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Fallen Firefighters
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 02:10:07 -0500 (EST)
Dear All,
It is for me a bit uncomfortable to single out certain deaths as
somehow "special," more worthy of our attention than others, for what does
that say of the countless, nameless others whose deaths, as their lives,
do not catch our attention, are outside of our consciousness?
Sometimes, however, recognizing, honoring the lives of certain people
in the shadow of their death can teach us, help shape us, and the gifts
that they gave to a few in their lives can -- even in their deaths -- grow
into gifts to us all.
You have probably heard of the tragedy in Worcester, Massachusetts.
On Saturday, two firefighters perished in a five-alarm warehouse fire when
they entered the inferno because of reports that there were homeless
people trapped inside. When the two firefighters radioed for help, four
more firefighters entered the blaze in order to rescue their endangered
comrades. They never came out.
I think it is worth reflecting for a few moments on what happened in
Worcester. People undertook tremendous risks, risks that cost them their
lives, in order to save strangers (it is now strongly believed that no one
was inside the warehouse when the first firefighters entered).
These strangers had no home. They are people whose lives our society
seems to think, by its actions if not by its words, of lesser value than
the rest of ours -- not entitled to sufficient food, to a place they can
call home. They are people who are often treated as though they are
outside of society. When we talk of how the economy is prospering, or how
living standards are improving, they are decidedly outside the scope of
our thoughts.
Yet the Worcester firefighters recognized that the dignity of a human
being, the value of human life, does not rest upon whether or not a person
has a home, or is so situated that s/he can contribute to national
productivity or some such measure. The firefighters were told that there
were people inside the burning building. People who no doubt had hopes
and dreams and plans for a better future. Like all of us. People who
wanted to live, who did not want to leave society, even if that society
has, in its pulsations of coldness, not welcomed them.
There were people inside, people in grave peril, people who needed
help. And that was all that mattered.
I think this is why we are so moved, so touched (I am) by these
firefighters' actions and their deaths. And it gives me hope that the
nation seems to be responding to the fact that these firefighters, heroes,
put themselves at such risk in order to try to rescue people without any
regard to whom these people were, without regard to the sad reality that
the people they sought to rescue were at the bottom of the social ladder.
There were people inside, people in grave peril, people who needed
help. And that was all that mattered.
Throughout our country and our world, there are people in grave
peril, people who need help. They face fires of their own. Hunger,
disease, war -- these and like fires rage on. And on.
There are many ways to be a firefighter, many types of fires to be
subdued in many different places. I cannot think of any calling more
life-affirming than that of the firefighter. And there are many, many
ways that each of us can be a firefighter.
John Glenn once said that he hopes that we will one day live in a
world where "stranger" will come to mean, will come to be translated
into, "a friend I have yet to meet." The firefighters were already living
in that day. We all have countless friends out there...
As always yours,
Take care,
Eric
"I have only dreams: to build a better world, a world of harmony
and understanding, a world in which it is a joy to live. This is not
asking for too much." -- Yitzhak Rabin
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