Chicken Soup for the Soul of America Read online

  “I’m a Catholic,” Mr. McMahon said. “But I only go to church about once every five years. I don’t know what that was that day. I don’t know how to explain it. Somebody got me out,” he said.

  Mr. McMahon wrote the memo to his boss on a yellow legal pad at the end of that week, sitting in his backyard in Westbury on Long Island. When his fiancée read it, she cried.

  “I wrote it,” he said, “because I had to get it off my chest.”

  The day it happened, as Mr. McMahon recounted in the memo, he wandered until he came upon New York University Downtown Hospital where nurses pulled him inside and checked his vital signs. He rinsed out his mouth and took a shower. Then he had his fiancée buy him some new clothes at Macy’s so he could, as he wrote, “finish out my day performing my duties.”

  He is taking some time off now, struggling with hearing loss and problems with his right eye, which was injured by the dust. More than those ailments, he said, he is struggling with his own mind.

  “When I tell my psychiatrist, I know it all sounds crazy to him, but that’s the way it happened,” he says.

  Mr. McMahon’s memo ends like thousands of others. On a line by itself are the words:

  “For your information.”

  Randy Kennedy

  What Can Be Said?

  10:32 A.M.

  I am writing this from downtown New York. In a perverse reversal, I have no way to contact anyone except through my high-speed wireless Internet connection—phones are out, and electricity in the area is intermittent.

  The media will ultimately tell the story better than I, but I can tell you that there is massive loss of life. The sky is black with ash, and the people have been panicking and fleeing in unadulterated terror. I have never seen anything like it. It is very difficult to breathe, even with your mouth covered—the ash blows down the streets and burns your eyes. It feels like the world has ended. When the screaming started and the crowds began to run after the second plane struck, it was a horror film running in overdrive, jumping frames and cutting in and out. Time got lost—I don’t know how long this went on. I have a cut on my leg. I ended up in a Wendy’s where a huge number of us took refuge. I don’t know where the workers were—I helped get water for people.

  I am starting to see emergency workers, and the streets are clearing somewhat—at least the first waves of panic are passing. I’ve seen bodies draped in white sheets—it took me time to realize those were bodies, not injured people; they must be out of room or not be able to get them to the morgues or the hospitals.

  I’m headed for the Brooklyn Bridge to walk out of the city. I’m going to stop at any hospital I find to give blood before leaving. If anyone reading this can, please donate blood—I heard from a medic that the hospitals are already running out.

  3:50 P.M.

  I am writing this from my home in Brooklyn after leaving Manhattan. I have signed up for a time slot to give blood later this evening and have a few hours available before then.

  After my last posting I made my way east through an urban moonscape—everywhere there is ash, abandoned bags in the street, people looking lost. I managed to get a cell line out to Jean-Michele, who is still in Seattle, and she helped me navigate with online maps as I plotted my exit strategy.

  Bizarrely, I caught a taxi cross town. I was standing at a corner, I’m not even certain where, and a taxi was sitting there. A very pushy woman, whom I will always be thankful for, barged her way into the cab.

  In a moment, without thinking, I climbed in, too. The driver, a Pakistani guy who had an improbable smile, immediately took off.

  The ash blocks out the sun downtown—it is like driving in an impossible midnight, made even more impossible because I’m in a cab with this woman who won’t stop trying her cell phone and another man, my age, who looks like he’s been crying. Maybe he just has ash in his eyes, I know I do—I feel like I will never see properly again, though that’s probably just trauma. I don’t even know where the driver is going. The crying man got someone on his cell phone and started explaining what he’s seeing out the window. It’s like having a narrator traveling with us. I only notice the things that he is describing as he describes them.

  God bless that taxi driver—we never paid him. He let us all off, and I think he got out as well, near the Brooklyn Bridge. There are cops everywhere, people are herding themselves quite calmly, mutely, onto the bridge. We all walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, which is unbelievably beautiful, the wires and stone of the bridge surrounding us and the bright sun ahead, passing out of darkness.

