Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
niels jorgensen
a new york firefighter for over 21 years
who was there at ground zero on
september 11 2001.
he was forced to retire because of the
leukemia he contracted from cleaning up
ground zero
this podcast tells his story
and the story of other great men and
women who were there that day
some of the stories we talk about are
part of a new limited podcast series
that kneels hosts called 20 for 20 with
20 episodes for the 20 years since 9 11.
to support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description
as a side note please allow me to say a
few words about the terrorist attacks on
september 11 2001.
i was in downtown chicago on that day
lost in the mundane busyness of an early
tuesday morning
at that time i was already fascinated by
human nature
the best and the worst of it
exploring it through the study of
history and literature
in the years before as a young boy
growing up in russia i saw chaos
uncertainty and desperation in the
soviet union of the 1990s
wrapping up a century of war and
suffering
but after coming to america for me
there was a sense of hope
like all of it was behind us
a bad dream to be forgotten as we enter
into the new century
on 9 11 when i saw the news of the
second plane hitting the towers my sense
of hope had changed
i understood that the 21st century like
the century before would too have its
tragedies its evildoers its wars
and its suffering
and unlike the history books these
stories will involve all of us
they will involve me
in however small and insignificant a
role
but one that nevertheless carries the
responsibility to help
i became an american that day
a citizen of the world i felt the common
humanity in all of us
i felt the unity and the love and the
days that followed and i think most of
the world shared in this feeling that we
are all in this together
evil cannot defeat the human spirit
there were many heroes sung and unsung
on that day and in the years after
often politicians failed to rightfully
honor the service and sacrifice of these
heroes
there is much i could say about that but
i don't want to waste my words on the
failures of weak leaders
instead i want to say thank you to the
men and women who rushed to ground zero
to help who put on a uniform to serve
who make me proud to be an american and
a human being and give me hope about the
future of our civilization here on a
small spinning rock
that despite the long odds
keeps kindling the fire of human
consciousness and
love
this is the lex friedman podcast and
here is my conversation with niels
jorgensen
take me through the day of september
11th 2001 as you experienced it as you
lived it
september 11 2001 uh was a bright
beautiful sunny tuesday morning uh as a
late summer
uh
there's a lot of folks who go to the
beaches in new jersey call it the short
summer it's uh everybody's left there
for labor day but it's still beautiful
enough to
enjoy the weather
um i left my house about 6 30 in the
morning
and uh my four and a half year old
daughter
said to me daddy
which truck are you driving today um the
fire truck the oil truck or the boar's
head truck because i had three jobs at
the time um
most new york city firefighters and
police officers ems we
don't make the most amount of money so
in order to live in that city you have
to uh you have to hustle and my wife
stayed at home raising the children
so
my daughter said oh she you should be
safe because you're on the oil truck i
said i told her i was going on an oil
truck that day so she should be safe
today daddy so i left and um
worked for this great company on the
north shore staten island quinlan fuel
very nice people treated me very well
and was my first day back actually for
the winter season um
i usually get laid off a couple months
in the summer because things you know
too hot to need oil
so i took the truck started my route on
that day and uh
plane hit the tower so initially i'm
like oh it's probably some silly learjet
pilot and he veered off track to get a
better picture for a client and uh he
hit the building
probably hit a
you know bad turbulence uh gust of wind
it's very windy down in that area in
manhattan so that was my first thought
can we pause there for a second
so 6 30 a.m you wake up you leave and
then the plane hits at
8 8 45 85 45 am yeah it's just
interesting how you phrase it so how did
you hear that a plane hit something
i um
i'm a big news radio guy uh news guy bit
of a buff i've been that way since i was
a kid and i had the news radio on
the local new york radio station and as
i was driving the truck i heard
you know a emergency report this just in
aircraft has just struck the world trade
center
and uh where quinlan's is located it's
on the north rim of staten island uh
which is right on new york harbor and uh
you could see statue of liberty you know
a mile or two away in your distance and
then past that as
towers so i just literally stopped the
truck and looked out and i saw the smoke
so there was smoke oh it was dark black
smoke it was just yeah i mean it was
burning fully at that point and uh did
you have fear of what the hell happened
or i was i was initially scared for
anybody involved uh i realized i said
there's there's gonna be lots of
fatalities obviously depending on the
size of the aircraft and uh
you know uh the the business day there
had started probably at 8 8 30 so those
buildings should have been packed at
that moment so that was a thought across
my mind um
but from our our uh being responder
perspective if you're off duty normally
you you do not go to a scene
they don't want you to because of
accountability and safety
uh the on-duty platoon will handle it
and if it's something
very horrific then they will have
something called a recall which is
any police firefighter or ems personnel
is obligated to go to their command
immediately
uh check in with
you know their command to get their gear
and stand by and await orders for
deployment uh or to remain in that
command for
routine duties how often throughout
history have there been recalls i
believe the one prior to that was like
in the 1968 riots
possibly and then maybe in the 70s there
was uh another blackout in riots and i
remember my dad talking about it and he
actually always said
just remember if something bad's going
down
don't just rush in you you you await the
recall or at the very least if there
isn't a recall you get to your firehouse
and because if you show up somewhere
there's a good chance that no one knows
you're there and now you
in your
well-intended uh movements you you get
lost or trapped or no one's looking for
you so that's the whole thing with you
know checking in and now
you're with a squad or you know group of
guys and
everyone knows you know hey there's
nells there's lex okay they're on you
know this team
so
i i said all right they're not going to
need us it's probably going to be a
fifth alarm and you know there'll be 250
firefighters there they'll handle it
it's going to be a bad day for those
guys but you know our guys take on some
heavy stuff and they'll be fine
a few minutes later um the second plane
hit and i knew immediately i'm like
okay
uh we're under attack
so i just flew the truck back in i told
my boss
i have to go
he understood he knew something was way
wrong and i just was flying uh at the
time i actually had a yellow volkswagen
beetle uh kind of a goofy car to be
driving but i loved it so for people who
are just listening you're kind of a big
guy well yeah i could i definitely need
to lose about 50 pounds no i don't mean
in that way yeah your frame as my hands
as my beloved friend bobby adams would
say to me i i uh i was driving around in
a clown wagon and he also says i have a
waving waving hair dude waving bye bye
so thanks bobby
but yeah he's a great friend uh yeah so
i took the volkswagen and i flew in and
i was heading over to verrazano bridge
and hit the brooklyn queens expressway
and my phone rang and my wife normally
doesn't uh
curse or raise a voice and she was
yelling at me and she said don't go in
there go to your firehouse
first she asked well she knew i was on
the way but she just wanted to know
where and um
i said i'm on i'm on the curve which is
65th street on the brooklyn queens
expressway called dead man's curve we we
actually used to do a lot of car wrecks
up there
and i was hitting that curve pretty fast
and then right around the curve is the
exit to the firehouse and i had to
decide well am i driving right in to the
battery tunnel to the city
or am i going to the firehouse and then
i said but i have no gear i
i'm going to be ineffective how do i
show up with no gear no protection no
you know so
she said do what your dad would
follow the recall go to the firehouse i
said hung up the phones i love you gotta
go and i did i went to the firehouse and
uh i'm glad i listened to her i have my
father ringing in my ears my dad
beautiful guy he's 82 in 34 years in new
york city fire department
he uh
he came down with end stage
non-hodgkin's lymphoma uh he's 38
back in uh
going on 39 1978.
and uh this guy
he uh
he's my hero he um
he was going to die they sent him home
they said you there's really not much we
can do go get your affairs and
he says but doc i have three young kids
and and uh
she she called him a couple hours later
she said um i got in touch with sloane
kettering and now
they have a new uh new drug we want you
to be a test pilot
and she's he said uh hey doc i'mma he's
got a heavy brooklyn accent i'm a
fireman i'm a fireman i'm not a pilot
and uh
so she said no no we want you to try
this drug out and it's it's uh if it
works we might have some success but if
not he says yeah i'm gonna die so let's
do it
so uh every
every two weeks
for four years
he uh he'd go for treatment but uh he
was assigned to a desk job after that
after the
the cancer tumor removal and you know
the heavy treatments
and he'd get up every morning four
o'clock in the morning and he'd uh he'd
walk down to the train station in staten
island take the train
and then he'd uh take the ferry across
the harbor
and he'd get off looking at the towers
and then he'd take a subway into
brooklyn
and on every other thursday he'd leave
at noon
and do the same exact reverse route and
he'd get to the cancer center
and uh my mom would meet him
and he'd get his infusion and within two
hours he'd be violently ill for a
few days really badly ill
and i just remember um
you know he's 10 years i was 10 years
old and
he just had to have the room darkened
out and he he'd be so sick and i just go
in and wipe the vomit on his face
just try to give him a little water but
he couldn't take it down because he'd
throw it up
and uh
maybe on saturday he started
coming around a little bit
drink down a little bit of tea and on
sunday morning he he put his robe on
he'd go down
mom and make him
black coffee and toast
he'd sit up
watch the news watch the game and then
monday morning he'd go back to work and
he did that for four years
and uh he's 82 and he's still here
uh you said that your dad's a man of a
few words but when he talks they're
profound so what what words were ringing
in your ear when you were driving i just
always remember them saying kid they
give the recall you go to the firehouse
you don't go where you think you should
you go to the firehouse you follow your
orders so do the smart thing do your job
yes sir and every time we hang up the
phone it's firemen talk
he'd say i love you keep low my dad
couldn't tell me he loved me until um
i told him when
i first got on a fire department i was
22 and my dad grew up in a tough
household my granddad was a a good man
but a tormented man he
he was sent away from home at 12 years
old um
um he was in from denmark and i'm named
after him grandpa nils
and uh i think his demons
took up a large part of his life his his
anger his whatever it was his fear i i
we got the sense that maybe when he was
a child he was an apprentice baker you
know living with strangers working for
them and we we think maybe he was abused
and that's why he took it out of my my
dad and my grandma my aunts but um
they uh they made it up to each other at
the end of my granddad's life my
granddad turned out to be the best
grandfather ever he i think he tried to
heal and heal everyone by his change of
behavior so
he's proof that
you can't change you can improve if you
work on it but i know i'm going off
track here but uh but you were man
enough and you're you said in your 20s
to tell you my dad yeah
i got on the job uh he said i had to go
kid that was the tour we called tour of
duty so i thought it was great it was
great i love it
and he goes we just remember you keep
low you always keep low and keep low
means you stay down below the flames you
know for room flashes over and it's it's
burning you if you stay up high you're
gonna get burned badly but if you get
down on your belly and you crawl
you'll get out
so he'd always say that when you hang up
the phone and i said well i love you pop
and he says uh well thanks kid
i said well you can say it too and uh
oh nice he pressured him and he did and
he said it and now every time we talk he
says it so you know um
you know they they talk about
masculinity and whatnot and uh my dad is
one of those tough tough guys with a
soft edge and that's that's how he
brought me up um
you know to be a protector i hate
bullies i was bullied really badly as a
kid and uh
i really hated it and and now i i find
myself
sometimes throwing myself into
situations to protect
people that are being you know
violated and hurt and uh
i just can't walk away from it but
that's my dad my dad was that you know
just a great guy but anyway yeah just to
listen to you therefore see you you
probably want to rush right to the
to the towers but you went yeah so
anyway i got i i did i listened to him i
listened to my wife i went to the
firehouse and it was really strange it
was eerie because um
the computer dispatch system was was
still beeping um which meant it sent a
dispatch and
the truck received it ladder 114 my my
truck company received it and they left
they were gone
so there's this beautiful old building
built in the 1880s with a spiral
staircase
just a narrow old
brick garage
and it was empty
and i just heard the computer chirping
and i looked down on a ticket and i said
lotta 114 respond the vessel west world
trade center aircraft into building
