No Greater Love

There was something to say about the Palace, as each and every member of Ladder 179 and Engine 200 called their station.  These men didn’t come to work like most people do.  No, they didn’t think of their jobs as work, but as time spent with the brothers.

They were all as close as you could get to being a family.  These men all experienced life and death together.  They saw more joy, but they also saw sorrow.  They witnessed the miracle of life while delivering a newborn baby, and the throes of death at senseless tragedies.  The unwritten law in this firehouse was the same at every firehouse across the city.  What we see, say, and do here and on our calls, stays here.  These men all had families. It was no use burdening them with more worries about their dangerous occupation.  The men and women of the FDNY saw more fire, and more death in one week, than most departments see in ten years.  The FDNY is the big leagues of firefighting.  To be a member of the FDNY means you are the best of the best.  All their hours of training and responding to emergencies could not prepare any of them for the events that would take place one year from today, on September 11, 2001.  Their passion for the job, for helping others, and for their great city, was all that mattered.  They didn’t think about dying, but the threat was always there.