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Community Corner

Sept. 11, 2001: A Day for Heroes

True courage found in continuing the upward climb.

The theme that strikes me this year on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is heroism – the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93, the heroism of the emergency workers, and especially the courage of the firefighters who were going up into the towers as everyone else was heading for the street, and trying to get as far away as possible.

When the firefighters were climbing the stairs on 9/11 – quite a feat in itself, let alone when carrying all their equipment – they knew that the smart and safe thing to do would be to join the crowds heading for the ground. But instead of that, they kept climbing to where the danger was, confident that as they had survived other hazardous situations, they would get through this one too.

How could they do that? They weren’t masochists – they didn’t want to die. But they were sure of their experience and training, they were committed to the job they had signed up for, and they took pride in being the protectors of the people of New York. They gave us a magnificent example of taking risks for their fellow man, and of having values other than just their paychecks or their own safety.

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I thought of the 9/11 emergency workers when I saw The Help this week, about a less dramatic but equally needful courage – again, the courage to take risks and to put one’s livelihood and even one’s life on the line.

In The Help the black maids of 1963 Jackson, Mississippi are challenged to tell their stories and to risk being fired and becoming unemployable. That kind of courage is also needful, maybe even more so. We are seldom called upon to directly risk our lives, as the 463 emergency workers killed on 9/11 did. But we are often called to take the risk of being more honest, and to tell a difficult truth, when we don’t want to.

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For me, this year, this is the prime lesson of 9/11 – of finding and using our courage to continue the upward climb, when our instinct for self preservation would send us scurrying to find somewhere safer.

 

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