and i said oh god i just hope they're
not on a death ride because this this
now was two
towers
and uh they were burning they were free
burning and and i knew this was really
really bad
and i got on the phone and i called
command right away i called the 40th
battalion and you know chief's chief's
aide just said look you know get 12 guys
sign them in
to the journal there's a journal of
daily events every everything that takes
place in the firehouse 24 7 has to be
logged
and i locked myself as coming in
reporting for reporting for duty um
and as the guys came in i logged them in
and then
one of our lieutenants took command
we grabbed up a bunch of gear and they
basically told us get 12 guys
get a city bus
and get down to
the batter the battery tunnel they they
said would probably be closed there was
threats it was going to be blown up
to get to the brooklyn bridge
and uh
so we did we got a city bus we flagged
it down and the bus driver said i'm
sorry i can't give you the bus i will
drive you and he took us and we stopped
at engine 201 which is just about a
quarter mile down the road from us uh
that's our affiliated engine company and
my uh
my my childhood best friend uh here
johnny uh shard was
he was a sign there and he was on shift
and uh
and they went through the tunnel
and uh
we picked up those guys the off-duty
guys from 201 and then we kept going
down fourth devin and we picked up 239's
crew and then we hightailed it down the
bridge and um
there's a lot of traffic there's a lot
of people
fleeing coming over the bridge and waves
so it affected uh
the inbound
what was the mood like
uh it was somber because just prior to
getting on the bus the uh
first tower went down so we we we
figured that
i heard 114 my lieutenant dennis oberg
i heard him on the radio and he uh
he said 114 uh manhattan we're on your
frequency what's you know what do you
need us and they said uh
tallyho which is our nickname tallyho
responding to bessie and wes to the
command post and receive your orders
and i heard dennis the tally ho 10-4
and
dennis
a little while after that they were
proceeding to go into
i believe it was i get this mixed up and
i'm sorry i should know this by the back
of my hand but sometimes it's just such
a
haze but
the second tower hit was the first one
to go down and um they were heading over
to go in it and all of a sudden he
looked up and he saw like what he
thought to be disintegration and he
turned the guys around he said run just
run don't look back don't look up go
they sprinted as fast as they could
and uh they dove under a fire truck
and the guys that were sprinting behind
him 40 feet away were
underneath the pile that was 10 stories
deep they they were killed
and just
further into that pile was his rookie
son
who dennis's rookie's son who was
working in ladder 105 which was my first
command on the department
i worked for
proudly served for three years
and just beside them was my childhood
best friend john shard and his
uh his crew from 201 and uh
they they were all killed
and the strange irony to um to that is
that
dennis dennis's son dennis jr was
working underneath the uh
under the wing of a senior man as we say
senior man is a guy with a lot of
experience and he'll uh
to watch over you make sure you don't
you know veer off like i veer off a lot
and talking and uh you don't veer off
and you get yourself hurt
in the morning in 1993 bombing
henry miller was my senior man
and i was the young guy under his wing
and he protected me
until the end of the day looked around
he said kid
it's a bad day
he said
they didn't do it right they blew it up
in the middle
if they did it in a corner
they would have dropped this building
half mile down to canal street
but don't kid yourself they'll be back
and they'll do it and they'll do it
right next time
and it's so strange and so prophetic
because
he was there with him he died with
dennis he knew it
and like 1994 we had a training manual
with a picture of the towers with a
target
and this is not
not a matter of if but a matter of when
be prepared
it's one thing it was like people knew
right
and we didn't stop it
and
uh so we got off the bus
but just prior to that coming over the
bridges the second tower was gone now
and we're just destroyed because we're
like our guys are there they're all in
there now we're feeling like cowards
because we got there late
and
initially we're thinking there's 500
guys that are gone because it was a 10th
alarm assignment which means
50 60 fire trucks
uh five to six guys per you know you're
looking at
at least you know it was even more 10th
alarm plus multiple alarms on top of it
there was a dispatch basically
equivalent of five to 600 firefighters
you figured oh they're all they're all
in there all gone all the police
officers port authority police nypd
police
court officers just up the street from
the courts
transit cops from
the train tunnels like just you know we
knew everybody was going and uh now
they're gone
so you what you saw what were we looking
at what did it look like so you saw
rubble and then you knew
that many that 105 and 201 many of those
guys are in the they're dead
yeah what and we thought
was in there too we didn't realize at
that point we didn't even realize that
they had gotten under that truck we
thought they were all gone but yeah it
looked like like it looked like
it looked like a movie scene with just
end of the earth destruction these just
massive piles of
intertwined steel what was left of the
steel and and you know there was no
cement it was all just dust
and
it was just a burning pile of dust and
concrete and plastic and it was just
everything was just pulverized and it
was it was truly hard to
mentally compute that like it was like
what and then
there was just fighter jets couple fire
just just circling and and you just
heard that
flying by over your head
i mean you'd literally see the guy
banking the turn around the brooklyn
bridge and just coming back and i'm like
holy shoot we're under attack
and we
couldn't really get concrete intel as to
what exactly we knew planes but then we
kept hearing there was
multiple devices there was devices in a
battery tunnel and there was devices on
the george washington bridge and in the
subways and it was just it was just
chaos it was i mean we kept it together
obviously because that's kind of we try
that's what we do
but the
the just constant barrage of different
reports it was like holy shoot
and then as we were being deployed it
was a little frustrating but they were
trying to take command and send us in
groups now because they realize we have
to start searching this there's
you could hear
the alarms on the on the scott air mask
the packs we wear to go into the
building
it has a motion alarm and if you stop
moving for 30 seconds it just sounds
like this whining you know
this screaming bell like it just keeps
going and going
and you could hear multiple units of
those going off and you're like
wait a minute there's guys with those
like where are they
and it's emanating from underneath the
pile and
wow you know it was it was just surreal
and um
truly like
like like a war zone you know i mean i
was a soldier in reserves and i never
saw combat and i would never claim that
i did but
you know we trained we trained for a lot
of situations and we trained in you know
real life atmospheres and whatnot and
this was just beyond that by leaps and
bounds it was it was bizarre
did you see the towers collapse as we
were coming over the bridge the first
one
we were as we were deploying from the
firehouse we had a television and i saw
it go down
and it just
it was just like
and and you know we were so involved in
getting gear together and getting okay
you know team set up and okay you're
going to be with these two guys and he's
gonna
and i just yell there's the guys and
they're looking at me i dropped to my
knees and i started praying they're like
what what the hell is wrong i said i
couldn't even say it's like i said i'm
14 they're in there and and they're like
what i said the tower's gone
and all you saw on the tv was just this
pile of dust and
i guess because they didn't see it going
down i probably thought i
truly lost it and and
then
then the realization came was like oh
wow the tower's down so now it was like
wow this is really on so we we just took
off and got that boss and uh
so if you thought
many of the guys on 114 were
dead
if you thought that did you think you're
going to die i mean if you're rushing
into the
towards the rubble
i
as crazy as it sounds i never thought
that the other tower would go down i
said okay maybe some freak chance that
one went down
but no the other one's not gonna go like
they're built so strong you know i was
in those towers so many times and i mean
i ate dinner up in the top four
restaurant windows on the world and i'm
saying
nah there's no way like like how the
hell did this one happen
but i i was having a hard time mentally
processing that the building was gone
and
and and believe me if if you don't have
fear in this industry and you know
police fire military then you're you're
kidding yourself
or you're a danger to everyone i don't
care who it is as tough as they are this
and that everybody has a certain level
of fear with doing this and i don't care
how long you do it there's always that
chance of something going bad and and
everyone who does it has that certain
amount of fear
but at that point it was such a feeling
of disbelief
that fear wasn't even kicking in it was
just like what the hell just happened
and
i honestly think it was almost like a
shock and it just stayed that whole day
um so the building is
before collapses is burning it's just
burning i mean upper floors is you know
up in the 78th up to the 80s and then
it's you know there's the way that the
cut was from the plane it wasn't just
straight across it was you know from the
78th then you know on up to maybe the
86th and
you know um then
the jet fuel had come down and was
burning down and there was people on the
on the ground who were
doused with
jet fuel that was already burning and
they were lit on fire on the ground it
was it was just insane how vast the
destruction path was a firefighter
what are you supposed to do with that
scale of fire
i i think the first bosses in the first
chiefs
were going to do their best to get
as we we get hose lines what our whole
theory is or our tactics is to get water
at the fire at the base of the fire
and get the truck company which is the
ladder company they're the guys who
break the doors down put ladders up this
and that to get them to where the life
is most expected and get them out of
there so i think the chiefs tactics at
that point was let me get multiple
engine companies let me get four five
six hose lines fighting this fire this
massive fire and let me get 15 20 truck
companies up there just yolking people
out of there yeah but you got to go up
the stairs everything's not working yeah
guys had to walk up 80 80 90 100 flights
of stairs and there's audio of
of
officers
and firefighters speaking to each other
on the radio channels and unfortunately
at that point in time we had very very
bad communication system
we've been fighting for years to get
radios that work properly we couldn't
because it was a lot of money
we fought for years to get the full
bunker firefighting suits which is the
pants and the coat
we used to have just coats and these
roll up rubber boots and guys were
burning to death and we had to fight
and unfortunately we lost three guys in
one vicious vicious fire in 1994
and then they finally said enough's
enough give these guys the gear
so
it's a strange phenomenon in the
first responder world and in the
military world
it's really one of the most important
things that takes place in society the
most pertinent
organizations and we can't get the
funding we need it's crazy they'll throw
money at every nonsensical thing but
when it comes to
gear equipment protective equipment
trucks this
couldn't get it just all the ways you
could take care of people i saw
in since 9 11 the wars in the middle
east have cost america over six trillion
dollars
and
the amount of that money that was spent
on
the soldiers
in this case the first responders is
minimal compared to it yeah almost
nothing they they like stay closed down
i believe it's either seven or eight
in
may of 2002
they closed down nine fire houses in new
york city for budget reasons
we hadn't even finished cleaning up the
world trade center site and they slashed
the budget
and
still to this day
have not reopened those fire houses
there's a million more people now living
in new york city than there were in 2001
and the fire protection is is way less
than it was and it's it's a sin
it's really a sin can i ask you a a
difficult question
so
there's this famous um
photograph of a falling man
so many people had to decide when
they're above the fire in the fire
whether to jump out of the building or
to burn to death
what do you make of that decision what
do you make of that situation
those people who jumped
those were acts of sheer desperation
i've i've been in fires
and and just minor burns but minor you
know in situations but i've been trapped
caught somewhat ended up in the burn
center for some nothing nothing serious
at all but like but i i for those brief
seconds half a minute was thank god if i
didn't have my fire gear on i would have
been burned to a very very horrible
level
those people
were burning alive
and they had the choice of either to
stay there and burn alive
or to
launch themselves
and some of them
i don't fault them but they they had a
few folks they won't show it anymore
because they say
i don't know why i defend some people
but
they had a couple folks that took
umbrellas and they took garbage bags
because they thought that it would slow
down their except their acceleration
rate to the ground and maybe just maybe
they wouldn't be killed
and that's to me
a true sense of desperation for humanity
to say
i'm going to die either way but let me
take my chance
and i don't know the exact number of
those folks who did that but our first
member of the fire department killed
firefighter daniel surf from edge 216
was struck by a jumper
and one of my dear friends was ordered
to
help
take him
and they knew he was passed away because
he was hit by a
flying missile i mean you know 120 miles
an hour body lands on you
those those two bodies are now crushed