  No one is talking to each other, but there is a sense of warmth. Everyone has their cell phones out, fishing for a clear signal. Those who catch them talk hurriedly to families, friends, people in other cities, children in their homes. It is comforting to hear their voices, telling how they are, “Okay, shhh, it’s okay, I’m okay.” As we walk out into the sunlight, I am so happy to be in this company, the company of people who are alright, those who walked out.

  I was in the city today to turn in some of my book. I had stayed up all night writing and I was so worried—is it ready, have I done my work? Those questions seem small today—not unimportant, but smaller, in a new proportion. I kept thinking of how much I have left to do in my life, so many things that are undone, people I haven’t spoken to in years. It’s overwhelming to feel everyone around me thinking the same thing, the restless thoughts trickling over this bridge as we come back to Brooklyn.

  From the Promenade, I stand with hundreds of others, listening to radios, watching the plumes of smoke and the empty holes in the skyline. People stand there for a long time, talking to one another in hushed tones. Someone hands out a flyer for a vigil this evening, which I will go to after I give blood.

  What can be said? Just this: we will emphasize the horror and the evil, and that is all true. It is not the entire story. I saw an old man with breathing problems and two black kids in baggy pants and ghetto gear rubbing his back, talking to him. No one was rioting or looting. People helped each other in small and tremendous ways all day long . . . a family was giving away sandwiches at the Promenade. Everyone I talked to agreed to go give blood. If a draft had been held to train people to be firefighters, there would have been fights to see who got to volunteer.

  No matter how wide and intricate this act of evil may be, it pales in comparison to the quiet dignity and strength of regular people. I have never been more proud of my country.

  Mike Daisey

  FOXTROT. ©2001 Bill Amend. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

  Twin Saving at the Twin Towers

  We are like one-winged angels. It’s only when we help each other that we can fly.

  Luciano de Crescenzo

  Through the vivid blue eyes of middle-aged Kenneth Summers came one of the most inspirational stories of a citizen saved by an instantly heroic volunteer after the September 11 terrorist attack in New York.

  Summers was one of the few people who were seriously injured and lived to see another day, only because someone stepped forward in sacrifice.

  An early bird, Summers arrived at his desk on the twenty-seventh floor of the North Tower at his usual time around 7:15 A.M. After clearing up his busywork, he took the elevator down to the soaring glass lobby of the World Trade Center to mail some personal bills that were perilously close to being late. What a perfect day, he thought. Crystal clear sky, cool air. The kind of day you feel happy to be alive.

  “I wasn’t outside for more than ten seconds when I thought I heard something like a massive train rushing past. Then boom! I looked to the right and saw someone I knew from upstairs racing for cover,” he recalled. “I don’t even know if I took the time to look up.”

  To take cover for himself, he rushed back to the revolving door leading into the North Tower. Inside that swirling door, Summers immediately noticed the space around him filling up with orange-yellowish colored fumes. “A second later, all hell broke
loose,” he continued. Shards of glass were flying everywhere as the force of an explosion lifted him up and out onto the street.

  “I was on my back and on fire. I frantically looked to see if I had fingers or toes. I was lying next to the big planters outside and I kept saying to myself, I’m okay. I’m okay. Then I realized I was bleeding from my hands to my head, and I was covered with burns.”

  He beat his clothes and his hair with his hands to extinguish the flames that engulfed him. Once he put the fire out, he staggered across the street, looked up and saw the black smoke billowing from the top floors of the Tower. Was it another bomb, like in 1993? he thought. Or maybe a plane had hit one of the towers. People on the sidewalk around him seemed frozen. Summers pleaded with strangers to help him, but understandably everyone seemed too stunned to respond.

