A Test of Will
"Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution."
Still, the selling in the trading pits has been more orderly than panicky, and if Wall Street is nervous, Main Street seems less so. In fact, America seems willing to invest its most precious treasure in Bush's war effort: its children.
The September 11 attacks initially scared off Lakiecher Murphy, 23, a junior at Loyola University in Chicago, from going through with her plans to join the Army Reserve. Her friends warned her she might be shipped off to war. "Girl, you might be on the front line," one of them said. But the attacks made Murphy want to help her country. She tried to donate blood, but the lines were too long. She gave some food to a food bank, but she decided she needed to do more. So she called Army Reserve recruiter Sgt. 1st Class Billy Williams and asked him about the war. He assured her she would fight only in a capacity for which she was trained; since she wants to become a transportation-management coordinator, it's unlikely she would be on the front lines. On Thursday, Murphy passed her physical and signed up. "I want to do something to give back," she says. "The best way was to show my loyalty." True, she is looking forward to the Army paying the last two years of her college tuition, but the World Trade Center attack "did push me over the edge. I felt I needed to do something."
The need to do something, from buying American flags to giving blood to leaving messages of tribute at the attack sites, has swept the nation. Americans, eternally looking for the bright side, are also looking for heroes to praise along with bodies to bury. At a drab white-brick, two-story firehouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan's 85th Street, the firefighters of Engine Company 22 and Ladder Company 13 have been under virtual siege by well-wishers dropping off food, money, and flowers. Since 1952, just four firefighters from the 50-member stationhouse have died in the line of duty. On September 11, the firehouse lost nine men when the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. Now, more than 75 floral arrangements and lighted candles bedeck the front of the firehouse. The wall along the sidewalk is blanketed with thank-you notes, testaments, drawings affixed with tape. Inside are tray upon tray of fresh-baked lasagna, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies, and new supplies of snow shovels, socks, flashlights, and shaving cream. More than a dozen psychologists have come by to offer free grief counseling sessions to the firefighters, while two masseuses have dragged their tables to the back of the firehouse to give free massages. All day long, people, many with tears streaming down their cheeks, walk up and hug the firefighters. "You are our heroes," They say. One amazed member of Ladder Company 13, numb from shaking hands, says, "It's half therapy for the neighborhood and half therapy for us." Another firefighter says: "Compared to some other companies, we were lucky. They found the bodies of two of our guys, so their families will at least be able to have funerals."
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