and they were ordered to take that
firefighter and bring him across the
street to engine 10 ladder 10. it was
literally a firehouse
less than 100 yards
from the facade of the trade center from
the trade center complex they literally
right there
and there was plane parts that went into
that firehouse landed into the front
doors onto the roof but the building
itself was not destroyed
so it was used as as a mini command
center for quite a while
so my friend was ordered to take
daniel's body in respect
and bring it over to
this firehouse
and give it some semblance of dignity
and lay it out on one of the bunk room
the bunks we have in the bunk house
and just cover it with a sheet and put a
sign
please firefighter kill do not disturb
and then we'll get to him later because
obviously this operation is going to go
on for days
and my friend who's such a great great
wonderful guy is so still to this day
filled with guilt because if they
weren't taking his body out
with the respect and dignity that they
did it took a while because
you know just it's a tough situation
his ladder company
it's coming over the bridge there's a
famous picture
of ladder 118 you see this
tractor trailer fire truck it's the one
where the guy in the back also drives
and it's a zoomed out shot and you see
the brooklyn bridge and you see only the
fire truck in the middle and you see the
two burning towers in the distance
well his engine company
was just ahead of them on the bridge
and the only reason that engine company
lived is their initial duty assignment
was to take that firefighter and bring
his body over it's like the military we
don't leave anyone behind these are our
guys
as we some guys say it's all about the
guy right next to you and nothing else
really matters
when that guy right next to you goes
down it stops you get that guy to safety
or if he's dead you get him out
so in that time frame
that saved his life
but that's a heavy burden to carry now
for the rest of your life because you
say if i wasn't helping my dead friend
i'm dead yeah
what did it
look like at ground zero what did it
feel like what did it smell like what
you said it there's a sense that it was
almost like a war zone but can you paint
the picture of
how much dust is in the air
how hot is it
how many people are there
and and again how did it feel like
it was just
it was scene of control chaos
control because there was a semblance of
command and we were just trying to do
our jobs
but it was such a frantic pace because
we're now digging frantically knowing
that there's life underneath this pile
and this is throughout the afternoon
this is this is
yeah i mean this was non-stop you know
uh just non-stop really for for days but
for my particular crew we literally kept
going we
initially were dispatched over towards
number seven had just gone down
and we were searching the post office
that was there there was reports of
people trapped
and we painstakingly searched every
single inch of that building to make
sure no one was left in there
and then we were deployed to the pile
and the pile was sort of ambiguous
because it was just such a vast vast
pile i mean it went for city blocks
and we were we were assisting in the
retrieval of two port authority police
officers
were lucky enough to survive but they
were trapped they were deep down into a
crevasse and they had to be physically
dug out and extricated
so there was a couple hundred few
hundred guys involved in that process of
bringing in equipment jaws of life
airbags to lift steel you just you know
to cut pieces of steel it was just a
huge operation
and we were back toward the logistics
end of it shuttling in gear and and
bring it bringing in stretchers bringing
in oxygen you know whatever whatever was
needed and you were trying to
climb over this this jagged pile of
debris it wasn't like you just walked
100 feet on a street with something you
were trying to climb over this i-beam
and then down into this hole and then
i'll back up that hole i mean just to
run one piece of equipment took a half
an hour to get
100 feet 200 feet
you know mind you some of these pieces
of equipment are 100 pounds you know
generator for rehearse tools this
massive motor on a frame
unstable ground unstable ground
just just horrible conditions fires are
still burning aside you beneath you
and at one point
i kind of veered off to the side and i
was with this other fireman from my
father's old ladder company 172 and
it was strange because we were down
quite a bit down like 70 feet down into
this ravine of debris
and he says brother what do you hear
and at the time it was like dust it was
like sand just falling down a pile
and it was hissing from gas pipes and
water pipes
and and i said i hear i hear the gas
lines i hear the
sand i hear the concrete he goes no no
what else do you hear
and just the side of us was a lady's
pocketbook
and a high-heeled shoe
and someone's sneaker
with nobody with it
and i said i don't know i don't hear
anything
he says me neither he goes
no one's coming out of here
and i said no no no this there's got to
be someone coming out of here i mean
there's thousands of people in here and
they're coming out
he says brother
we would hear him calling for help
they're gone
and
i still at that point thought there was
a chance and and
after about the fourth day they just
said
this is a recovery now there's there's
no more there's no more life there's no
more chance
and on that first night we we went full
tilt to my crew my specific crew of 12
15 guys and
four in the morning we just we just
couldn't breathe anymore we couldn't see
we were caked just with it was like if
you took flour and just kept dousing
yourself
and and the lieutenant just said look
guys we're gonna go back we're gonna get
some medical aid
and then we'll come back in a few hours
and uh we we took a city bus
back through the battery tunnel
you know unbeknownst to us
that morning
this off-duty firefighter stephen siller
from squad company one
he he raced down there with his pickup
and he couldn't go any further because
the traffic was stopped up because they
had a report of a bomb
so everything was held up
and he grabbed his fire gear
and he put it on
stuff weighs about 60 pounds
and he ran through the tunnel
two and a half miles
got to the end of the tunnel
fire truck was coming in from the other
way
he hopped on the back got him up to west
street jumped off tried to look for his
his company where they were
and
he was never seen again
he just ran through the tunnel ran
through the tunnel and he he got there
to help his his team right it's all
about the team so about the guy right
next to you
and he's the tunnel to towers foundation
stephen his his brother frank decided in
his name
in perpetuity he's got a fund that that
now builds a home
for every gold star family
for every seriously battle wounded
warrior
for every seriously wounded first
responder or killed in a lighting duty
first responder if they had a home
that paid a mortgage if they didn't have
a home they give them a home
and especially if it's if it's a
severely battle wounded they give them a
smart home because these poor guys come
home with no limbs
and
so the beauty of the beauty of stephen
and his selfless act
was that he's now helped
thousands and thousands of people i mean
tunnels of towers is incredible that's
part of our part of our mission is to
bring awareness to these great people at
tunnel to towers what they do they've
raised
250 million dollars to help
to help protect the protectors to rescue
the rescuers
in in a what's become unfortunately is
somewhat ungrateful society but they
will not forget
these great guys
so you uh tell steven's story he's one
of the 20 people that you talk about in
the new
ireland labs 2420 podcast series
if you can just linger on his story a
little longer
what does that tell you about the human
spirit that this guy
you know the tunnel couldn't couldn't
drive through so he just puts on that
heavy pack and runs
what do you make of that
that shows the depth of a man's soul
he didn't have to do that he could have
turned around and went home to his
family
and nobody would have shamed him but
he's
one of those beautiful brave people that
take a job
and really doesn't pay a lot of money
and
you become a cop or a
firefighter or nurse or an emt or a
medic or soldier a marine an airman
sailor
when you take these jobs
you don't do it for
fanfare you definitely don't do it for
money i mean those those 13 brave souls
we lost you know week or two ago in
afghanistan
they're brand new soldiers and marines
they make 22 000 an hour
but they don't work 40 hours a week they
work 80 they work 90 hours a week so
they're making about six bucks an hour
and you know what they sign off
and firefighters and cops and medics and
emts
nurses
emergency room doctors
they don't really make a lot of money i
mean they're starting salary right now
for a new york cop i was in new york cop
for two years first
i made 12 25 an hour
back in 1989 to get shot at
during the crack wars
if you made uh
11 an hour
with a family of four you were entitled
to welfare back then
so i was just above the welfare level
risk of my life
and these are the guys that are getting
ripped up now
right and and look i won't get into any
politics but like
that says something about someone's soul
that they're willing to take a job like
that and get
now get zero respect so a guy like
stephen what that shows is the depth of
that man's soul and courage and
determination
it's hard to be selfless in this world
anymore
but i still know a lot of selfless
people that just just put on equipment
every day bulletproof vests fire bunker
gear
stethoscopes
you know flak jackets military helmets
and they go in and they do it smiling
that young marine
that passed
last week she was photographed and
quoted as saying i have my dream job but
she was holding on the left got any baby
and she was dead a few days later
she was so thrilled to be making seven
dollars an hour helping people right
isn't that huge like that to me says
that's a true sign of character right
there and it's important for our society
to elevate those people as heroes
let me ask you about firefighting
what do you think it means to be a great
firefighter
and a great man a great human being
in a situation like you were in in 9 11.
you know that's that's kind of a broad
term like some you know you can go to
different firehouses and they might have
a different definition of what they
consider a great firefighter
but i think in the industry as a whole
if you're willing to put
everyone else before you
especially your team
you know it was we said ain't no i in
team right it's t-e-a-m and there's no i
in there it's all about those guys and
girls next to you
if you can do that
that makes you pretty great
you you put everything else second and
you just run in and you run in with that
team for strangers
you know i i've had
the honor of i spent almost 25 years of
my adult life serving
humanity my country
my former city
and the people i worked with were giants
and i don't mean that in height i mean
but i mean that in spirit and in soul
i saw some of the most heroic selfless
acts
and then i saw some of the behind the
scenes that were so impressive you know
we'd go to a fire around christmas
and a family would lose everything
and even when i was a cop same thing you
come back either to the police precinct
or the firehouse or the ems station
and someone would put together a
collection and say hey guys hey lex 50
bucks a man you know the smiths down the
street just lost everything we're gonna
go get some presents for the kids and
some turkeys
and not one of those guys questioned
that
and they were making 12.25 an hour and
they still came up with 50 bucks for
that family but see that's the stuff the
press won't show you right they don't
want to show that humanity that soft
edge
see when you're a warrior you need to
have this rough shield this rough
exterior
because if you don't you die
but
a true great
firefighter or responder or a cop or
military personnel
they have that rough exterior with that
soft on their belly that that you know
like this is that heart right it's there
and and that's to me the true great ones
yeah
some of them they just have a hard time
doing that you know there's no shame in
showing your soft side you know well you
got your dad to say i love you back no
all right that was huge that was that
took that took me 22 years
so you were a firefighter for 21 almost
22 years yeah what what why did you
become a firefighter oh my dad i mean i
i i was five years old and i went to his
firehouse and there was these you know
at the time they looked like giants to
me with mustaches and they you know
and the trucks the trucks smelled like
smoke and the gear smelled like smoke
and the tires and you know the diesel
fuel and i was like alright
this is this is what i'm gonna do and
then and then they bring you in the
kitchen and they stuff you with ice
cream and cake and everything you know
and then i go home to my mom you know
shaking with a
sugar comber and she's mad at my dad but
yeah it was just oh i was like i gotta
do this it was like
they were like a baseball team in a
garage with a truck and these big tools
and big coats and helmets and they were
just laughing and having fun and i'm
like yeah man i'm doing this and i knew
i was obsessed with it i mean i i was so
pissed the fireman's test came out when
i was 14 and i couldn't take it you had
to be 18.
and and it was done you know you know
test was graded and whatever so my dad
you know now there's a copy circulating
because it's it's old now
and he goes hey this is what you're in
for
and i took it i and i you know did it
like it was real and i got a 99 and i
was so pissed i said i want to get hired
he goes you can't you're 14. like but i
wanted i just wanted to do it so bad
and and i just wanted to help people i
just wanted to be like my dad you know
like he'd come home smiling as tired as
he was and he fought fires in the 60s
and 70s when the city was burning
and he's still as exhausted as he was
he'd still be smiling
i wanted to smile at work and i used to
i got paid to laugh and joke
i got paid to cry sometimes
but man we laughed a lot we really it
was the the chop breaking is just it's
just on ending and it's great
if you don't mind can you tell me
you were really kind enough to give me
uh
one of these shirts with 114.
can you tell me the story of 114
um i where proudly i served eight years
in that command and i i didn't finish my
career there um i i i passed the
lieutenant's test and once you do you
have to leave
the story behind tally ho is um
back in world war ii there was this
gentleman named bad jack carroll and
jack was an airborne ranger and uh my
father-in-law was also on a department
and he knew jack
and jack came home
jack jumped normandy and uh stormed up
through the battle of the bulge in
bostonia and uh
he came back
greatest generation as they all did and
they they got jobs they went right to
work and uh they were treated better
back then vets right and uh he got on
the new york city fire department and he
got assigned a lot of 114
and they first got um
radios back then
and when jack he would drive the truck
you're up there with the officer either
lieutenant or captain so if the boss is
off the truck you you operate the radio
for them as the driver so when they call
them and they'd say
you know a lot of 114 responding to 52nd
street third avenue structure fire
you're supposed to get back and say
aladdin 114 10-4 but he refused to do
that he'd say lana 114 tally ho
because that's what they yell when they
jump out the plane
so all these years later it's stuck and
it's a little bit of a bragging right
but uh out of 350 engine and truck
companies in the whole new york city
fire department
we're pretty much the only one that's uh
called by their nickname on the radio
not their number so
it tweaks some guys off in other places
you know they may f you italia you know
but it's it's just uh yes it's a great
great
heritage and we're really proud and uh
you know the shamrock was
you know he was irish and a lot of the
guys back then
were irish immigrants from the area from
the neighborhood and they would actually
take the the fire truck to church on
sunday and park out front and and one
guy would stay in it to hear the radio
in case they got a call so uh yeah
that's
the proud history and you said that if i
wear this around new york am i getting a
little bit of you you might get a guy
from the bronx go ahead tyler will screw
you you know but i mean it's it's
all that good rivalry you know we like
to you know
we like to kid each other back and forth
you know uh
guys from manhattan was like yeah you
guys in brooklyn yeah short buildings
tall stories like yeah but you guys in
manhattan tall tall buildings no stories
you know it's just all that it's all
that i love jocular ball breaking it's
good stuff you know um let me ask a
i guess a difficult question if we just
step back in the events of 911
on the side of the people
that flew into the towers
what
do you take away from that day about the
nature about human nature about good and
evil
how did that change your view of the
world
i
i witnessed evil firsthand um i remember
later on well into that night when we
were uh trying to help get those police
officers out i remember looking up at
the building century 21 the store
runs along the east side of the towers
and it was still there and you know the
debris had come down right almost to the
edge century 21 is this old story
department store in new york city
and the sign was was there and it was
still lit up like some of the neon was
broken and but i think some of it was
actually still lit up and i just looked
around and i was like
this is this is a war zone like we're at
war and and you know we knew we were
attacked we heard the fighter planes and
you know back then it wasn't uh the
extensive communication network and we
had cell phones but they were the old
school flip phones and there was no news
on them and so
plus we we didn't have a signal down
there anyway i couldn't reach my family
for like 12 13 hours and
my dad had deployed down to the ferry
terminal to retrieve bodies uh he was
retired but he still went
and they deployed him to go be
basically the morgue transport guys they
expected to be sending
hundreds and thousands of bodies across
on the ferry
and they set up these tractor trailers
as a mobile morgue and uh that never
happened because
there were no bodies to take they were
all buried um
so i saw evil first hand i i don't know
how someone can inflict such
vent revenge or or eventual act for in
the name of anything in the name of a
religion and a name of a cause and a
name
like what the hell you know were you
ever able to make sense of that why men
are able to commit such acts of terror
in the days and the years after
no lex i haven't i you know
my mom's from ireland and um i still
have a lot of family there and and you
know my my great uncles
one of them was dragged out and shot no
he lived but but just based on a rumor
that he was in the ira
and i wasn't happy to see what happened
to my mom's people because they they
were
victimized and brutalized by
england at that time
but
blowing up bombs and and killing
innocents and the name of that
it doesn't make it right
i couldn't justify something like that i
i can see
you know i was a cop i was a soldier
and you never want to take life and in
those
jobs but sometimes you have to
but you don't do it with a vengeance you
don't do it with a thirst you do it
because it's necessary for survival
when you do it out of a bloodlust out of
a thirst out of a cause
that's evil there's something wrong with
you
i i have no
i i respect life to the highest level i
i mean i'm very life is sacred to me
it's precious it's beyond
it's not a commodity it's a gift
but to take life just so randomly so
there's something way wrong with that
person and and maybe i'm a conflicted
soul
but i would have no problem seeing
someone like that put to death because
they do not deserve life
um
there's there's many uh many children
around this world that are being taught
to hate
someone who's different than them
just because the the person who's
allegedly teaching them says so
i don't understand it well that starts
with just having a basic um
respect and appreciation for the other
human beings and yes that starts with
empathy so yes and one of the reasons i
love this country why while joking that
i'm russian
maybe you could say the same as you
being irish
you're actually truly an american and
that's why i consider myself very much
an american and one of the reasons i
love this country is it serves as a
beacon
i still
believe it serves as a beacon of hope
and that empathy and love
uh for the rest of the world that like
hate
is uh not gonna get you far that love
will get you a lot farther and i i still
think you know sometimes it's easy to um
see the press
uh mainstream media you can see social
networks because you can make so much
money on division
sometimes
uh because it makes so much money it's
easy to think like we're really divided
i honestly don't think we are it's just
like oh i think the very surface level
thing that we see on twitter
it's that you're abs you're 100 right
there's people out there that are
maximizing off this whole division right
they want us divided they want people
angry because it sells you know a lot of
these people that are in charge of
certain organizations well they all seem
to have nice cars and nice houses and
nice vacations
and
they're constantly trying to convince
everybody that we hate each other yeah
to me i'll use a fireman analogy right
it's like a little campfire
and if you just let the embers
flutter they'll they'll go out
but if you take a little cup of gasoline
with those embers
it'll blow right up in your face
and that's what a lot of these
politicians and a lot of these media
folks are doing because there's
something in it for them
and i i think they're it's possible to
defeat them with great leaders with
great spokespeople with great human
beings having a voice one of the
powerful things of the internet
is
more and more people have a voice and i
ultimately believe
in certainly in america but in the world
the good people outnumber
the assholes oh i agree though and you
know there's days when i think the
assholes are you know are overrunning us
but you know what um
i think what the downfall of the world
is
is ego and arrogance and people that
think they're better
than that other guy
my parents raised me you know to be this
way my mom is such a sweet gentle soul
she's an immigrant she came here at 16
years old
she helps everybody but herself right
she's just one of those people she's
sick she's got parkinson's you'd never
know it and she's still flying around
her condo complex helping everybody
because that's what she does
she loves to help people
but she's been in their shoes she's been
poor
she's sick her husband was sick she's
had all sorts of suffering and loss in
her life my grandad died
when my mom was 10 and she was one of 10
children that survived out of 14.
she knows hard times
but she so appreciates the good times
and the goodness of this country
you know the
fire department and the police
department military told me a lot about
empathy and and trying to really feel
for someone and put yourself in there
their situation um i remember years back
i was a much younger fireman at probably
five years on a job
and uh
i was sent down to the next firehouse
over to fill in you know we would get
sent around randomly when they needed an
extra guy
and
someone came banging on a firehouse door
and in the tenement apartment next door
they said there was an an older woman
that was unconscious
so
we dispatched ourselves and we ran over
with the medical kit
and it was an elderly woman
laying there on the bed and she was
obviously
not breathing she was
obviously in cardiac arrest and an older
gentleman that was
holding her hand just just un
inconsolably crying and it turned out it
was her husband and they were married
for 65 years
and um
normally we would just respectfully ask
the
family members to just step aside and
let us do our work
and i realized that he wouldn't leave
her side
so i kind of gave the crew a wink and
they were doing cpr and what they had to
and and i just
let him keep holding her hand and i said
sir if you you know could you just come
over just a little bit so we can work
and
i held his hand
as he held hers and and i said sir i
said do you do you have faith and he did
and
i said would you like to pray with me
for your wife
and
he said i would like to so we we said
the lord's prayer and and
you know i just asked god to protect her
and bless her and
i think he realized that she didn't have
a chance but we still gave her that
that chance and we you know got her in
the ambulance and maybe maybe it was
wrong to try to make it look like we
could save her but you know you can't
really
not not try
but the one beautiful moment was
he thanked me
and
he
was almost okay with it at that point
like he wasn't as upset he wasn't as
distraught
because i tried to just humanize that
situation of what we were trying to do
we were trying to do our best but we
also tried to be compassionate to his
sadness and
it just i walked away just feeling so
good even though it was a tragic
situation and she did pass that you know
he he came by to you know
thank us days later and um
just heartbreaking but you know there's
there's just it's just happens many many
times throughout the country every day
people get that opportunity as a
responder to be that last
bridge to the family and the loved one
and
you only get that opportunity once
sometimes and you really have to
to me it's like your moment to shine you
know you could just be very very
dismissive and very rude or you could be
compassionate and just show hey i've
i've i have a mom i have a grandma i
have you know and and
just in your mind pretend that that's
who you're working on and that's who
you're with so that moment of compassion
that moment of empathy even if it's
brief
can be the thing that saves the person
from suffering
make the difference between
suffering and overcoming in the face of
tragedy yes like i felt that even though
obviously his loss was still huge it
just made it a little more bearable and
um
you know tried to just take his grief
down to a lower level and uh i it made
me feel
just feel really good about doing it
that's a powerful way to see the job of
a first responder of course you have to
deal with certain aspects of the tragedy
but it's to provide somebody with that
moment
of compassion yeah and you know i i made
it a little habit because sometimes with
faith it's a little bit of a tricky
subject so
every time i had someone who died which
unfortunately was many many times i
would i would just
touch their hand and just say a little
quick prayer and just say look you know
i hope you're moving on to a better
place i hope
if you did have faith that it's it's
it's strong as you depart
and if you didn't have faith i hope
maybe at your last moment that you found
some and and you just found some closure
so that was just my little
my little ritual i think i just you know
i felt it was important that that that
person even though they were a stranger
just had someone there it's just sort of
hoping for the best for them in their
last moments
you mentioned cancer
you had a rare
leukemia
due to um
all the work that you did at ground zero
can you maybe talk to
the experience of just breathing through
those days
and what that was like being unable to
breathe
being overwhelmed by all of the dust in
the air
yes um the the first day especially um
we
we didn't have equipment we ran you know
we didn't have breathing apparatus and
we were handed little 69
hardware store dust masks you know those
little thin paint masks that would just
get sweated up and you know sticking to
your face within 30 seconds so you would
you just they were useless
and what what you wound up feeling like
was that you you swallowed a box of
razor blades because there was glass and
there was cement and it was just so
caustic
and uh
i remember that night you know when we
went back just to get some medical
relief uh for the few hours
we were walking up the hill to the
firehouse because they dropped us off
like a block away down at engine 201s
and quarters and uh
one of the older firemen as we're
walking up the block we're all
struggling we're all having a hard time
breathing and just just i mean i felt
like i was dying literally it's it was
pretty bad and just remember the one guy
going now we're all dead and i said no
no we made it we made it he goes no you
don't get a kid he said
we just breathed in poison after poison
for for hours and then that went into
days and it went into months
he says we're all dead men this is going
to take us all
and i i i thought he was crazy and then
now years later like starting in 0.304
guys just started coming down with these
really
rare and advanced cancers and then
it just it just stopped being a
coincidence
with the number of guys and they were
young one one of the first guys john
mcnamara he was 33 or 34 and he came
down colon cancer and it took him
quickly in 2000
it was in 2005 and
i i kind of said to you know friends and
family i said i feel like i'm running
through a minefield and i wonder when my
i'm gonna step on my mind because
everybody's gonna get sick
and i wasn't feeling well from 2008 on
just i just i couldn't put it and i
couldn't put my finger on it but it just
wasn't right
and in 2011 uh
i i failed my medical
my bloods my bloods came back
horrifically wrong
and they pulled me off the truck
but uh they strung me out for a month
the
doctors in the fire department one of
them said my spleen was engorged because
it was probably drinking myself to death
like
as he said most of the guys
did after 9 11
which was pretty wrong of him in
stereotypical you know just to
stereotype and to categorize and
guy couldn't have cared less he just he
was so crude and nasty and then my one
doctor who was my doctor on the outside
my blood pressure was 240 over 140
my spleen was about to rupture
she didn't even show up for my
appointment and i went down i passed out
the paramedics responded
she got into an argument with a
paramedic because for big ego
and basically telling him there wasn't
really anything wrong and he's looking
at my paperwork going this guy's got
leukemia and
he overrode her he raced me out of there
down to brooklyn methodist
and uh
the doctor
the charge physician the er physician he
says you're not leaving because uh
you're in a bad way and i said
what is it he said i need four he goes i
need i need a little while to figure it
out he goes but
you probably have one of a
few different types of leukemia he said
i'll drill into your hip take your
marrow and find out
and he said uh but in the meantime we'll
get the swelling on the spleen down like
some sort of rapid medicines and whatnot
because my spleen is about to rupture
i had no blood platelets left which is
your clotter so i basically would have
bled to death and uh
i found out from my team of doctors that
i had about 48 hours to live
um and that really set me off i was
infuriated because i was telling them
for a long time that i was sick
and
the doctors failed you the few doctors
in the beginning failed you i felt very
betrayed and and other guys had died
and uh i i had a i had it out with that
one doctor i basically told her she was
fired from my case and she's
pretty politically
in charge person and i didn't care i i
jeopardized my my job for it because it
was my life and i got the sense that she
didn't really it didn't really matter to
her
she didn't have any empathy as you say
it was exact so why for her why for a
few others was there not a
a special care special compassion for
first of all all humans but human beings
in your position especially a
firefighter a first responder you know
alex i think what it is in the
department their title is just to get us
back to duty as quickly as possible when
we are either injured or sick because
what happens then is your replacement is
now in overtime
so you're out being paid on medical eve
but then they need to replace your spot
and then that costs more money
so i think it's just behooves them to
get as many
personnel back and especially during the
summer time you know they look at it
like oh maybe you want a few extra days
off to uh you know go to the beach
and uh
this one doctor he tipped his hand back
as if like i was drinking an alcohol
beverage he says hey busy summer
because i asked him to look at my spleen
which was sticking out of my abdomen
like a football
and i said excuse me sir i said how dare
you assume that i'm i'm abusing alcohol
because
you know alcohol abuse sometimes will
present itself as the spleen
is engorged and having an issue so you
automatically just assume that that was
my situation wouldn't even give me an
exam
and i was horrified i was i was so angry
i mean i wanted to punch this guy out
and i literally was screaming at him and
an executive officer came in to defuse
it and sent me to another doctor and
when i showed her my paperwork she was
horrified she was like what did he say
and she said oh okay go go to your
regular doctor tomorrow who was one of
the department doctors and
and she just
it was just an indifference it was like
i don't know i i was shocked at the lack
of compassion but you know what that
being said i'm past it i you know it
life moves on
the team of doctors i i ended up with a
methodist and my subsequent oncologist
dr peter mincel
uh world class just incredible human
being my dr pete is just i love him i
just i love him like a friend like a big
brother like a father like a
my primary oncology care nurse mike
nunez was just incredible human being
and and he knew i was frightened because
i had to get two and a half years of
chemo uh compressed into seven days
or i was dead um these massive bags of
chemo that never stopped and
and uh
they they burned the minute the minute
they went into your body you felt like
you were burning to death from the
inside out
and mike when mike came in to hook me up
he said um
look i have to wear a hazmat suit this
stuff is so caustic that if it if it
drips it'll burn whenever it touches
and i was like but mike you're gonna put
that in my body how how the hell is it
not gonna kill me he says no no this is
exactly what it's supposed to do trust
me
so when he prepped the iv tube to get it
flowing it spilled onto the tube and the
tube started to smoke and burned
and i i went i said no f and way mike
you're not putting that in me no way no
way and he goes listen let me get
another one let me start it over and
here he is wearing a hazmat suit looking
at me and i'm going this is this is
insane
and he goes he looked at me he took my
hand and he says nils if you don't take
it you're dead
he says you got those three kids i i'm
sorry i have no other option you're dead
and i said all right mike okay and he
hooked me up
and you know what it was it was like
you know if you do drink alcohol and you
have like a shot or want you know strong
type spirit and you start feeling that
burn
well the minute he he hit me in the vein
it just started going up my arm burning
and then up my shoulder
across my neck
into my head across the rest of my body
within a minute down to my feet
and i was riding in pain for seven days
and i was praying to die
i was the seventh rescuer in six months
to come down with the rarest leukemia
there is there's only 500 cases in all
north america a year
and seven of us came down in six months
two guys died during treatment seven
responders police fire
two guys died in the first couple days
of the treatment because it's so vicious
your liver your heart your kidneys
something will fail
and i was praying and i was praying but
i wanted to die i was in so much pain
and i wouldn't take a painkiller because
i know people with some issues and i
just didn't want to go there
and
finally on the last day i gave i gave in
i said please i can't do this anymore i
was literally like jumping out of my
skin
and they gave me something
but it had burned out my mind it burned
out my body i couldn't hear i could
barely see it was vicious
but it worked
and my nurses especially they just they
were so dedicated and devoted and i was
not an easy patient because i was in a
lot of pain it was it was
bad it was drove my friends my family
crazy it was just it wasn't good
but on that first night
i had a quick vision of all these people
that i loved
that were dead that died a lot of them
in the trade center and i saw johnny i
saw i saw friends i grew up with
the last one was my my mother-in-law who
had passed six months before and she
died of
she was in a coma she had a stroke she
had a horrible
horrible last six months of life and she
wasn't fair because
she was so religious she went to church
every day devout catholic woman
and all of a sudden i see her and she's
smiling and uh
we used to talk a lot you know it's the
irish thing like the gab the gift to
give and uh
she used to call me a boyfriend because
we'd sit and talk for hours and talk
about books and about movies and about
food and i love her she's my friend
and she'd say you know my boyfriend's
here
and all of a sudden she's smiling and
she goes hi my boyfriend i said dad no
no wait what are you doing she goes he's
not ready he doesn't want you you got to
go back got things to do
and i'm like no no no it hurts so much
please please take me and she left she
goes no no not yet i'll see you
and she just faded away
and one of my doctors on my team
she she was
she had she had a problem with religion
and that's okay i understand that you
know i'm not a i'm not a preacher i have
a faith but i don't preach it i don't
push it i just you know
live and let live
so she sent in this shrink to see me and
i and i was
messed up from the chemo but i i knew
what i was seeing i knew what i was
saying
and he was he was a jewish gentleman he
was a rabbi also in a synagogue and i
actually had responded in that district
and he he knew
114 would run into borough park oh yeah
i see tyler oh they come down the street
you know
and he asked me to tell him the story
and i did
and uh he started laughing and he scared
me now i said doc am i really crazy he
said no no
he said i believe you my friend he said
we we share the same god he goes we we
work in the same
corporation but in different departments
and he says
he says you did see your mother-in-law
he says your faith is that strong he
said i've had many patients express the
same sentiments he said so i want you to
listen to her and fight and be strong
and he said so what else do you want to
talk about i said well i don't know daca
my dad messed up he goes no no he goes
they're paying me for an hour it only
took 20 minutes so we watched the yankee
game together
but but it was just again it showed the
human condition here here's these two
men of two totally different faiths
and yet we shared that that bond of
faith and he had empathy and he had
sympathy and he he's he saw
me and many other patients so he just
didn't assume and he and he gave me a
fair shake and i will always be grateful
to him for that
through any of this the the pain you
have to go through with the leukemia but
also the the days of 9 11 after
did your faith get challenged
you know
lex it was strange i it was times it was
so angry you know there's that range of
emotions the anger the denial the
depression the this to that
and this is the weirdest thing it was it
was mostly i knew my career was over
and uh they retired me out of the job
that that i got sick in august and that
october they told me i was out
and by the time i was processed and you
know used up my
my leaves and whatever you want to say
it was i was i was officially retired in
january of o2
and uh in less than six months
and i'm there walking my dog one day my
rescue greyhound who i miss she was such
a soul god she lived to be almost 13
katie and uh
we were walking in the snow and i got
the call i was retired and i looked at
her and i'm like katie what am i going
to do and she just looked up and said
we're going to go on a lot more walks
you know
and i was so sad and i was so sad i was
so angry because i lost my priesthood i
loved helping people i really alex i
would have done it for free
i would never tell mayor bloomberg that
right
he's all about the book right but like
you know honestly i would have i would
have been a new york city farmer i would
have paid them to do it yeah you know
and uh
i wasn't allowed anymore that's it you
have over 20 years and you have cancer
you know back when my dad got sick
they'd let you hang around for 10 12
years in an office but
not now now it's all about the bottom
line
and uh
but i was more depressed about losing a
job than almost losing my life like as
crazy as that sounds you know and it
just uh
it's more than a job i mean it's uh it's
a way of life man yeah it's it's also as
your family your father you're you're
carrying torture your father's oh my
friend i love my friends i love we work
24-hour shifts together you cook you
clean you break each other's jobs
relentlessly i mean it was i love those
guys so much i mean i i hope that my
kids and anyone that i know and care
about i hope they can experience the
bond
of that brotherhood that i experienced
in my life it was so god i i would give
anything to have it back just yeah
i can ask you about new york so when i
i've uh unfortunately have never lived
in new york i visit i've always wanted
to live there for a bit obviously it's a
very different experience to have really
lived in new york for many many years
but
there there's a few friends of mine that
are from
they got similar accent as yours yeah
that uh
that are a little bit saddened perhaps
it's temporary but
perhaps not they don't seem to think so
of what new york has become especially
with kovid it's losing some of the
spirit of new york
um do you have that sense do you have a
hope for this city that has been so
defining to what is america
you know i my heart's broken
i had moved to new jersey many years ago
and but i still have close attachment to
new york my parents are still there many
many family members
um and i've since now moved to tennessee
i needed to go somewhere quiet i wanted
to heal my fractured soul and i'm in the
middle
of a beautiful farming rural area in
middle tennessee and um so
they probably call me a sellout back in
new york for leaving but it's not the
same city and it's sad um you know i'll
refrain from the politics and the um
finger point
but it's a mess compared to what it was
and um you know i did broadway theater
security for many years
and
i started to see it slide like like with
stuff that was happening like you know
public urination and defecation and just
like you know tourists don't want to see
that right and
and um i i had an unfortunate incident
um two years ago i was jumped by four
teenagers coming off the subway
and they were pissed off because i was
wearing an american flag hat and i um
i don't know i i
i'm not really sure why but that it left
me i got out of it um okay
but
i was taken back they were literally
videoing it and the kid was just
throwing shadow punches at my face
wanting to beat me up and i finally
looked at many eyes and i was like oh
boy i'm a little too old for this
body's a little broken down for chemo
and i finally just said all right
all right i i just i had enough i wanted
to go home just work the 17-hour shift
as a stagehand
and i was so taken back i was so
insulted i'm saying you know i spent my
life protecting this city
and now i'm getting attacked like for
nothing and i just i gave up and i maybe
i should have given it a little more
time but
it's um
i don't know it's turned into an angry
place it's turned into
i think there's a lot of people that
aren't getting the
resources they need in a sense there's a
lot of mental illness there's a lot of
homelessness there's a lot of violent
people just roaming around the streets
and it's not good it's not safe
and and tourists are not
going to come back
even just leading up to the covet i had
some tourists say to me i won't be back
and now i can only imagine that it's
just gotten exponentially worse but
i hope there's a chance it'll swing back
because it is it's the gateway to the
world i mean my grandfather came
you know from
denmark he landed in ellis island in the
20s
you know american success story 25 bucks
in his pocket didn't speak the language
had a sponsor family in bay ridge
brooklyn
and he made it you know he ended up
dying owning a bakery at one point and
then an apartment building
and he did pretty well for himself for
an immigrant who was poor
and my mom my irish mother landed in the
same neighborhood bay ridge brooklyn uh
16 years old
worked as a cashier 50 60 hours a week
in the supermarket and finished school
at night
married my father to firemen
and uh
you know lived the american dream and it
was all it was all from new york and my
my father's mom was from irish
immigrants
and uh they all landed in ellis island
well my mom didn't because it was closed
at that point but
it's it's there's people breaking down
the doors to come to this country right
there there there's no one breaking down
the doors to leave
and this is this is a problem i have
with people that aren't grateful for
being here
and this again it's not political just
straight down the ball straight down the
middle fastball
if you don't like it here i'll show you
the door i'll get you the plane ticket
i mean would you want to live back in
russia compared to here would you you
might because of family ties but i mean
if you had no ties to russia or would
you want to go to china right now and
possibly end up in a labor camp or right
there's people busting down the doors to
get to this place it's not perfect it's
got its flaws it's got its blemishes
you know um
but it's a damn great place it's the
best country in the world yeah and some
of it so first of all i have hope for
new york i i think that culture is very
difficult to kill i think it will
persevere
and i think ultimately the same story
with new york as with the rest of the
united states
um it has to do with leaders and yes i'm
always hopeful that great leaders will
emerge i agree and and the the kind of
leadership we see
now and the kind of conversations we
have now i think it has to do with um
prosperity and comfort
and in the face of hardship i think
great leaders will emerge and yeah um
yeah i i just think ultimately in the
long arc of history
well leaders shouldn't become rich they
shouldn't become rich in the process
right you shouldn't go into political
office
as a you know an alleged you know
lunch box kind of guy and then come out
uh you know eating at the best
steakhouse in the world i mean
that that's the problem of politics
right my irish grandmother god wrestler
used to say
oh those politicians they're all like
dirty diapers they're full of shit and
they stink
and it's true i don't give a crap what
party they're in yeah greed in power we
had to beg these guys beg them
for federal legislation to cover our
medical bills right there's a gentleman
john feel from the feel good foundation
this guy is a lion of a man a general
but with a soft big great heart
and john
john is a former construction worker who
came to the
911 site the day after
he was one of those guys cutting the
steel with torches and craning it out of
there one of those hard hats that just
that never got
the credit
and the praise that that we did as
responders and and i don't mean it as a
knock to responders right i mean we lost
37 port authority police officers 23
nypd officers
about a dozen
emergency medical technicians and
paramedics
three court officers from new york state
courts and two federal agents
and i hope and 343 new york city
firefighters we lost a ton of responders
