September 11, 2001 Hereos

Did you now that Father Mychal Judge of Manhattan rushed out to help his firefighter friends to give them their last rites? And when he was giving a firefighter his last rites, debris struck him in the head and he passed away.

Madeline Amy Sweeny was on the first plane to hit the Towers, but she stayed calm. She called a control station and at Logan International Airport. She said the plane was flying too low and then, in her own amazement, "Oh my God." The plane stuck the tower.

Talking about September 11, 2001 sometimes makes people sad. But talking about the heroes on September 11th may not. There was not just horror on that day. There was also bravery. Here are some heroes and what they did.

In addition to the heroes in the Twin Towers in New York, there were also people on the airplanes that made important calls to let people know what was happening to them. Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett Jr., and Jeremy Glick all made phone calls from the plane. Some to mothers, some to wives, and to a GTE Airfone operator, but all gave some clues as to who the people who hijacked the planes were. Todd Beamer said, "They've knifed a guy and they've said there's a bomb." Their calls helped the people on the ground understand what was happening so that the airports could be shut down.

There were also heroes at the Trade Center. Many of them were police officers and some were firefighters. There were many success stories. One of the stories that is told is about the 6 fire fighters who survived. They are known today as the Lucky Six. They survived because of one reason only; they were helping. Tommy Falco, Sal D'Agostino, Mike Meldrum, Matt Komorowski, Captain Jonas, and Bill Butler were the firefighters. Josephine Harris, a grandmother from Brooklyn, was trying to get out of one of the Trade Tower buildings. She wasn't walking well (her office had been on the73th floor) and was exhausted when the firefighters came across her as they were heading down to the lobby. They couldn't leave her there so they began to help her down to the lobby. There was a big boom. The South Tower had just collapsed. When they were on the fourth floor, Josephine couldn't go any further. Then everything started to heave. The North Tower started to go down. Then it was noisy, things began to fly around, and there were gigantic dust clouds. They were hurled around for a moment and then the wreckage settled with them in it. There was no way out. But then they saw that, for some reason, the second-floor section of the staircase was still there! The firefighters placed a harness around Josephine and slid her down. Remarkably, all seven got out alive. Faster or slower, they might not have gotten out, but at that pace they did.

Though a lot of people died, still, many survived. We've got to be brave and have faith in ourselves even though we may be grieving for the ones we've lost.

WE ARE STILL STRONG