  A split second later, there was a whoosh over his head, and he heard a second explosion. Suddenly the South Tower was ablaze. Fiery debris rained down, and Summers began to run. His skin was smoking and smoldering, peeling off in sheets. He was charred black and going into shock.

  That’s when a stranger with a kind face started calming Summers. “I want to help you. My name is Stephen Newman. I want to be your guide,” he offered.

  A thirty-six-year-old banker for Merrill Lynch, Newman had taken a car service to work from his home on the Upper East Side. When the first plane hit, he was stopped in traffic two blocks south of the World Trade Center. After he got out of the cab, he headed for the Twin Towers. “I was racing to reach my office to make sure everybody knew what was happening,” he said. Just as he saw the singed Summers, the second plane hit the South Tower.

  While he wasn’t sure what motivated him, Newman knew Summers needed medical attention fast. “We have to get across the river,” he said to the badly injured man who was getting weaker by the moment.

  Staggering, Summers slumped more and more with every step. But Newman’s calm persistence pushed him on. They finally made it to the pier near Wall Street where thousands of usually steely New Yorkers were quite animated as they pushed to board boats for New Jersey. Although Newman had only been across the Hudson River a couple times in his life, he wasn’t about to abandon the needy stranger he had taken under his wing.

  The hobbling man and his newfound guide were the last two people to board the ferry leaving for Jersey City. As the ferry pulled away, the South Tower collapsed. “It was like a volcano,” Newman remembered. “An avalanche that was weaving its way all over the World Financial Center.”

  Since the captain of the ferry had called ahead to have medical help waiting for the critically injured Summers, rescue workers took him immediately to the burn unit at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey.

  Summers was one of the few lucky ones. He lived. Had Newman not stopped amidst all the panic that surrounded them, Summers is certain he would have perished.

  “If he hadn’t led me, directed me and pushed me, I was so woozy I would have probably sat down and lost consciousness. Who knows what would have happened?

  “Steve saved my life,” Summers said. Yet, in a startling revelation, Newman made the same declaration to him.

  “You probably saved my life, too,” he replied. “If I hadn’t helped you, we both might have been there when the buildings fell.” Through the sacrifice of one, two lives were saved. It was volunteering of the tallest order.

  Robin Gaby Fisher

  ©Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

  More Than Chocolate

  I arrived at Ground Zero as part of the Emergency Animal Rescue Services (EARS) team on September 19, a week and a day after the terrorist attacks. Although there were plenty of agencies providing food and drink to the rescue personnel, everyone was still mostly running on adrenaline. There was so much to do, so much chaos and wreckage—so much energy tied up in helping in any way it was possible.

  The devastation at the WTC area was unimaginable. Over three hundred search-and-rescue canine teams had come from all over to help find survivors, and when it became obvious that there were precious few of those, the teams looked for bodies. Many of the human/dog teams weren’t strictly search-and-rescue; if someone had a drugor bomb-sniffing dog, they came, too. Everyone wanted to do something.

  EARS helped at a triage area for the dogs working at the site. When a team came off a shift, they brought the dogs to us for cleaning and decontamination. There was a lot of asbestos in the omnipresent dust that covered the animals’ fur. Plus the dogs had to trample through pools of foul and unsanitary water that collected as a result of the rain and the hose jets directed at the rubble to keep the dust out of the air.

  After the dogs were clean, veterinarians did exams, paying particular attention to the dogs’ eyes, noses and feet. Many of the dogs needed eye flushes because of the abrasive nature of the dust. Others had minor cuts on their feet that in that environment could have become easily infected.

  One man, a police officer from Canada, had heard the news and decided to drive down immediately. He and his large German Shepherd, Ranger, had arrived on the 12th and, within hours, had begun that amazing duet called search-and-rescue work: the dog’s instinct and intense concentration combined with the handler’s keen attention and response to the dog’s cues. Back and forth, over and over, the pair scoured the surface of enormous piles of broken concrete, twisted metal and shattered glass.

