The heroes amid horror: In the air, on ground, Americans' courage serves as a beacon

09/16/2001

By DAVID TARRANT and BILL MARVEL / The Dallas Morning News

In the midst of knee-buckling terror, they acted. When hope seemed lost, they stepped forward.

In the air, a group of passengers apparently fought hijackers on a doomed flight over Pennsylvania. On the ground, a beloved New York chaplain died giving last rites to a fireman. In a burning tower, a Wall Street trader helped an aging businessman down the stairs - just before the building's collapse.

Those who are alive carry on. A Washington, D.C., flight attendant, mourning for her colleagues, has spontaneously organized a blood drive. All over the country, people follow her example, donating their money, blood, skills.

In New Jersey, a cave rescue group prepares to navigate tight spaces in the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Iron workers, structural engineers, heavy-equipment operators, surgeons, nurses, even veterinarians - ordinary people who might have spent the weekend with their loved ones - are plunging into search and rescue efforts.

In recent years, Americans have had too few heroes to admire. That changed Tuesday.

President Bush reflected on this at Friday's national prayer service: "It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation, as well. In this trial, we have been reminded, and the world has seen, that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave. ... And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice."

Since the terrorist attacks, Americans have responded with bravery, compassion and valor, in acts both large and small, most unnoticed. Here are a just a few of their tales.

'You've got to move! You've got to move!'

He didn't know Victor, the overweight, aging businessman he encountered on the 53rd floor of tower one. Yet he carried the man, coaxed him and comforted him as far as they could go - until, friends fear, the building crumpled around them.

"Harry is so atypical of traders," said Kevin Davis, president of May Davis Group, the firm where Mr. Ramos was head trader. "Traders are usually, to be honest, a nasty lot. I used to say Will Rogers never knew any equity traders. It was a selfless act, and I'm just praying to God that a miracle happens and he shows up."

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Ramos was at his office on the 87th floor of Tower One with 26 co-workers. He was on the phone with his wife when the plane struck. He told her he was going to hustle his group to safety.

Mr. Ramos found Victor a few minutes later, resting in the stairwell as hundreds of evacuees streamed past. The man was at least 250 pounds, despondent, complaining that his legs couldn't carry him, said Hong Zhu, another May Davis investment banker. He offered to help. "He was too heavy for Harry to handle by himself," Mr. Zhu said.

The three men were in the credit union on the 39th floor when the other tower collapsed, shaking the building. "We've got to move," Mr. Zhu said. He and Mr. Ramos carried Victor down three more flights, but then Victor planted himself.

"I shouted at him at 36 and said, 'You've got to move! You've got to move!' He still said he couldn't do it. I said, 'Sit down and move your butt,' " Mr. Zhu recalled.

A fireman saved Mr. Zhu's life. "He said, 'Who the [expletive] are you?' screaming at him. 'You get the ... [expletive] out of here now. Go now!' ... That's where I parted from Harry."

A half-hour later, the building was a heap of rubble. Mr. Zhu, 46, got out with 10 minutes to spare. "Harry has a great heart. I would say he is ... heroic," he said. "I admire Harry. ... At this moment, I still pray for Harry, for the safe return of Harry. However..."

Sunday would be Mr. Ramos' 46th birthday. His wife buried her mother a week ago, friends said. They have a baby and a new house. He had a heart attack 11 years ago while working. His boss, Owen May, remembers the day paramedics wheeled him from the trading floor.

"That's just like Harry," said Mr. May, who was a block from the building when the plane hit. "Harry empathized with this guy. None of us would ever know, since we haven't had a heart attack, what goes through your mind - 'Oh, God, if somebody could just help me.' "

'God ... needed someone up there to help him'

Then: the news of an airline crash at the World Trade Center. Father Mike, as he was known, raced to the scene. A person who had jumped out of one of the towers had fallen on a firefighter. Father Mike knelt down to give last rites to the fireman. He took off his fire helmet to pray.

A rain of debris showered down, killing him.

"God was taking 250 firefighters up to heaven, and he needed someone there to help him," said firefighter Brian Thomas. "That's the only way you can rationalize what happened to Father Mike."

Firefighters carried his body to the firehouse. Later, the body was taken to St. Francis of Assisi Church, where the 68-year-old Franciscan priest lived in a friary. His funeral took place there on Saturday, attended by about 200 firefighters - a fraction of the number who would usually attend a brother's funeral because of the demands of the work at the disaster site.

Disasters weren't new to Father Mike. When Trans World Airways Flight 800 exploded off Long Island in 1996, he helped console families of victims.

Like all Franciscan friars, he had taken a vow of poverty. "Father Mychal exuded life," Mr. Cole said. "He was a New Yorker, a priest, and he was part of the Fire Department - the things he loved and cherished. He gave the same amount of dedication and enthusiasm to each."

On Thursday, the church held a wake for Father Mike. He was laid out in a coffin, wearing his brown monk's robe, his fire helmet at his side, while hundreds of mourners paid their final respects.

"He touched thousand of lives," said Father Bryan Carroll. "He could be at peace with a homeless man at a door well on the street and with the president of the United States. ... And minutes before he died, he was talking to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

"He loved people. He had an incredible belief in the goodness of humanity."

Not leaving 'brothers on the battlefield'

Then: "BOOM! It really rocked the place. Part of the ceiling caved in. Everyone was yelling, 'Get out!' " American Airlines Flight 77 had crashed into the Pentagon.

He ran out an emergency exit door, then headed around the corner toward the noise and heat. He and another officer climbed through a window back into the Pentagon. They dragged a woman to safety. Then he saw a flash.

"It was a man, totally engulfed in fire," said Lt. Col. Anderson, a 41-year-old father of two. "He ran right by us, but we both dove at the guy. We rolled him over and over to get the fire out."

The men took the victim outside to medics. Firefighters and police officers tried to prevent Lt. Col. Anderson from returning to the building, but he defied them. "I was absolutely furious," he said. "I'm screaming, 'Get in the building. There are people in there!'... There's no way I'm leaving my brothers on the battlefield."

Fires engulfed the crash area and prevented him from re-entering. He stayed until 6:30 p.m. His keys were inside his office. His car was at a crime scene. There was nothing to do but take the subway home. "I got on the Metro covered with soot and blood," he said. "Nobody could believe it."

Elsewhere in the Pentagon, Navy Commander Sam Perez carried to safety a man who was burned. He was helping establish a first-aid center when he heard people were trapped behind a nearby emergency exit door. He could hear their screams.

Cmdr. Perez, 43, an El Paso native, and a half-dozen other men found fire extinguishers and tried to batter down the door. Nothing worked. Firefighters reached the area, and the makeshift team turned into a support group, hauling hoses, turning valves and supplying drinking water. "We just had to pitch in and do whatever we could," Cmdr. Perez said.

At least twice, he said, warnings that more attacks were imminent forced the rescuers to withdraw. When they came back a third time, the yelling had stopped.

Cmdr. Perez said the men didn't think about risking their own lives. "Guys were staying in there till they were hacking up lungs," he said. "They just couldn't stay there any longer. And we just didn't have the equipment."

Flight 93: 'We're going to rush the terrorists'

They weren't supposed to be. Mr. Glick's flight out the night before had been canceled. Mr. Burnett had been scheduled to be on a later flight and boarded Flight 93 at the last minute.

Now both found themselves on a hijacked plane. Each man phoned his wife and learned about what had happened at the World Trade Center. After hurried messages of love, both ended their calls determined, as Mr. Burnett, 38, told his wife, to "do something about it."

Mr. Glick, 31, told his wife: "We're going to rush the terrorists. I'm going to put the phone down. We'll be back in a few minutes," according to Mr. Glick's uncle, Tom Crowley.

Then, several minutes of silence, followed by several more minutes of yelling and screaming. Then silence again. The FBI would neither confirm nor deny that there had been a struggle.

At 10:10 a.m., Flight 93 crashed in a field 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. "There were some very brave people on Flight 93 who perhaps saved some people on the ground," Mr. Crowley said. "In my eyes, Jeremy is a hero, a great American hero."

Helping after 'someone attacked my country'

Ellen Heck, director of the Tissue Transplant Services Center at the medical center, quickly determined she had 60 square feet of skin available to send. The problem was how to get it to Washington, with all flights grounded.

She tried arranging military transport, but such flights were restricted to defense missions only. The unit decided to drive the skin to Washington. Technicians Eddie Perryman and Matthew Harris volunteered to make the 1,300-mile trip with the donated skin, driving all night in the center's blue van.

"Someone attacked my country. I wanted to do something to help. I'm glad I was given the opportunity to help," said Mr. Harris.

"They're already using it," Ms. Heck said of the skin. "It's a little thing, but we were thrilled we were able to help."

Flight attendants: We 'feel so helpless'

On Wednesday, she woke up determined to do something special in their memory: organize a blood drive. "It would show the world that the flight crews of American Airlines were not going to take this sitting down - and were going to remain strong and stand up to these monsters."