but the recovery workers
thankfully weren't killed in that
process but
there's hundreds of them now who are
dead from illnesses because they came
down to recover our people and the
civilians and the poor lost souls
that were killed at work that day
and john
literally almost lost his foot
in a construction accident at the site
an 8 000 pound
i-beam
tore off half of his foot
ended up with massive sepsis six months
in the hospital hundreds of thousand
dollars in medical bills
and then no one wanted to pay him
so here's a guy who's gonna lose his
house lose his life lose everything
and now the never forget it started
quick right
and he went on a mission
formed his feel-good foundation his last
name is phil f-e-a-l fieldwood
foundation and
this man
literally went to washington dc with his
army as he called it
and i was honored and blessed to be with
him a couple only a couple times i wish
i had
dedicated some more time to it
and what it was with john is he set out
on a mission to get and initially what
he did is he got funding to take care of
responders who were in that limbo who
couldn't get their medical bills paid
who couldn't make their mortgages who
couldn't make their car payments who
couldn't make their child care payments
and john just took it upon his own to
get donations and take care of you while
you were suffering right i got a call
when i got out of hospital you okay you
need anything i said who is this it's
john phil
i said aren't you that constructor yeah
you need anything
i'm pretty good right now i i appreciate
it phone ring again a few weeks later
hey it's not feel you need anything i'm
like this guy's incredible but there's
people who needed stuff and he was
getting it done yeah and he with his
army
had to chase these politicians through
the halls of congress
to get funding to cover the medical
bills i was getting sued for 125 000 my
month stay in the cancer ward
and
i couldn't believe it i said well wait a
minute i have insurance they're like oh
no no this is this is terrorism related
we don't cover that
so usually then workers comp will cover
your on-duty injury or illness oh no no
leukemia is not covered under that we
don't cover that so then the ping-pong
game starts and i'm literally have
people showing up taking pictures of my
kids in front of the house and i went
and grabbed the guy in one day by the
caller i said who the hell are you sort
of a private investigator they were
putting a lien on this property due to a
non-payment of a bill i said okay i
understand do your job let me bring my
kids inside take all the pictures you
want don't step on my front lawn
and i went in a house
i closed my room
my door my my door my room and i cried i
said i can't believe this i spent my
entire adult life
trying to help people
give of myself and i can't even get my
medical bill paid
well john field got my medical bill paid
he finally got these politicians with
his team
firefighter ray pfeiffer who has since
died fought
with terminal cancer for nine years in a
wheelchair
literally at the end came out of hospice
to go
finalize
getting us this coverage detective luis
alvarez who testified
days before he died in front of congress
and
a bunch of other guys that were really
really sick and we had to shame these
people into signing on and luckily we
had jon stewart come on and literally
just just hound these guys and and shame
them and embarrass them
and what it all stemmed from was in 2006
the first
of death that was determined to be
linked to 9 11 there was others but the
first one that was officially linked
was a new york city police detective who
initially the city said he died of
advanced lung disease his lungs were
protruding out of his body
and he was on painkillers and it was so
bad at the end that the doctors said
just grind them up snort them drink it
whatever you need to do to get instant
relief
so when they found the talcum from the
pill lining in his lungs they said oh no
this is opiate abuse you didn't he
didn't die of lung disease so they said
and the mayor was quoted as saying he is
not a hero
well shame on you mr mayor he was a hero
and his father who was a retired police
chief
married up with the feelgood foundation
and jon stewart
and ray pfeiffer
detective alvarez
and they got us all covered
but it took so long lexi was so
heartbreaking these people who were
lining up three deep politicians three
deep to catch a picture with a responder
so they can tweet
never forget and hashtag look at me and
hey how am i doing all that bullcrap but
they didn't know they were nowhere to be
freaking found i phys i i literally
witnessed them hiding in cloak rooms
running down hallways away from us those
freaking cowards that's cowardice
can i just linger on the jon stewart
thing the comedian actor jon stewart
uh his testimony before congress over
the benefits for 9 11 first responders
i mean there's a lot of important human
beings in this story but he has a big
voice yes and he spoke from the heart
what do you make of that testimony
oh it was heartfelt i mean
he spoke look i mean john john was a
you know a polarizing guy right there's
certain things like over the years he he
was cutting edge and i might not have
agreed with all of his oh yeah you know
well you know some stuff i'm not right
you know like we all but but i tell you
i found him as funny i i enjoyed his
humor
i would love the two you'd have a
conversation no but but again i love a
guy where you can have you can have a
difference in opinions that's the
beautiful thing about the firehouse
kitchen i mean it could get raucous and
la and now i don't know it's a little
different situation but
i mean back in the day
some funny stuff but yeah john john
literally just took his talents
you would think he was speaking from the
heart of a fireman or a cop or a soldier
or a marine or you know someone who was
there
but i think he
especially got to know ray so well and
ray had this stack of
mass cards from you know the funeral
cards they give out
it looks like you know a larger business
card that's laminated
and ray had a stack of them he would
carry around i think it was close to 100
cards
and john saw it he said what's that
he says these are my cards he said for
what he says for my brother's funerals
he was like oh my god you've been to
that many funerals
he goes yeah this this is just the ones
i made like like you know
and john i think was was just stunned
and like john actually had that stack of
cards after after ray passed and like
said look this look at these look
there's gonna be more of these cards we
have one guy a week or a girl one one
responder or or recovery worker or
someone who actually resided down there
there's more than one a week dying
it's one a day dying
on average and on average two people are
diagnosed with a 911 cancer or
disease right now this the worst part is
there's autoimmune diseases flying off
the graph
and they're not covered under the
legislation
by the grace of god my cancer is covered
if my if my cancer comes back i mean i'm
in remission it's technically incurable
but i'm i've been blessed i'm staying
ahead of this stuff going on 10 years
but if it comes back with a vengeance
tomorrow and takes me
you know at least my my wife will get my
pension and be able to live her life
without fear
but my friends who are suffering from
these advanced autoimmunes their wives
get nothing their pension dies with them
and
we're hoping that that you know john and
his army can can
shame these politicians once again
to have the kindness and decency to
cover these autoimmunes
you know they're throwing a lot of money
around at a lot of things lately and
this is one that they won't and and
these are lives in the balance who
really need it and john had this strong
line
they did their jobs
do yours
talking to the politicians yeah
and it it
it's a strong wake-up call that
um it's not about the twitter or the
social media or all that kind of stuff
it's you have a job to do and you have
to
it's that compassion
uh implemented in form of money of
helping people oh yeah that were there
for you when you needed help well we had
a guy i mean i might get audited out of
this one but i hope not but
we had a congressman from out west i
won't say where but
he prided himself on saying he was a
retired cop yeah busy cop
22 years yeah he said no on the
legislation
i witnessed a cop who was dying get out
of his wheelchair and said hey brother
i got a half a million dollars in
medical bills and i'm a short timer i
got a few months to live who the f is
gonna pay him do the right thing you say
you're a cop you show me you're a cop
and you sign that paper
and the guy started tearing up the
congressman and he signed it but he had
to be freaking shamed and you know what
he said well this doesn't really
confront me this is pork as far as my
district's concerned he goes oh yeah do
you know there's 10 guys from your
district who came across the country to
help us that are also dying he had no
idea yeah he had no idea and that's the
sad part about alex there's there's
it's a failure in leadership
you know
i mean i think some people would vote
for mickey mouse just because if he ran
i mean no offense against mickey mouse i
like him he's a good guy right i mean
but like like allegedly allegedly
supposedly yeah yeah you know but
seriously like
i i he i look at i look at some of the
leadership sometimes and go
we're in trouble and also you lose uh i
think the way government is structured
is
um people who are senators or um
people
who are in congress they
they start playing a game between each
other and they lose track of the
connection to the to the to the people
to the basic humanity so you forget even
when you think of yourself as a cop
uh you forget what are like the cops
and uh the other people
uh servicing the community are actually
experiencing all the the troubles
they're going through and how they can
actually be helped because you lose
touch that because you're not actually
living you're not talking to them you're
not living among them and i mean that's
a natural part of the system but i think
that's why character and great
leadership is important is you say
you leave the game of congress and you
go back to the people
i mean that's what
the the country you know it's like the
george washington ideal is you're not
playing a game of power
you ultimately see yourself as somebody
who's servicing this country service in
the community and that requires talking
to the people
in their time of hardship well you have
some people some people serving in in
congressional districts don't even live
in that district yeah i mean so how are
they going to empathize they're not even
driving through there on a daily basis
and and you know
again if when
anything
becomes lucrative from a financial
standpoint
it blurries people's vision
you you have to take the potential of
becoming rich out of
politics politics is public service
police and fire and ems are public
service
but cops and firemen and medics don't
walk out
of their career
with
gazillion dollar contracts with this
company and that company on that board
of directors and this board of directors
they walk out with a pension and that's
it
and and you have to wonder the
intentions of people getting into
politics are they truly going into to
help to
help the human condition or are they
trying to help their own damn condition
with their wallet in their pocketbook
and i try to lean toward the latter
lately you know with what i'm seeing
well some of them are the good ones and
that's our job as a society to elevate
the good ones that's
that's it and and then uh and that has
to do with the ideals that we elevate
there are a number of conspiracy
theories around the events of 9 11. do
any of these hold true to you
or do they just frustrate you
even angry you
i've been asked this
by a few different people in my life
this is my take on it right you're a man
of science and a man of education so you
allegedly allegedly but yes but you you
know you're a very very intelligent man
and
what i believe took place is this
structural steel
will fail
at
a sustained temperature of 1500 degrees
fahrenheit and i don't know exactly how
long that would have to be sustained
but that's the temp right
diesel fuel kerosene fuel kerosene based
jet fuel which
was the ignition there
burns at 2200 degrees fahrenheit
so
that
continued burning of that diesel that
jet fuel but kerosene based you know
it's all kind of similar
exceeded the temperature needed for that
steel in the structural members of the
trade center to fail
in my heart of hearts i would hate to
ever think
that somebody
affiliated with our government with some
sort of agenda
would perpetrate that crime and that
tragic just
destruction of humanity and property
for some other form of gain
those planes rammed into those buildings
450 miles an hour
they were loaded with thousands and
thousands of gallons of jet fuel
number seven trade center had the backup
for the emergency management system for
the city
and it was an emergency generator in
that complex which had a 25 000 gallon
tank of diesel fuel to continually run
for weeks to keep the
911 system the backup system going in
the case of a catastrophic event
well that tank in seven heated up
from the fire that was already going on
from the aircraft debris coming into the
building so once that diesel
became ignited in seven
now
you had
enough temperature to fail that steel in
that building
so
i would like to truly believe what i've
learned from the minimal fire science
knowledge i have from my career
that it was just a matter of
it burned too long it burned too hot and
it failed
i mean if you look at the way it came
down
it came down as it was designed to
in the god forbid event that it was to
collapse it it came down pancaking upon
itself
if it had failed horizontally and just
sprayed out side to side
those buildings would have dropped for a
quarter half a mile up to canal street
but you know lex fighting and the
destruction that could have resulted in
oh my gosh it could have been so much
worse i mean it you would have taken out
every building you know
from that
point all the way up
but in my heart i'd like to just believe
that it was just a fire that burned too
long or too hot you know these these
planes caused structural damage upon
impact in both buildings
and it was just a matter of time and
then you think about it you add all the
plastics all the carpeting
all of the stuff that was burning on
those floors you add that to that fire
load
i think it just had enough to collapse
it
and you were in uh building seven for
part of that day i was just after it
came down as well we were excited and we
weren't in it or next to it when it
actually did come down
but moments after we were there and
again i i would like to believe that it
just
it was just that that fuel was going
and
it just took its physics took its course
in it and it failed
so physics and science aside it's hard
uh it's both i would like to believe and
it's hard to imagine that anybody would
be so evil as to orchestrate parts of
this
from within the united states government
that's very difficult for me to imagine
yeah you know what though lex there's
people
and i and i won't elaborate i won't get
into it any any
any controversial subjects but what have
you
there's some people that don't have any
problem at all perpetrating any level of
evil
people like you and i who have hearts
and we have depth of soul
we couldn't imagine it but there's other
people wouldn't even be a second thought
i mean i've seen some horrific incidents
in my career
that i go home shaking my head at night
going
human beings are just they're not wired
right
you know i mean i look at animals i love
animals i love dogs especially right and
i and i i see this dog park when
i uh i train to fly airplanes now and
something i wanted to do
and there's a dog park across from the
airport and there's 60 dogs and there's
bones flying up in the air and chewed
toys and sticks and they're running
around having a time of their life right
and they're all getting along
and they're not hurting each other
they're not violating each other they're
they're not
canceling each other that and and i'm
going we really need to learn from these
dogs like right and like
i just yeah i mean sometimes it sounds
crazy but i think they're better they're
a better species than people
unless they're rabid they don't hurt on
purpose they don't you know they don't
cut you off in traffic and throw you the
middle finger and you know just these
they just don't do these
these acts of
humanity that sometimes are so vicious
why do you think these conspiracy
theories of which there's a lot
uh take hold
why why do you think so many people
believe some version of different
conspiracy theories around 9 11.