  When the police officer’s days off from his job at home were finished, he didn’t want to leave what he felt was such important work in New York. He called his police station up in Canada and requested to take his vacation time. They refused his request.

  “Then I quit,” he told them and hung up.

  When the people in his community heard about this situation, they immediately took up a collection to show their support of this man. The police station received so much flak over their unfortunate decision that they called the man and told him to stay as long as he liked; his job would be waiting.

  It was late in the afternoon on the day I arrived in New York when Ranger and his handler came to our triage area. We scrubbed Ranger down and passed him over to the veterinary team. I noticed Ranger’s handler sitting in a chair close by, staring straight ahead. He was a large man and looked like a combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo—bald head and camouflage fatigues. The adrenaline had finally run out and the reality of the disaster around him was finally catching up with him. He had that look on his face I recognized from the over fifty disasters I’ve witnessed—a look that said, “I don’t think I can do this much longer.”

  It was probably the first time the man had sat down in a very long time, and he didn’t look at anyone or talk except to answer questions the veterinarians asked about his dog.

  The doctor asked, “When was the last time your dog ate?”

  The man answered, “Last night,” in a voice as blank as his face.

  Someone put some food in a bowl and placed it at Ranger’s head. The big dog was lying on the pavement and, although he sniffed at the food once or twice, it seemed he was just too exhausted to eat.

  I found a dog biscuit, squatted down near the dog, scooped up some of the gravy from the dog food in the bowl and offered it to Ranger. He lifted his head and slowly licked the liquid from the biscuit, so I dunked the biscuit in the bowl again, bringing up a little of the food with the gravy this time. Once more, he licked the food and gravy from the biscuit. I continued “spoon-feeding” Ranger while the triage workers and veterinarians looked on.

  While I was feeding Ranger, I had the thought that someone should probably ask Ranger’s handler the same question. After all, we were here to help people, too. When I finished, I turned to ask the man when he had eaten last, but before I could open my mouth, he looked directly at me and said, “Do you know how I get through this?”

  I shook my head.

  He reached his massive hand into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic baggy wit
h two chocolate kisses, two dog biscuits and a note inside.

  I recognized it as one of the “care packages” children at the local school had made for the handlers and their dogs. What could be inside that had sustained the large and powerful man in front of me through this tremendously draining and demanding work? I knew from experience that it would take a lot more than chocolate.

  He handed it to me, his eyes bright with tears. “Read it.”

  I took out the note, and unfolded it. There, written in a child’s handwriting, were the words, “Thank you for helping to find people. I know Lassie would be so proud of you.”

  Terri Crisp

  As told to Carol Kline

  E-Mails from Manhattan

  On this Earth, though far and near, without love, there’s only fear.

  Pearl S. Buck

  September 11, 2001

  A Tragic Day: The Walk Uptown

  Probably more for my own sake than anything else, I wanted to try to describe this morning to you. My office is in the building of United Jewish Community and Jewish Education Service of North America, located at Fourteenth Street just a couple of subway stops before the World Trade Center. When I reached my stop at about 9:00 this morning, the first thing I heard was the announcement that there would be no connecting or continuing service: There was an emergency at the World Trade Center. Basically, get out. I walked up the subway stairs and smelled smoke but didn’t know why. By the time I got upstairs, officials at UJC were already gathering everyone in the conference room. The room was not filled, despite the hundreds of people who generally work on the floor. Many had seen the planes crash and had never come upstairs. Others were stuck on the bridges, tunnels and subways, all of which had already been shut down. They advised us that the Consulate had not closed and that UJC was also not going to evacuate. Together, we saw the flames from our windows. We recited a couple of psalms. We heard the leaders speak. We knew that many of the people in the room had family and friends working in the World Trade Center. Within five minutes, we heard of the collapse of the second building. And then we heard that the Pentagon was struck. And finally, we heard that the Consulate had closed and we should leave the building.