It took only a few phone calls to get 60 American flight attendants and other crew members to gather at a Red Cross donor center in Fairfax, Va. Although they were not on duty, they all wore their uniforms in a show of solidarity. "I'm so glad we could do this. So many of us feel so helpless. This blood drive was something positive we could do."

'It's like a Dante's Inferno scene'

Giuseppe Sergi, 35, a volunteer rescue worker, stood outside St. Vincents Hospital and Medical Center, trying to explain what he had seen at ground zero. The hours of picking through the rubble left Mr. Sergi dust-caked and tired. He had suffered a deep gash on his right ring finger that required six stitches.

Mr. Sergi wore a yellow hard hat, a plastic breathing mask, shop goggles and black work boots. He had been a relief worker in Bosnia for Catholic charitable organizations, but he had never seen anything like the destruction at the World Trade Center.

"It's a hole," he said. "There is nothing left. It's hot. It's smoky. We can't breathe. There's a lot of police and fire officers and a lot of equipment spread around. It's like a Dante's Inferno scene - dark and smoking debris all around."

Hundreds of worried relatives looking for missing loved ones lined up outside the makeshift St. Vincents Hospital information center in Greenwich Village.

Alexandra Pelosi, an independent filmmaker who lives near the information center, joined her neighbors to set up an aid station. They offered families cold water and a chance to use the phone or bathrooms in their nearby apartments. Soon, other neighbors and passers-by began stocking the table with bottled water, soft drinks, sandwiches and fruit.

"New Yorkers are nice when they have to be," she said.

Iron workers 'were headed for the building'

They are the members of Local 40, International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers. Even as the first of the twin towers collapsed, the iron workers were calling the union hall asking what they could do, said Alan Simmons, president of the Iron Workers New York Council.

By Wednesday evening, more than 150 of them swarmed over the wreckage, wielding bolt cutters, wrenches and cutting torches so that rescue workers could get at survivors who might be trapped beneath.

"When people were running down the street, iron workers were headed for the building," said Michael Fitzpatrick, the union's general secretary. "They pulled out a woman and helped get a fireman out, too."

'Everybody's got a mission to do'

Mr. Johnson, 58, cuts hair at his concourse shop underneath the Pentagon, where thousands of people emerge from the Metro each morning.

The building is so big and so deep that he didn't hear or feel the explosion.

He joined the evacuation and went home. Later, as he watched the horrifying TV coverage Tuesday night, he saw Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld affirm that the nation was doing "business as usual."

Mr. Johnson figured that applied to him, too. With no other way to get to work, he walked about two miles from his Arlington, Va., home. Most stores were still shuttered, and rescue efforts continued in the smoldering Pentagon. He and two other haircutters opened for business. They're still not as busy as before, but that's not the point.

"We all just had the feeling that nothing was going to deter us from our job," he said. "Everybody's got a mission to do, and in this building, everybody's devoted to their job."

'They also serve who only stand and wait'

All week the 62-member Urban Search and Rescue Texas Task Force-1 waited at Texas A&M in College Station for the summons to join the rescue in New York. They packed and repacked gear, attended training sessions, watched television and slept on the floor.

They were told an Air Force plane would fetch them in the coming days. The team expects to remain in New York for 10 days until relieved by another team.

Jerry Dempster, a Dallas structural engineer, missed his son's birthday party Friday. A former city building inspector, he volunteered for the Task Force in 1997 after firefighter told him his skills would be perfect for search and rescue operations.

He said his job on the team will be to ensure the safety of rescue workers in the shifting wreckage and unstable buildings near the Trade Center. "Structural engineers determine which buildings we can get into with the least risk of life to our people. ... Rescuers are tremendously dedicated. They'll rescue in spite of any danger."

Michael Rickman, assistant director for Dallas Water Utilities, has worked with the Dallas Fire Department, when heavy equipment was needed to bring down a building or to lift heavy debris.

He joined the USAR Task Force, he said, because "my family and I have been very well-blessed. This was one of the ways I can pay back for what we've received."

Fort Worth Fire Department Battalion Chief Jay Peacock, the team's leader, comes from a firefighting family.

His father and uncle are retired Fort Worth chiefs, and his wife, Konnie, is a lieutenant on the force.

The death of so many New York firefighters makes it "extra difficult for us," he said. "We lost some people in there we knew.

"Firefighters are all one big family, whether blood-related or not."

Staff writers Todd J. Gillman and Christopher Lee in New York, Michael Precker in Washington, free-lance writer Connie Benesch in New York and The Associated Press contributed to this report.