| Engine 16 Ladder 7 "Pass It On" |
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| New York City Fire Department |
NEW YORK - Mickey Kross, a city firefighter for 27 years, just wants people to know what really
happened on Sept. 11, 2001 - and how six brave men from his firehouse died that day.
For Kimberly Grieger, who volunteered at Ground Zero one day and stayed for eight months, it’
s about remembering the random acts of goodness that followed the horrific attacks.
And for Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son Jonathan died in the attacks, it’s about protecting our
future by honoring and learning from our past.
The three will be among a bevy of volunteer tour guides at Ground Zero, a place that has
been oddly lacking in official tours since the attacks.
"If you were here and you had the knowledge, wouldn’t you want to tell people?" said Kross,
58, whose E. 29th St. firehouse lost all six members of Ladder No. 7.
The tours will be organized out of the planned Tribute Center, to be located on Liberty St. at
the edge of Ground Zero. Weekend tours will begin in October, with most to be led by
survivors of family members of those who died.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. George Pataki and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani all turned out
yesterday to help announce the new tours, a fuller description of which can be found at
www.tributenyc.org.
"It’s the only way to recapture the worst day in the history of our city - and the best day in the
history of our city," said Giuliani, referring to the countless acts of valor that followed the
attacks.
"We must rebuild," added Pataki. "But more important is remembering."
ICE
>>
The idea is the brainchild of East Anglican Ambulance Service paramedic Bob Brotchie and
was launched in May this year. Bob, 41, who has been a paramedic for 13 years, said: "I was
reflecting on some of the calls I've attended at the roadside where I had to look through the
mobile phone contacts struggling for information on a shocked or injured person.
>>
Almost everyone carries a mobile phone now, and with ICE we'd know immediately who to
contact and what number to ring. The person may even know of their medical history."
>>
By adopting the ICE advice, your mobile will help the rescue services quickly contact a friend
or relative - which could be vital in a life or death situation. It only takes a few seconds to do,
and it could easily help save your life. Why not put ICE in your phone now? Simply select a
new contact in your phone book, enter the word 'ICE' and the number of the person you wish
to be contacted. For more than one Next of Kin ICE1, ICE2, ICE3.
>>
If you think this is a good idea please pass it on to everyone in your address book get your
family and friends involved. It is Easy, Free, and could save your life, or at least let you family
know what's going on.
The idea is the brainchild of East Anglican Ambulance Service paramedic Bob Brotchie and
was launched in May this year. Bob, 41, who has been a paramedic for 13 years, said: "I was
reflecting on some of the calls I've attended at the roadside where I had to look through the
mobile phone contacts struggling for information on a shocked or injured person.
>>
Almost everyone carries a mobile phone now, and with ICE we'd know immediately who to
contact and what number to ring. The person may even know of their medical history."
>>
By adopting the ICE advice, your mobile will help the rescue services quickly contact a friend
or relative - which could be vital in a life or death situation. It only takes a few seconds to do,
and it could easily help save your life. Why not put ICE in your phone now? Simply select a
new contact in your phone book, enter the word 'ICE' and the number of the person you wish
to be contacted. For more than one Next of Kin ICE1, ICE2, ICE3.
>>
If you think this is a good idea please pass it on to everyone in your address book get your
family and friends involved. It is Easy, Free, and could save your life, or at least let you family
know what's going on.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
(Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and
famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to
other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the
document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I
have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing
this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change
have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as
many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I
saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I
saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that
Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was,
though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly
important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I
deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and
reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be
a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a
role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or
getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do
their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is
the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit,
Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject
Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad.
He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who
saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was
guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a
family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but
the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and
their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The
noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan
and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they
live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not
want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go
off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and
paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for
surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children;
the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as
the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest
and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as
great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or
as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even
remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to
the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it
moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my
sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my
father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality
with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the
firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that
matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help
others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
(Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and
famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to
other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the
document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I
have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing
this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change
have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as
many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I
saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I
saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that
Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was,
though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly
important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I
deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and
reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be
a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a
role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or
getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do
their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is
the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit,
Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject
Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad.
He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who
saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was
guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a
family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but
the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and
their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The
noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan
and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they
live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not
want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go
off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and
paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for
surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children;
the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as
the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest
and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as
great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or
as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even
remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to
the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it
moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my
sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my
father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality
with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the
firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that
matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help
others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein