Jana Stanfield
THE FAMILY CIRCUS By Bil Keane
“When I grow up I wanna be a
SUPERHERO—a fireman or a policeman.”
Reprinted with permission of Bil Keane.
©Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
The Only Thing
We Could Think Of
We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
Marie Curie
My singing group, The Sirens, was invited to New York City to sing at an awards ceremony for Helen Thomas (the White House correspondent). Only five of us could make it, but it turned out fine. We were excused from all of our classes for the day so we decided to make use of our time off. After the ceremony, we hopped on the subway and headed to Ground Zero. As soon as we stepped onto the sidewalk, the mood was completely different. It was dark, quiet and it smelled strange.
What we saw was devastating. The buildings were still burning, and the air was filled with smoke. The area was fenced off, but you could see pretty much everything. I have never seen such destruction in my entire life; not one person there could look at it without feeling horrified. There were candles, pictures, posters and letters posted all along the fence that separated us from the remains. Hundreds of people stood watching and crying. I have never felt so hopeless. We decided to do the only thing we could think of and that was to sing. We have been preparing many patriotic songs that are beautifully written and well arranged (for a cappella music).
The girls and I stood up against the wall, faced the people, and with the remains behind us, we sang for two hours. People videotaped us, took pictures, hugged us, sang with us, and about five people called home and held up their cell phones to our music.
At one point, a woman in front of us broke down and started bawling, and all of us girls felt her pain and lost it in the middle of the song. The most amazing thing was that the crowd joined in and finished it for us; it was absolutely surreal. CNN showed up and taped our group and the people responding to the music. In our last song, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” firemen began to fill the streets. There were about forty of them, and they had just walked off Ground Zero from working there all day. They removed their hats and began to cry. It was so sad; I cannot begin to describe how it felt. At the end they applauded us, and we applauded them. We walked into the streets and hugged them and thanked them. They were crying and tried to explain how horrible it is there, but told us how important it is that people support each other.
I will never forget that day as long as I live.
Elizabeth M. Danehy
Playing for the Fighting 69th
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Leonard Huxley
I had probably the most incredible and moving experience of my life. Juilliard organized a quartet to go play at the Armory. The Armory is a huge military building where families of people missing from Tuesday’s disaster go to wait for news of their loved ones.
Entering the building was very difficult emotionally, because the entire building (the size of a city block) was covered with missing posters.
Thousands of posters, spread out as high as eight feet above the ground, each featuring a different smiling face. I made my way into the huge central room and found my Juilliard buddies. For two hours we sight-read quartets (with only three people!), and I don’t think I will soon forget the grief counselor from the Connecticut State Police who listened the entire time, or the woman who listened only to “Memory” from Cats, crying the whole time. At 7:00, the other two players had to leave; they had been playing at the Armory since 1:00 and simply couldn’t play anymore. I volunteered to stay and play solo, since I had just arrived. I soon realized that the evening had just begun for me: A man in fatigues who introduced himself as “Sergeant Major” asked me if I’d mind playing for his soldiers as they came back from digging through the rubble at Ground Zero. Masseuses had volunteered to give his men massages, he said, and he didn’t think anything would be more soothing than getting a massage and listening to violin music at the same time. So at 9:00 P.M., I headed up to the second floor as the first men were arriving. From then until 11:30, I played everything I could do from memory: Bach’s B Minor Partita, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto, Dvorak’s Concerto, Paganini’s Caprices 1 and 17, Vivaldi’s “Winter and Spring,” the theme from Schindler’s List, Tchaikovsky’s “Melodie,” Meditation from Thais, “Amazing Grace,” “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Bile Them Cabbages Down.” Never have I played for a more grateful audience. Somehow it didn’t matter that by the end, my intonation was shot and I had no bow control. I would have lost any competition I was playing in, but it didn’t matter. The men would come up the stairs in full gear, remove their helmets, look at me and smile.
At 11:20, I was introduced to Colonel Slack, head of the regiment. After thanking me, he said to his friends, “Boy, today was the toughest day yet. I made the mistake of going back into the pit, and I’ll never do that again.”
Eager to hear a firsthand account, I asked, “What did you see?”
He stopped, swallowed hard and said, “What you’d expect to see.” The colonel stood there as I played a lengthy rendition of “Amazing Grace,” which he claimed was the best he’d ever heard. By this time it was 11:30, and I didn’t think I could play anymore. I asked Sergeant Major if it would be appropriate if I played the national anthem.
He shouted above the chaos of the milling soldiers to call them to attention, and I played the national anthem as the men of the 69th Regiment saluted an invisible flag. After shaking a few hands and packing up, I was prepared to leave when one of the privates accosted me and told me the colonel wanted to see me again. He took me down to the War Room, but we couldn’t find the colonel, so he gave me a tour of the War Room. It turns out that the regiment I played for is the Famous Fighting 69th, the most decorated one in the U.S. Army. He pointed out a letter from Abraham Lincoln offering his condolences after the Battle of Antietam . . . the 69th suffered the most casualties at that historic battle. Finally, we located the colonel. After thanking me again, he presented me with the coin of the regiment. “We only give these to someone who’s done something special for the 69th,” he informed me. He called over the regiment’s historian to tell me the significance of all the symbols on the coin.
As I rode the taxi back to Juilliard I was numb. Not only was this evening the proudest I’ve ever felt to be an American, it was my most meaningful as a musician and a person. At Juilliard, kids are hypercritical of each other and very competitive. The teachers expect, and in most cases get, technical perfection. But this wasn’t about that. The soldiers didn’t care that I had so many memory slips I lost count. They didn’t care that when I forgot how the second movement of the Tchaikovsky went, I had to come up with my own insipid improvisation until I somehow (and I still don’t know how) got to a cadence. I’ve never seen a more appreciative audience, and I’ve never understood so fully what it means to communicate music to other people.
And how did it change me as a person? Let’s just say that, next time I want to get into a petty argument about whether Richter or Horowitz was better, I’ll remember that when I asked the colonel to describe the pit formed by the tumbling of the towers, he couldn’t. Words only go so far, and even music can only go a little farther from there.
William Harvey
Reflections from the Pit
We have been called to heal wounds, To unite what has fallen apart, And to bring home those who have lost their way.
St. Francis of Assisi
It is exactly 227 miles (as the crow flies) from Peace Ledge, our home in New Hampshire, to Ground Zero. I know because, last night when we got home, I checked the distance on my global positioning satellite (GPS) gadget. But it might as well be a distance of sever
al light years from here to there. The contrast between the two places is striking.
Twenty-five years ago, we named our home Peace Ledge because it sits in the woods, up on a hill, and smacks of tranquility—a place where God is very present to us. How many times we have come back to this place in fatigue, in gratitude, even in personal defeat, and found restoration here.
Peace Ledge is a dark place at night if the moon isn’t shining. Only if the breeze is right can you pick up the slight noise of a truck going through its gears on Route 106 five miles away.
Not so 227 miles away. There the brilliant halogen lights shine all night long and light up the smoke still percolating up from fires deep in the rubble (someone told me the temperature in the hot spots remains at seventeen hundred degrees). The noise in the pit is constant and sometimes painful to the ears. And the constant antlike, rushing motion in the pit by hundreds of men and women leaves one in almost a manic state of mind. Here at Peace Ledge there is something akin to an oasis; there I can think of no better description than the impression I have always had of Dante’s Inferno.
Yesterday we left New York and drove Interstates 95 and 93 north to our home in New Hampshire and began to unload the car. If it were not for the smells that linger on our clothes, our boots and my knapsack with which I carried special materials that Gail had purchased each day, it would be virtually impossible to believe that we have spent a week at the lip of the pit and worked with the people of the Salvation Army we’ve become privileged to know.
Before we left, Gail and I both spoke in a worship service at the Salvation Army Training Center. When I began my talk, I held up my Salvation Army cap that says Disaster Services, and I told the officers and cadets that of all the hats and caps and helmets I’d worn during my life, this one brought me the most pleasure. I would keep it, I said, for the rest of my life as a symbol of an extraordinary experience where I felt I saw the spirit of Jesus at work like never before.
On our last day at the pit, Gail and Colonel Rader had walked into the disaster area ahead of me. After finding a place to leave our car, I followed. Having the required credentials, I decided to walk through the pit (sort of a shortcut) from one entrance point to where our station was located. On the way, I stopped frequently to talk to men and women and prayed for a few who seemed particularly open to speaking to a “chaplain.”
Suddenly a foreman approached me and said rather brusquely, “Put your hard hat on! This is a hard hat area!” I realized that I was wearing my cap and not the hard hat that still dangled from the back of my knapsack. I thanked him for the reminder and made the switch immediately. He was right, of course. There is still the danger of pieces of glass or stone façade falling from buildings that ring the WTC disaster site.
This morning I started my talk to the Salvation Army officers and cadets with a description of that encounter. And I suggested that ministry is, or ought to be, a “hard hat” job. We can’t afford to let ourselves get sucked into the minutia of organizational life when a larger world beckons with all of its yearnings to hear a word of love and hope. But people who go out “there” better wear a hard hat of a kind because it’s a lot more dangerous than life in religious territory. On the other hand, some may debate that.
I have always known that I preferred life “out there” rather than inside the religious world. Perhaps that’s why, as Gail and I drove north, I felt a strong sense of melancholy coming over me, probably a kind of psychic and emotional withdrawal. After all, we have spent a week unlike any other week in our lives. Every moment was fraught with an intensity of experience that one can hardly describe to anyone who hasn’t been there. At the site, no one seemed a stranger. But now, away from the site, all the old feelings and experiences of incivility begin to creep back.
Drivers on the interstate are posturing for position at the tollbooths; at the gas station the attendant doesn’t even look at you when you try to engage him; and at the rest stop along the way, a young man lounges outside his car with his radio speakers turned up so loud that you can hear and feel his music pound on you fifty yards away. He doesn’t care who is affected by his insensitivity.
