Images of New York City’s World Trade Center collapsing and city streets filled with dust and rubble haunt the memories of Americans everywhere.
These infamous symbols of a nation under attack flicker on television screens across the country each year on Sept. 11, and have been printed in countless books.
They also fill one immaculately preserved photo album owned by Thomas Goodheart.
Goodheart was there. Along with his fellow New York firemen, he donned his flame-resistant uniform and headed to the site where thousands of innocent lives were taken.
On Sunday, Goodheart joined hundreds of firefighters from across Texas and the Southwest in downtown Dallas to honor the lives of New York firefighters who died on 9/11.
As he tirelessly worked, he captured what he saw around him with the disposable camera that he always carried.
“It’s funny, the weather today is the same as it was that day,” Goodheart said. “The sky was just like this. Maybe bluer.”
Exactly 343 firefighters climbed 100 flights of stairs at Dallas’s Renaissance Tower to commemorate the lives of the 343 New York firefighters who died saving others on that day.
Onlookers didn’t need to ask why; “We climb because they climbed” was the simple answer printed on signs throughout the tower’s lobby.
The participants wore all of their firefighting gear for the climb, including heavy oxygen tanks, just as those in New York did on 9/11.
“We couldn’t sign up fast enough,” P.J. Wendling, a firefighter from the Hurst, Texas fire department, said.
Each participating firefighter was given a lanyard with the name and photo of one of New York’s fallen firefighters.
The participants wore the lanyards for the entire climb, removing the firefighters’ names at the end and placing them together on a board at the top of the building.
Firefighter Jacob Manceaux of the Port Naches ,Texas Fire Department was given a photo of Michael Cowley to carry, a firefighter with Ladder 136 in New York who perished saving others on 9/11.
“It’s kind of an honor because he was a hero,” Manceaux said. “He went to go up and save people and he never came back. I’m doing this to finish his climb.”
On Sept. 11, 2011, over 16,000 firemen around the world participated in a similar climb to remember the fallen firefighters of 9/11.
“To me, this is like a happy thing,” said Goodheart, who appreciated that firefighters chose to remember and honor the lives of New York’s heroes rather than “concentrating so much on death.”
In his album, Goodheart carries photos of a sunset that he took from the top of The World Trade Center in 1982, when his wife worked in the building
These come before the photos he took driving into Manhattan from Staten Island after hearing the news.
“It was at a time when it would be bumper to bumper traffic and there wasn’t a car on the road,” he said, showing his pictures of an empty road with clouds of dark smoke billowing in the distance over the New York City skyline.
Goodheart was off duty at the time and raced back to his firehouse to help.
As he flipped through photos of the wreckage, fellow firefighters rushing to the scene, crumpled buildings and a computer still displaying its animated screen saver amidst the ruins, Goodheart noted, “Compared to other people, I did pretty good.”
He remembers the complete silence that followed the collapse of the second tower. The only audible sound was the occasional beeping of firefighters’ masks, which emit that sound when their owner hasn’t moved for a period of time.
Even when looking over the funeral schedules, Goodheart keeps a level head.
“That first Saturday there were 27 funerals,” he said.
Some may not realize how significantly the families of first responders were impacted after the tragedy.
According to Goodheart, within his fire department alone, a father and son who were both firefighters were killed, as well as two brothers, one of whom was a police officer.
While the firefighters of 9/11 are still remembered and celebrated as heroes, Goodheart hopes that people will remember to celebrate firefighters around the country who risk their lives everyday.
“This year three men were killed on Father’s Day,” he said.
At the stair climb, the lives of Dallas area firefighters lost in the line of duty this year were not forgotten.
A “Table of Honor” was set in the lobby of the tower to remember the five Dallas area firefighters whose lives were lost this year, and could not be in attendance for the climb.
A long-standing tradition originating from the military, the plates at the table contained lemon wedges to remind all who see the table of the firefighters’ “bitter fate,” as well as a mound of salt which represents the “river of tears” cried by their family members.
Sonya Reynolds, the wife of one of a participating firefighter from the Plano Fire Department, said that she knows danger is something that comes with her husband’s job.
“It’s just something I accept. He may not come home,” Reynolds said. “I’m very happy he did this to honor those who had fallen.”
Goodheart, who slept on sidewalks between his shifts at ground zero, went back to the site several months later and collected a piece of glass from one of the buildings’ windows that he keeps in a bag with his photo album.
“Sometimes it’s almost like today, and other times it’s just a passing thought,” he said.
Video by Andy Garcia [email protected]
