Unsung 9/11 Heroes
On the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the New York Post editorializes that the country mourns the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent people including ”the heroism of the first responders who unhesitatingly rushed to the maelstrom to do their jobs — even at the cost of many of their own lives.”
Writing at the NewsRealBlog, Cassy Fiano spotlights just five of the many heroes who gave their lives helping others trying to escape the deadliest attack perpetrated on American soil in the history of the country.
Some of them were police officers and firefighters; others were ordinary Americans just like you and me. All of them gave their lives that day; all of them deserve to be remembered.
Again, these are just five of the many brave American heroes of 9/11:
- NYPD Officer Moira Smith saved dozens of persons trapped in the World Trade Center
- Investment banker Welles Crowther is credited with saving at least 18 lives in the South Tower
- Tom Burnett, an executive with a medical device company, fought back against the hijackers aboard Flight 93
- FBI Agent Leonard Hatton, a former Marine, helped evacuate victims until the towers fell
- NYFD officer Ronald Bucca, a 29-year Army vet, is the only NYC fire marshall ever killed in the line of duty. A U.S. army base in Iraq was named Camp Bucca in his honor.
As Michael Day writes in the New York Daily News:
What came to be called Ground Zero was really Ground Hero, and the sacrifice of those heroes consecrated what had been a crime scene
The fact that they had given all for the sake of strangers of whatever faith made the lives of those strangers even more precious and the ground all the more holy.