Not so at the pit. There, everyone seems to connect. Tell the policeman who stands nearby that you need some ice, and fifteen minutes will not pass before a van drives up and a half dozen burly officers begin loading you up with more ice than you can use. And then, when you say “Thank you,” they say, “No, thank you for what you’re doing.” Ask one of the “guerilla volunteers” if she’s seen any Dr. Scholl’s foot pads, and a case of them shows up rather mysteriously an hour later. From where? Ask any person who passes by how they’re doing, and they’ll talk to you as if you were lifelong friends.
I think life at this pit carries some hints of what combat veterans talk about when they reminisce, if you can get them to do it, about life under battle conditions. Stephen Ambrose was right: In such circumstances, we become a band of brothers (and sisters).
As we drive farther north into New England, we can see the first hints of fall coming on. There is relative cleanliness on the roads; there is greater order to the affairs of people; there is even the expectation of a hot bath when we arrive at home.
But somehow I prefer life at the pit. The pit is—if I dare to compare—a more real and more desirable place. It smells badly and its tumult pounds at you. But there is something awfully stimulating to the senses and to the soul at that place of human tragedy. And a part of me would rather be there wearing my hard hat and my Salvation Army chaplain jacket than be here.
I am reminded that missionaries often return home from hot spots where they have seen death, poverty, disease and great spiritual loss, and they often appear to be in shock and overly critical of the way they see Americans (American Christians) living. You can sense that they would like to say to many of us, “Get a life!” when they hear us talk about problems and needs that are really kind of petty when put in contrast to what they’ve seen. I suspect that Gail and I will struggle with that same kind of withdrawal for a while. Now I appreciate why many missionaries come to regard some Third World site as their real “home.” There is a quality of life out there on that edge that tugs at our souls and calls from us a better quality of person. We find that the gospel works better there, if you please; that it is designed to fit best in the suffering situation and is powerfully transforming. And if I may say it this way: when we go to such places and give away everything we have, we like ourselves better.
Life at the pit this past week renewed my sense of genuine manhood. I was pleased to feel bonded to real men and women who were bringing out the best in each other. I loved being in touch with their intensity, their sorrow, their determination to be faithful to their lost comrades. We were all swept up in a cause much bigger than us.
On the next-to-the-last day we were in the pit, I was walking (I forget to where) in the street among a spaghetti-like maze of fire hoses and utility lines. People were rushing back and forth all over the place. Suddenly a firefighter called out my name, “Hey, Gordon,” he yelled. Since my name is written in bold letters on the peak of my hard hat, I’m not difficult to spot. He came over to where I was and said, “Remember me? I’m Ken. You prayed for me the other day. I wanted you to know the prayer has been working. I’m okay!” As we embraced in that special manly way, my cheek brushed his, and I could feel the sweat and the grittiness of the dust and dirt on his skin. Perhaps at another time I might have recoiled from this. But not in this hour. I felt proud to share his smudges. I whispered a blessing into his ear as we stood there in the middle of the street, and then we parted.
Gordon MacDonald
Dear Mr. Cox
Dear Mr. Cox,
It has taken me too long to write you. I was delayed by my own fear that your son was lost at the World Trade Center and by the challenge of finding out the truth and then locating you. I hope I am right to believe that, as Fred’s father, you would want to hear from me even as you endure his loss.
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I am a writer who travels often on business. I met Fred in the last week of August on a flight from Los Angeles to New York with a stop in Las Vegas. We were both headed home, but he was intending to take a few hours in Vegas before catching a later flight to Kennedy.
For me, every flight is a chance to have a few precious hours of solitude, for reading, and just reflecting in a way that’s almost impossible at home or work. I almost never engage in a long conversation with a seatmate. Instead, I use body language and a book to create some space between me and the other passengers in our tiny, shared space.
However, on this flight I got bumped to first class, where the comfortable surroundings made me more relaxed. My seat was in the last row, by the window. The young man who got up to let me sit down smiled warmly, offered to hand my coat to the flight attendant, and told me his name—Frederick.
In that short flight Fred told me how much he loved his work, especially travelling to meet with clients, and how his life seemed to be taking a shape that made him very happy. His choice to work at a smaller firm was an example. He believed it gave him a chance to learn much faster, and he was grateful for the opportunity. (He was also very proud that he had been accepted at the company even though he didn’t have the advantage of a Wharton or Harvard degree.)
On the personal side, Fred said that despite his intentions, he had fallen in love with a young woman whom he admired deeply, and he was discovering that the values and lessons he had been taught as a child—be honest, care for others, listen to your heart—really worked in adult life. Fred possessed a rare combination of idealism, intelligence and innocence that was very appealing.
When I confessed to Fred that I am a writer, and that I have written a couple of books on golf, he began telling me about you, the times you had spent together on various courses, and how much it meant to him to share the game with you. When I mentioned I had been a caddy at Wentworth by the Sea in New Hampshire he told me, rather excitedly, that you had been a caddy as a boy and had worked in hotels in New Hampshire and elsewhere. “I just love caddies,” he said. “You guys really play the game for the right reasons, and appreciate it in ways the rest of us really don’t.”