Firehouse (19 page)

I live on Sixty-seventh Street on the West Side of Manhattan, some three and a half blocks from the Engine 40, Ladder 35 firehouse. My family and I have lived in our apartment for twenty-one years, but before the tragedy of September 11, I had never been inside the firehouse. I had passed it many times, and I had often seen the men at work in our neighborhood, and, however distantly, I had admired them—in New York there is always on the part of average citizens a quiet sense of admiration for firemen, for their courage, for the highly professional and immensely good-natured way they go about their jobs, and for the fact that they constantly have to deal with terrifying fires in the high-rises that surround us. In this book, Captain Jim Gormley recalls the Lionel Hampton Fire, one that occurred five blocks from my home in January 1997. I distinctly remember the great number of fire trucks assembled that day, although I, like most civilians, did not have any sense at the time of how frightening the fire was to the men who had to confront it and put it out.

September 11, of course, changed everything. My most lasting image of that morning will always be of the firefighters going into the Twin Towers just as everyone else was trying to leave them. Going back to my days as a young reporter covering first the Civil Rights movement and then the Vietnam War, I have always admired acts of uncommon courage on the part of ordinary people. The courage displayed by the firemen on September 11, though, was really beyond my comprehension. Even with elite combat units, when a soldier runs across a field of fire to carry off a wounded buddy, he is doing it for a pal; with firehouses, it is important to remember, the firefighters, in keeping with their professional code, perform acts of exceptional courage to save complete strangers. That fact alone remains incredibly sobering for those of us who live essentially risk-free lives.

When Graydon Carter, the editor of
Vanity Fair
, asked me to go over to the 40/35 firehouse and learn and write about the men, I was eager to take on the assignment. His instinct for a story, the latitude he gives a writer to pursue it, and his innate trust in his writers, are some of the things that make him special as an editor. I want to thank him and also Doug Stumpf, my editor at the magazine and on this book. Doug and I have worked together closely for fourteen years now, at three separate institutions, and he has always had an extraordinary sense of—and faith in—the kind of work I am capable of doing.

I first visited the firehouse in mid-October and spent most of the next two and a half months there. One of the things that makes a career in journalism both pleasurable and valuable over time—for me, a very long time—is the reward that comes in discovering, again and again, the nobility of ordinary people. Rarely have I had so strong a sense of that as when I was with the firemen. More, there are very few stories that I have written in my fifty years as journalist that have been so personally rewarding. Though I was an outsider who knew no one at the firehouse and was dealing with a great many people at a time when they were in considerable pain, I was treated with remarkable grace, generosity of spirit, and, finally, good humor by everyone there. From the start, the families of the men from 40/35 who died on September 11 granted me the most important thing they had: their trust.

One of the things that is very attractive about the firehouse from the perspective of a reporter is that it is the rare spin-free zone. In an America where the job of inflating the reputations of people with negligible larger social value has become a major growth industry, firemen do what they do because they love doing it, not because they want the plaudits of outsiders. Instead, what they want most is the respect of their peers. In some ways, theirs is a hermetically sealed world: Very few of their heroics are ever written about, and most of the great stories within the world of fire fighting are passed on as part of an oral tradition, rather than in the city's daily newspapers or on local television newscasts.

Because of their traditions and because of the way firefighters live and how intimate their knowledge is of one another, you cannot con anyone in a firehouse. Within the house, you're always being measured; it is a mandatory process given the constancy of the danger the men face. The contrast between their world and some of the other, more ego-driven and materialistic worlds that I have covered in recent years is striking. Even as I was going over to the firehouse every day, the Enron scandal was breaking, serving as a daily reminder of the exact opposite kind of leadership and values.

Let me then express my thanks to all of the people who helped in making this book possible, and especially to the widows—Angie Callahan, April Ginley, Marion Otten, Joviana Perez-Mercado, Jennifer Liang, Susan Giberson, and Debi Morello—and to Teresa Ivey and Stephanie Luccioni, who shared so much with me. They have my gratitude for their kindness and openness. I want to also thank the parents and kin of the firemen for their help, in particular the members of the Roberts, Lynch, Morello, and D'Auria families.

To the men of 40/35 I owe a special debt for their candor and their trust. They accepted me on faith and I cherish their honesty and the pleasure of their company, starting with Captain James Gormley, who welcomed me into the firehouse and set the tone for the courtesies I received. In addition, firefighter Sean Newman, formerly a reporter for Reuters, was uncommonly helpful in serving as an unofficial ambassador between the world of the firehouse and the world of journalism and in helping to minimize misconceptions and mistakes. Also, the Reverend Robert Scholz, the pastor of a neighborhood Lutheran church who has helped find counseling for many of the men in the months since the terrorist attack, generously vouched for me early in the game.

I want to also thank Stephen Levey for giving me so much help on both the magazine article and the book. At
Vanity Fair
, Punch Hutton and Matt Trainor were exceptionally helpful. In addition, I want to thank Carolyn Parqueth for typing my notes so quickly, Lisa Queen for watching out for me, and Sarita Varma and Jeff Seroy for their assistance. At Hyperion, thanks go to Will Schwalbe, Bob Miller, Ellen Archer, Kiera Hepford, and Stella Connell. And thanks as well to my usual support team: Marty Garbus, Bob Solomon, Philip Roome, Linda Drogin, Ken Starr, John Phelan, and Dr. Stephen Marks.

The Noblest Roman

The Making of a Quagmire

One Very Hot Day

The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy

Ho

The Best and the Brightest

The Powers That Be

The Reckoning

The Breaks of the Game

The Amateurs

Summer of '49

The Next Century

The Fifties

October 1964

The Children

Playing for Keeps

War in a Time of Peace

The Teammates

The Education of a Coach

The Coldest Winter

Everything They Had

The Breaks of the Game

David Halberstam
was one of America's most distinguished journalists and historians. His many books on politics and power in America include
The Best and the Brightest, War in a Time of Peace
, and
The Coldest Winter
. He was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his early reporting in Vietnam. Of his many bestsellers,
The Amateurs, The Breaks of the Game, Summer of '49
, and
The Education of a Coach
are counted among the best sports books of our time. He was killed in a car accident on April 23, 2007, while on his way to an interview for what was to be his next book.

The times used throughout for the impact of the planes and the collapse of the towers have been verified with information from the Seismology Group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

The photographs of the firehouse chalkboards were taken by Jonas Karlsson for
Vanity Fair
.

The photographs of the twelve firemen are used with the kind permission of the firemen's families.

Copyright © 2002 David Halberstam

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Hardcover edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0005-0

Trade paperback edition ISBN: 978-0-7868-8851-1

eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0522-2

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