all, but I'm willing to follow that model based on everything else I know and believe."

Jewish tradition teaches that since God forgives, so must his creation. Forgiveness is at the heart of the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But victims are obligated to forgive only when the perpetrator has gone through a process of repentance, called teshuvah. Similarly, in Islam, forgiveness is tied closely to repentance.

Some see moral value in not forgiving. When a dying SS soldier in a concentration camp hospital asked Simon Wiesenthal for his forgiveness for the soldier's part in a massacre of Jews, Wiesenthal remained silent and walked away. A devout friend in the camp told Wiesenthal he had done the right thing: "You would have had no right to do this in the name of people who had not authorized you to do so. What people have done to you yourself, you can, if you like, forgive and forget. That is your own affair. But it would have been a terrible sin to burden your conscience with other people's sufferings."

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Firefighter Bob Beckwith and President George W. Bush, United in Helping the Stricken Amidst the 2001 Islamic Terror Attack on the U.S. World Trade Center in New York

 
President George W. Bush embraces firefighter Bob Beckwith while standing in front of the collapsed World Trade Center

Firefighter tells story behind iconic moment with George W. Bush
By Jess Wisloski, Yahoo! New York City Editor

"Bob Beckwith, a retired New York City firefighter, is one of the best-known faces of the rescue efforts in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

The photo of him wearing his old fire helmet, standing alongside then President George W. Bush atop the ash-covered remains of a fire truck, became legendary. It graced the cover of the next day's New York Post and, later, Time magazine.

It also catapulted the retiree into the nation's spotlight.

Beckwith, 79, still lives in the same house in Baldwin, Long Island, that he has shared with his wife, Barbara, 77, since 1958.

"I was just an old man, just getting older and enjoying my retirement. Then 9/11 came," he says.

On that grave morning 10 years ago, he had already encountered one terrifying shock: His 14-year-old grandson was hit by a car while he was biking to school. Beckwith rushed to the scene, fought his way through a crowd, and waited at the boy's side for the ambulance to arrive. A short time later, he stopped home on his way to the hospital, heard the news on the radio about what was happening at the World Trade Center, and turned on the television.

"I heard a small plane went into the tower," he says. "I'm looking at this and the smoke on the upper floors, and then the wind took the smoke. I said, 'Well, that's a bit bigger than a small plane.' ... I couldn't understand what was happening."

Less than an hour later, he was in the emergency room in nearby Mineola, glued with others to the TV. That's where the former firefighter, who had been retired for seven years, watched the south tower collapse. From that hospital, where it appeared his grandson was going to be OK, he knew where he needed to go next.

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Lauren Manning, true patriot and survivor of the 2001 Islamic Terror Attack on the U.S. World Trade Center vows to survive and prevail for those who didn't make it



 

A 9/11 Survivor Tells Her Story
Hit by a fireball as she waited at a World Trade Center elevator bank, she ran from the lobby, her clothing on fire.

By Laura Landro, WSJ

"On the spectacular September morning when two passenger jets tore through the World Trade Center towers in a heretofore unimaginable act of terrorism, Lauren Manning happened to be in the lobby of the north tower when it was hit by the first plane. Waiting for an elevator that would take her to the 105th floor, where she worked for financial-services company Cantor Fitzgerald, Ms. Manning had heard a piercing whistle and attributed it to construction noise—but then she felt the building quake and a fireball flashed from the elevator bank like a blast from hell, engulfing her.

"Unmeasured Strength" is a gripping tale of her long fight back from a devastating injury that easily could have killed her. Though her story has been told before—in the press, in a book by her husband, and on television on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Today"—Ms. Manning's own account, arriving in time for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, goes beyond those tributes to her courage. Her graphic descriptions of the physical ordeal of a burn victim may churn the stomach, but she has valuable lessons to impart about the personal challenges of overcoming physical and emotional adversity.

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