well you know like many things in life
it leaves me a little conflicted i i
have to say this i am at the point now i
don't know who to believe anymore
so
i could see that
lending a hand to someone who's already
a doubter going oh yeah look that
exactly that's what they're doing right
i mean you know look at this whole virus
like
who do you believe like where'd it come
from uh you know like and and and you
know if you plant that seed
it's like that little campfire we're
talking about earlier right you just
toss a little gas into those embers you
got a fire now i also think there's a
lot of people with a hell of a lot of
extra time on their hands right and
they're really bored you know the two
are combined alex yeah man you know like
look i was a three job charlie right you
know one guy used to say to me you know
anything but but home i go no i i got
deadlines responsibilities you know like
that's that's what it comes down to is
like
i mean look we all we all have our
hobbies and things we like and you know
little nuances and that's what makes us
special we're unique every person is a
unique being but
i also think some people just just they
want to cling to something
like we all want to feel accepted and
belong to something so
all of a sudden you you group up with
these people and you all believe this
fervently like yeah yeah you know they
did it they took it down they took it
down and and now you start going
yeah and i think what happens is when
you're in company of people and you
start telling each other the same thing
often you freaking believe it i mean if
you keep telling me i got a great head
of hair i'm gonna go you know what i do
but no i don't i mean right i got that
waving bye bye dude but like but you
know i think when you start hearing
something often you stop believing it
but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna doubt
their intelligence i'm not going to
doubt their intentions but
i just don't see it as being plausible i
just i
it would be too
too big of an operation to to
successfully happen i you know i mean
look there's other things that
you know i i won't say it on the
interview there but like i have my
doubts with certain things uh
you know
that that
i mean conspiracy theories take hold for
a reason because some of them are true
no yeah the hard thing is just to know
which ones well when you don't have
facts right
you don't know who to trust sometimes
when you don't have facts when you don't
have figures and you don't have science
it's hard to take someone's word on it
you know i had a conversation with
someone a while back right and the guy
is like
just just dedicated atheists and he
thinks i'm an idiot for believing in god
and he's like yo you're one of those
jerks who believes in creation and i
said well i i do
well what about the big bang theory that
he's going on this diatribe about the
science and the gases and the chemistry
and i'm going dude i barely got through
high school chemistry slow down
and he went on a tangent and also when i
stopped i went
uh
who
who created the gas and the molecules
and the stuff you're talking about in
the collisions
and he was furious and stalled off
and i got him and again i had no facts i
had no figure he didn't either but but
i stumped him
but sometimes when you can't show some
people need to see something yeah
tangible they need to see it in their
hand to believe it
and that's that's the real hard thing
about faith
i see it in action
people restore my faith
and then i say to myself well there
can't be that many dummies in this world
if there's so many billions of us
believing in this higher power that's
higher right i mean
and and you said that you said earlier
like you you believe most people are
good and i do too
the bad outshine the good because the
bad get the press
right
if it bleeds it leads that's just you
know like think about it how many more
damn zombie apocalypse movies can we
make right i didn't even know there was
that many zombies yeah and it just seems
like every other show is just guys like
you know bashing each other's heads in
with bats with nails in it and it's like
after a while it's like all right gosh
you got to get a new boogie man here you
know right like but seriously like
but meanwhile human civilization is
getting better and better we just like
making hollywood movies that just we're
getting better and better but we're
treating each other worse and worse you
would think with all this technology and
all the knowledge and all the it's like
what the hell is going on sometimes like
i really want to see the good
and i think maybe maybe the level of bad
that we're seeing was always existing
it's just now everything is
instantaneous news and flashes and
tweets and this and this like like you
know
well with the technology we have it's
also come to the light so you you get to
see all these fights it almost i think
it's step one of uh dealing with the
problem is revealing it in its full
beautiful light oh yeah
how much of a bickering species 50 years
ago a guy like me who loves to talk how
the hell would i have gotten an
opportunity to have someone listen to me
and have it right i love this right and
i think it's cool but like but you
didn't have that arena you didn't have
all these things my grandfather nells
god rest him he died in 1979. i mean
that dude didn't even want to have a
checking account he would walk to each
store each the phone company the gas
company this company and and pay the
bill in person he didn't trust the bank
and it was like he he now atms this that
he would be overwhelmed he'd be just
like i mean i love my dad but to watch
him on his ipad is comical right he's he
calls my niece's boyfriend who's a tech
guy matt matt if you listen he's the
greatest he'll have this poor guy in a
phone for like hours like the second
you'll walk in to see my father my kids
hey uh do me a favor you fucking
straighten out this pant and and then
and it's it's comical because i'm
looking at my dad i'm going
he was born
when hitler started world war ii yeah
wow and i'm going he's seen all of that
oh my wife's grandmother was born in
1900 czechoslovakia and she died in 1998
i'm going
holy the stuff she saw in the span of
her life
just it's just incredible but but what
troubles me sometimes is with all of
these advances and all these devices
this is what i say to my kids
look up
from the phone and look up
right because we don't talk anymore i i
saw a girl
literally
and i shouldn't say girl guy whatever i
saw a person
literally just about walk into an open
manhole cover texting
and i'm going that's scary because
your your awareness is is gone and and
it's i've been at restaurants
with you know groups of people
and they're texting and they're texting
each other just sitting on the other
side of the table i'm like
just put the freaking thing down and
have a conversation and that's the thing
we've lost the art of conversation you
know like like
you know my wife runs she's just running
jokes there's a lot going on up there
and i'm like yeah because i i really i'm
inquisitive i'm excited about life i
love to meet people i love to learn i
love and the only way you can do that is
to have a conversation the hilarious
thing about this so you're obviously
very charismatic you got great stories
you're a great human being and you're
talking to a guy who spent most of his
life behind a computer hiding from
people no no and i i don't know but
we're like trying to bridge this right
but i don't mean that as a rip but you
know i would never know that really i
would never know that because you're
very engaging you're very like i would
not know like you don't have any
impediments to your
social skills your personal and and
that's
and again i don't mean it as a knock to
you and these youtubers no but this is
me trying to look up from the smartphone
is having these conversations talking to
people i think it's it's important i
mean
some of it could be it's always hard to
know some of it could be just you and i
being old school like because uh you
grew up before the internet maybe there
is joy and deep human connection to be
discovered inside the smartphone we
don't know it doesn't seem that way yeah
because the smartphone's so new maybe we
just haven't figured out those
uh those things because there's a
globalizing aspect there's a opportunity
for you to connect with people from
across the world oh yeah in ways that uh
i have cousins in ireland and england
yeah i love it i get a facetime or
whatsapp and it's like holy crap that
they're you know three four thousand
miles away and i'm having a conversation
now i used to send my grandma in ireland
a letter i i adored her she passed when
i was was 10.
and uh no i'm sorry i was 11. and uh
i sent her a letter
emailed and and i'd wait and i wait and
about two weeks later
this this airmail letter would come back
and she called me master nils william
jorgensen and i would be so excited to
open up that letter and written just
like and like like and then i'd write
her another one and i just couldn't wait
for letters from granny yeah and now
it's like
you know
that's kind of faded away yeah i still
write letters by the way handwritten i
do too
the way the way this all came about was
i i
i wrote a letter to someone to say thank
you for cancer research
i'm blessed to be alive
my chances
that's a good starting point for any
story i'm blessed to be alive and my
cancer was one that if i got it 15 years
prior to 19
excuse me 2011 i was a dead man
right 15 20 years before there was no
drug to treat i was gone going home to
see him
so there's this wonderful gentleman that
donated hundreds of millions of dollars
to cancer research
mr david koch he since god rest his soul
passed away
and he's a controversial guy big time
business titan
and and you know there was the press was
just brutalizing him one day over some
something to do with his politics
now
i'm a union guy
um proudly served in union still in a
union you know and and he was not you
know most business guys don't like
unions right but you know most guys like
me don't like working for three dollars
an hour so we like our unions right
and i reached out across the table so to
speak and i sent him a ham written
letter
to thank him to say we may not agree on
everything but i can't thank you enough
this is this regular dude out there who
is now living his life watching his kids
grow
thanks to generous people like you who
believe enough in cancer research you've
saved my life maybe i can't see his
exact dollars but people like him
and he reached back out
and his secretary said oh he'd like to
talk to you on the phone i go well he's
kind of a busy guy he wants to talk to
me he's a billionaire and he got on the
phone he was like the greatest guy in
the world
invited me up to sloan kettering to
dedicate a new cancer wing
it was like i was hanging out with my
dad yeah
and and the sweetest man just so kind so
empathy because he was a cancer survivor
but now he's got the means
to help
people who suffered his fate
to a better place
and he was so real and it was so
beautiful just to get to know say hey
you know what this guy is is a big time
guy but yeah he's just a regular human
like you and i you know i'm a guy who
went to night college and i went to the
army and i'm a blue collar kind of dude
and here's this guy who went to mit like
you and he's a wildly successful
billionaire a genius
but yet he can sit down and mix it up
with me
and know that i was truly grateful and
that to me was just like one of the
coolest
little you know relationships i've ever
had it wasn't like we were hanging out
having barbecues together but like you
know it was just i was so touched by his
decency well the basics of the like
cancer reveals
you know
it's like fundamental to the human
experiences trauma is is tragedy it's
like money who gives a shit about money
education all that is like
weird new inventions
you know life is short you suffer with
the various diseases and that is a
reminder that life is short and a
reminder of the basic human connection
and that's why you can bridge that gap
oh yeah all sparked by a handwritten
letter which just is makes for a hell of
a story and you know what lex this is
the commonality between us
a guy with three jobs two a billionaire
yeah we both had that sense of a
sledgehammer to the chest boom you have
cancer
and you can't breathe
for like 30 seconds
and then when your heart's just about to
kick off and you you take a breath and
you go i'm sorry what'd you say doc
you have cancer and it don't matter what
kind
one of my one of my best buddies bobby's
going through right now prostate and i
got
way too many of my buddies with cancer
right
my buddy hugh who became a vet since his
first cancer he was a fireman he's now
veterinarian right he diagnosed me
actually over the phone by the way
um
when they couldn't figure out what was
wrong with me well dr hugh he nailed it
to the t
and we talked
and the same thing that the dozen of my
close friends that
have cancer
the same thing we say is the fear
so mr coke and i
we shared that same sledgehammer to the
chest
and that same fear
and it didn't matter how much money he
had and how much i didn't yeah and you
know it's just like the morning of the
trade center
there was
big time brokers
who went to their demise right working
in these firms god rest them and there
was dishwashers excuse me dishwashers up
on the windows on the world restaurant
on 107th floor
making five bucks an hour
and they died together it didn't matter
it didn't matter if you had an armored
car loaded with bills you were done that
day
and that's i think where people need to
humanize each other
just because you're driving around in a
nice car and you got your own jet and
you got this and you got that
don't mean nothing when you're going
when you're in that vulnerable spot it
you could have you could have more money
you know than than the u.s reserves
federal reserve or you could have
a welfare check
you're going
i learned that in a cancer ward i had
people on my ward that died on me
i was going around as a little bit of an
ambassador because i was trying to i was
putting on a fake
i was putting on a fake like i got this
i got this i was so scared but when i
got
past that that seven days of torture
and the days leading up to it i'd go
around and try to comfort the other
cancer patients
i had this one older african-american
gentleman he couldn't talk because he
had such advanced throat cancer
he was my roommate for a little while
but then he got worse they had to put
him by himself
and you couldn't understand what he was
saying because his throat was just so
radiated from the radiation
but if you put your ear
down to him you could make out what he
was saying
and i'm not faulting the nurses for
maybe not wanting to do that right it's
it's they're busy they got a ton going
on they can't spend you know
so if he was in need i'd put my ear down
and i find out and i go get it for him
so when they moved me down the hall
they asked me to come down with my iv
tower he needed me
and uh
i knew it was bad because he just his
look was was gone
i said sir what do you need
and he whispered
call my sister i'm going
he had only one survivor in his whole
life
and she was in north carolina and he
wanted her to know she couldn't get up
she was elderly
and i got the nurse
and i got on the phone i called her
sister and i said bam
i i explained who i was
and i said he
he can't really
verbalize too well right now but he
wants to say he loves you
and i put the phone down
and he told her he loved her and he said
i'm going home
and
and that was it and i hung the phone up
and i i just said ma'am i'm so sorry i
said you know they'll notify you and
and i stayed with him for a while
holding his hand and then you know they
wanted him to rest and then i left and
then
i got the tap an hour later and they
said we're sorry he's gone
and then there was another girl and she
was a young
young girl from
one of the areas i worked young
african-american girl where i used to
respond but i didn't know her but i knew
her neighborhood and uh
she had what i had but they weren't sure
which one you know leukemia is there's
an elusive beast there's 49 of them
right and each one of them is like
they got their own little nuances his
own specific treatments so if they don't
know what you have they don't know what
to do for you
and she refused to let him drill into
her hip to take the marrow because it's
vicious it hurts so much it's like
someone's born into your hip with a wood
drill and and
it's no joke
and they asked me to try to convince her
to let her
let them do that or she was going to die
because if they couldn't figure it out
it was advancing quickly she was
so i i talked to her and she said i
can't i can't i'm too scared
i said but are you more scared to die
and she said i am i said okay
i'll stay with you i'll hold your hand
you squeeze it as hard as you want
i said if if you want they'll give you
like a towel or something to bite on
whatever i said but you get that pain
out but you need to do this
so you can get saved
and she said okay and they came in and
they this huge thick needle they just
bore it into you and she's screaming for
