{"id":33690,"date":"2016-09-11T13:41:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T17:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=33690"},"modified":"2017-09-11T13:14:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T17:14:00","slug":"15-years-after-911","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/15-years-after-911\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Years After 9\/11: The Story of Rick Rescorla"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the 15th anniversary of the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, I recommend that you read (or re-read) the 2002 New Yorker story by James B. Stewart called, “The Real Heroes Are Dead<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

It’s about an English-born Vietnam veteran named Rick Rescorla, who became the director of security for Morgan Stanley, a financial firm based in the World Trade Center. After the 1993 truck bombing of the Trade Center, he predicted that the next attack would come by air,<\/a> so when the first plane struck on Sept. 11, 2001, he successfully evacuated close to 2,700 of Morgan Stanley’s employees from the WTC despite orders to stay in the building. Sometimes he sang to the evacuees, the way he did to troops in Vietnam. When he went back to look for stragglers, he was killed in the collapse of the towers. His remains were never found.<\/p>\n

Stewart’s story became a book called Heart of a Soldier<\/em><\/a>. Rescorla’s widow, Susan Rescorla, also wrote a book called Touched By a Hero<\/em><\/a>. Stewart reported Rescorla’s last conversation with Susan:<\/p>\n

“‘Stop crying,’ he told her. ‘I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I\u2019ve never been happier. You made my life.'”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rescorla had appeared in books before 9\/11. His Vietnam experiences feature in the 1992 book about the Battle of Ia Drang<\/a>, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young<\/em><\/a> by\u00a0 Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway. The original version of the book bore Rescorla’s photo on the cover. (There’s more information on Rescorla in Vietnam — and before that, as a British commando in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) — in Michael Grunwald’s 2001 Washington Post<\/a> story, “A Tower of Courage<\/a>.”)<\/p>\n

\"we_were_soldiers_once-and_young\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Rescorla gave interviews to Moore, his Vietnam commander, for We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young<\/em>, but he never read the finished version nor did he see the movie based on the book. As Stewart wrote, Rescorla told Susan that, as a war survivor, he didn’t like being portrayed as a hero. The title of Stewart’s 9\/11 story came from what Rescorla told Susan about Vietnam:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real heroes are dead.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The man was too modest. Thankfully, there are heroes walking among us. There are also those who are trying desperately to cling to the role, such as Rudy Giuliani, who was New York City’s mayor at the time of the attacks. <\/p>\n

For a brief, crucial time during and after 9\/11, Giuliani showed courage and decisiveness when both were needed. <\/p>\n

\"Giuliani<\/a>

Giuliani on Sept. 11, 2001. Screen cap from HBO documentary, via the New York Times and Reuters. Click for more information.<\/p><\/div>\n

Since then, he has sought to make a career out of that image. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
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Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n