From New York with love
Gothamites can't stop thanking their firefighters

By David Whitman

For all that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center at first seemed surreal, as if they were scenes from an action movie, the response of New Yorkers to the attacks has been just as improbable, even by Hollywood standards. Millions of notoriously hard-boiled New Yorkers seem to have adopted the principle of the movie Pay It Forward–in which a young boy played by Haley Joel Osment seeks to help others by doing good deeds without the expectation of being paid back in the future.

Engine Co. 22 and Ladder Co. 13 lost nine men, two of whom are confirmed dead, with seven missing. (David Butow–Saba for USN&WR)

The outburst of altruism is evident far from the confines of the World Trade Center, where rescue workers received standing ovations and well-publicized donations of food, water, and other goods. At a drab, white-brick, two-story firehouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on 85th Street, the firefighters of Engine Co. 22 and Ladder Co. 13 have been besieged nonstop by well-wishers, food, money, and grateful citizens for more than 10 days since the two fire companies lost nine men after the north tower collapsed.

A week after the tragedy, more than 75 floral arrangements and dozens of lit candles bedeck the front of the firehouse. Its first-floor wall is smothered with thank you notes, testimonials, and drawings affixed with duct tape and Scotch tape. There are poems from Thomas Wolfe, reprinted lyrics from a k.d. lang-Jane Siberry duet ("Calling All Angels"), and a thank you note from a Buddhist group. 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 quietly offer free grief counseling sessions to the firemen; two masseuses have meanwhile dragged their massage tables to the back of the firehouse to give free massages to the bedraggled rescue workers. All day long, people-many with tears rolling down their cheeks–are walking up and hugging the firefighters, shaking their hands, and saying, "Thank you" and "You are our heroes."

A number of the firemen, more accustomed to helping others than being helped themselves, didn't know what to make of the outpouring of neighborhood support at first. One amazed member of Ladder Co. 13, numb from shaking hands and telling the same stories day after day, said, "It's half therapy for the neighborhood and half therapy for us." But the stationhouse has now temporarily had to assign a fireman to record all the checks that the neighborhood's affluent residents are bringing in for the families of fallen firefighters and scrambled for legal advice about setting up a charity. Last Tuesday alone, 440 people between 7 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. walked in to the firehouse, largely unbidden, to make checks out to the Eng 22/Lad 13 Firefighters Family Fund-roughly a check every 100 seconds. Hundreds of others dropped off cash in a water-cooler bottle set by the entry. Kayla Gerdes, 10, set up a lemonade stand next to the stationhouse. She sold all her drinks in 20 minutes, donating the $189 she earned, saying, "The firemen need the money more than me."

No one has been able to tally the amount donated yet by area residents, but estimates are that it runs into the hundreds of thousands if not millions. The firefighters, though, have been especially touched by small donations from cash-strapped citizens on pensions and disability, and in low-wage jobs. One man wrote a check for $18 but promised to come back at the end of the week when his paycheck cleared so he could give more. Sherrie Douglas, who stopped by with her husband, Jim, and 5-year-old son, William, to donate some cash, says, "It's nice to see the firemen are appreciated. But it's sad that they weren't appreciated every day."

Since 1952, just four firefighters from the 50-man stationhouse had died while on duty. The loss of nine men in just one day was unimaginable for firemen who have cooked together, slept at the stationhouse together, downed beers together, fished together, gone to Yankees games together, fought fires together, and called one another "brother." "Compared to some other companies, we were lucky," says one fireman. "They found the bodies of two of our guys, so their families will at least be able to have funerals." Yet the men have had little time to grieve, between first looking for bodies at the World Trade Center and attending the funerals of fallen comrades.

Last Tuesday morning, before they went out to shake hands and receive the condolences of the public, stationhouse members first attended the funeral of fellow firefighter Martin McWilliams in Kings Park and then drove immediately afterward to Rockaway Beach to attend the wake for their captain, Walter Hynes. "I go through the lists of the 300-plus firefighters the department lost and it doesn't register," says Mike Donohue, a 16-year veteran of the firehouse." You can't even fathom this, a human being can't frickin' absorb it."

The outpouring of money and support from neighborhood residents who long took the firefighters for granted is heartwarming, says Donohue, even if it won't last forever. Still, nothing can ultimately compensate for the loss the men and their families have suffered. All told, the nine fallen firefighters had 10 children under the age of 6. The cascade of checks, Donohue says sadly, "is money for kids who have no daddies anymore."