her life and she's
squeezing my fingers so hard and so hard
and i said it's okay honey you keep
going you keep going we got it it's just
10 more seconds 10 more seconds
they got it
they figured out her treatment and they
got her onto her road to recovery and
then
i spent a long time
asking god
why why do i have cancer
but then i stopped and i went wait a
minute i didn't die that day with my
friends
shame on me for asking them why i have
cancer i 10 years after 9 11
with such great years
and i got to watch my little girl being
born when john never got to see his son
so it was all gravy after that
and i said but now i know why i have my
cancer
because i can
i can empathize with people who have it
and i can try to be their voice
when they can't talk
be their shield
to try to take that pain
because i can understand i can walk
their walk
and now i thank god for my cancer
because it's made me a better human
being it's made me i'm not gonna lie i
brought a lot of anger for a while and
my family suffered it but i really
tried to go past that and heal and and
part of living out in the country it's
very very healing for the mind and the
soul
but
i now thank god for the cancer because
it humbled me i didn't really need
humbling i wasn't i wasn't a
arrogant puffed up type of person at all
but
you know maybe i was running away at
myself a little bit working on a tv show
i'm fine man 30 at the time while i was
42 and got sick you know life was
cruising man it was great
and then all of a sudden it was like
a blowout on the highway in the middle
of the night and you're just veering off
towards the guardrail yeah
you remembered uh you're reminded that
you're mortal and that's oh yeah
ultimately a connection to all the rest
of us oh yeah it's it's a good thing
though when you you know because that's
the problem i think there's a lot of
people running around and thinking
they're immortal
right you know when you look at it lex
right you look at the heartache in a lot
of segments of people
and any time like someone that's got
fame and wealth and success
and and and they they die tragically a
lot of times it's from
substance abuse or just you know just
just some
just some horrible death
and i used to say to myself
how the hell would someone with that
much money and that much fame and this
freaking mansion and you know i oh i
love cars my son and i were just big car
heads you know and i'm like you know
this guy's got a collection of cars and
this
and he overdosed
because he was sad and i'm going how the
frigger you said but then i stop and i
go
okay because maybe he doesn't have any
idea who loves him
he's got a lot of people clinging on to
him because of his success
and and he just
he can't fill that void you know and and
then they fill the void with something
destructive and i'm not i'm not bashing
people that have substance abuse
problems or alcohol problems i don't
mean it that way but what i mean is
it's just said that that
their level of despair is so high on the
surface they look like they just got
everything going on it's all great right
so humans the guys dealing with the same
yeah exactly because they want love
right they want love
and they and they can't
they can't really find it like well
first of all that's true for all of us i
think we're deeply lonely and looking
for love when we find it that's what
friendship is that's right absolutely
and then that's true for whether you're
super rich yeah or super poor it's all
the same journey my dad said all times
kid you're going to end up working with
hundreds of guys and you know you'll
love a lot of them but he says when you
when it's all said and done and you're
all like me and if you still got two or
three of them that you talk to and you
love
and i tell you what i mean i i
i have thanked the lord more than two or
three of them and i i have my six i call
it my six it's six guys that are gonna
carry my call from when i'm gone right
yeah because i know this cancer is gonna
come back i i know like we get multiples
right my friend yvette just got his
second my friend mike said five of them
my other mic is two
but i'm
i wasn't
ready to accept it in 2011. it was so
much more to do it was so much i was so
scared i'm like wow who's going to take
care of my kids and who you know they
were little you know 9 11 and 14 right
it's like what the hell i have two girls
and a boy between and they're beautiful
kids they're such good good children
the adults now i mean but you know
my wife's a drill sergeant she she's
tough you know mess you know she's this
this big but like so you're the softy in
the family well
you know it's funny because my son said
to me my son's 21 now he's a good kid
you know
and uh he says to me
back when he's like 12 he goes dad
i don't want you to be offended but i'm
really scared of mom i'm not really that
scared of you and you know like i i
cracked up because it's true like she's
got a step she's got to stand on like a
milk crate to reach him because you know
she's tiny and he's tall but it's true
but you know but she was hard but fair
but loved that see this is the thing
you take any
child
anywhere
from any background
if you love them you nurture them you
teach them and you guide them you have a
successful adult
and see that's the problem in our
society it's not judgmental i'm not
judging anyone
but we need to try harder
as parents
as as siblings as friends
but
especially when when we're blessed with
a child it's like
you you got to put that child first it's
like being a military person or
responder it's not about you anymore now
it's the team
so that little child
is is now the team and you know your
wife or your
significant other you know
like it's not about you anymore and see
that's the problem is people have a hard
time
not making it about them
you know like now it's really weird my
kids are 19 21 and 24 and they hardly
want to hang with me because they're
busy in their life we love each other
they're probably tired of hearing me go
on and you know preach and whatever but
like but but they're adults we we we did
pretty much the crux of what we had to
do to to put them into adulthood
and i look back and i was like wow i
wish i didn't work so much and i wish
but then i say no but it was okay my
wife stayed home
good lessons good you know just just
ultimately like you said it's love it is
it's the common that love is
the most important ingredient on this
earth and now and that's that's the
problem what's going on right now like
take politics out of it right take
polarizing each other against each other
take all that crap out of it and just
airdrop a bunch of love
right right like
like i when i worked on rescue me right
yeah i love those people so much they
were such great we had such a great crew
and they worked so hard you're a
celebrity no no no not at all if i was i
it didn't really it didn't really work
out so good i went on to being a stage
hand that way no
i'm not pretty but uh
they don't want old guys waving waving
by by hairdos but uh but but it was
funny we the crew we became really tight
we had like shoot like 80 90 people on
us on a set right
and you know
the first few episodes everybody's
trying to feel each other out because
you know you work with different crews
different people
and this is going back starting in 2004
it was a different time
and
i love to hug people
because to me a hug
is a true expression of love and caring
you may not know a person a long time
but you say i care about you with a hug
can i can i do it's a tiny tangent this
is in the midst of kovid when i was in
boston and it was you know masks like
triple masks
and when i went to see joe here when
he's trying to convince me to move to
austin joe rogan yeah yeah and then well
the first time i see him he's like ah
you motherfucker big ass hug yeah and
people but people probably looked
horrified you know it was just hugging
it was just him oh okay but if you're
doing in public now it's like it's like
you committed it but that expression
because i was so you forget
how oh yeah how powerful that is oh i
got some of my buddies i give them a
huge
huge hug and a big sloppy kiss on their
cheek and i mean i cuz i love them these
are my brothers you know but on this set
i swear to god it got to the point
and i'm not trying to whatever but there
was people that would come up to me for
the daily hug yeah and i said
what are you doing and i said come on
bring it in and i give him the hug and
they said you don't understand it just
makes me feel so good yeah it makes me
feel like you give a crap about me i
really do i said but it touched my heart
that people were seeking me out to get
that hug to start the day yeah and i
remember there was a guy in manhattan he
was selling hugs for like 50 cents and i
think he got arrested right it was just
before covered but like i wouldn't sell
them if but now i'm giving them away
well now i got leukemia i'd be kind of
concerned of getting the covert i mean
yeah but but like i i really think we
need that we need hugging booths like in
each city or each town like because
there's so many people that just want to
know someone gives a shit about them and
that's the problem it's like
like you know
that's what i love about small little
towns like where i am now in tennessee
and i'm not knocking new york i'm not
knocking big towns but i guess it's
easier to do in a smaller area because
it's just not this massive humanity
but they'll stop and check on you like
you're out in the road and you know like
i'm cutting and cleaning or whatever
occasionally i'll roll a lawnmower or a
tractor into a ditch because i'm you
know not a farmer too good but uh
it's easier to drive a fire truck in new
york but they literally oh i was worried
i haven't seen you and i'm like no no
i'm okay but they literally like check
on you they're worried about you and i'm
going these people hardly know me but
yet they're so
caring and
and that's the problem like this is what
i love about my life i spent a lot of
time as especially as a young boy and a
lot of time in ireland at my grandma's
farm
and my mom comes from this tiny tiny
little village she's out in the middle
of nowhere and and
the childhood home she grew up and still
my aunt and uncle live in and still
i just love it there so much because
everyone waves tennessee's similar they
wave
driving by and like who the hell is that
i just wave you know but my cousin will
point it out i got your third cousin's
second removed by you know johnny like
holy shoot i'm related to everyone here
right but like everyone stops to say
hello and how are you
and i have a problem doing that because
my wife goes
people think you're crazy why are you
talking to everybody i said
like i'll literally stop someone and say
how's your day going like i mean i'll
randomly on the sidewalk then it looks a
little nuts but like if i'm buying a cup
of coffee oh that happens here in austin
all the time yeah that's why i love it
here on the sidewalk randomly yeah no
it's just something i think they they'll
say hi to me i thought they recognized
me or something i don't give a shit who
you are they're just being nice
i was on the road uh coming back driving
from my family up north down to
tennessee last week
i stopped in a bathroom
and
it just it was close the girl was was
cleaning it whatever she's working so
hard whatever she goes search because if
you go down the hall there's a family
restroom feel free to use it you know
she didn't have to do that and i went
down and i i'm old
you need a bathroom you need a bathroom
right
and i walked back out
and i said ma'am i said i want to thank
you for being here today i said bathroom
was immaculate it was it was like my
army bathroom
in the barracks it was
spotless right
and i gave it ten dollars i said i'd
really like you to buy lunch with me
today i said you really didn't have to
do me that favor she goes no sir i said
no no i said i want and it was like i
gave her a million bucks
and i say to my wife now
i've been praying to be a billionaire
because that's a sin i said no no you
don't understand right she goes oh you
missed me you know mister you know i
said no no i said you're getting it
wrong i said i'm praying
to be like a multi-gazillionaire because
i want to give all away
we used to have a sign in ladder 114
until some other rival truck company
stole it right because that's what we do
you know they get sent to cover your
district when you're out of fire and now
your stuff's missing yeah and the
old-timers had a sign that says i am
content
because if you got to ladder 114
that was considered such a great place
such a great assignment such great guys
you had to be vetted to get there you
couldn't just randomly go and it was a
little exclusionary but they wanted good
guys
and i said to myself that's where i am
in life right now i am content
but
i'm restless because i want to really do
a lot more good it's like this podcast
i want to make sure that it's not
forgotten
and i want to make sure that these
charities that are really really helping
people get recognized but i'd like to
take it a step further right a friend of
mine runs this
foundation for young folks
suffering mental illness
and in crisis
it's for
someone that we love dearly and uh
he's on a mission now to get
therapy dogs
for really really
mentally wounded warriors right these
these a lot of these young soldiers
are having a really hard time and now
they could be out a while they may have
come back in country two three years ago
now it's just starting to set in
and there's a waiting list for thousands
of therapy dogs and he said
that they can't get enough of them quick
enough but he said when you see the
response the way these
veterans just light up when they get
these dogs it just changes their life
radically immediately and i said that's
it
god
i don't know how i'm going to do it
but i want to i want to be a
gazillionaire and i don't i don't want i
don't want
any picture photo ops this that i just
want to go there's a dog there's a dog
there's a dog there's a dog and then i
want to build veterans land for these
these vets who just need a nice clean
place to live so why don't we take these
old army bases and
marine bases and navy bases that have
been shut down they're just sitting
there rotting away
i was in the army in alabama
my old
fort mcclellan is three quarters vacant
it's sitting there they just did a
documentary on it it just looks like
zombieland going back to zombies so why
don't we take that and renovate it
and say the vets who are struggling
hey guys you're gonna live here
and
they take the old
army you know uh the places where they
had all the supplies or you know there's
massive buildings where you could just
retrofit it and
make light manufacturing within two
weeks give these guys jobs they live
there they work they'll take care of it
military guys they teach you how to take
care of stuff right
how the hell in this country should any
vet come back home and be homeless
because now they now have to dedicate
their lives for six seven ten twelve
years five five six deployments making
7.50 an hour and then you know they
spend seven years or they get a whopping
16 an hour right you know they they walk
out making 35 grand
and now no one gives them a job no one
gives them a chance so very quickly they
end up homeless
by no fault in their own
and
i don't know how that's even possible
the people in this country who have
given the very most
and they're struggling they're hurting
that's not fair and my whole thing is if
if i can
have this dream of succeeding so to
speak
i want to try i want to try to change it
you know
and just just so that's why i'm praying
to be a billionaire
gazillion yeah well my wife my irish
mother probably wouldn't agree either
because you're not supposed to right
well i i'm i'm the same with you uh the
more the more money you have the more
you're able to help yeah
help people you could put smiles on
people's faces
i i have to ask you
the us invaded afghanistan in october
2001 in response to terror attacks
now 20 years later we still had a
presence and abruptly withdrew all
troops
what do you think about this war across
the world
that was uh sparked by this tragedy
whenever you do something quickly
without thinking it out thinking it
through and planning
it doesn't succeed
i understand that we needed to exit
i mean how how long we're going to stay
over there and and we've lost over 7 000
of our young souls
over there
for sometimes people i don't know if
they're grateful for it or not right i i
mean
i don't know
so there's the other element and sorry
to interrupt that's okay one is the
financial of six trillion dollars and
that money is not just money it's it's
education it's everything um
it it's money that could have gone
towards first of all the first
responders oh yeah but all the service
men and women of all kinds throughout
this country and then there's the other
side which is the over 800 000 people
who died in direct
uh result of this conflict so not just
the american side of the troops but just
people who died those humans humans yeah
and those humans
um
many of them civilians
that's spreading
hate
especially if you have leaders on the
other side who frame the death of those
civilians in certain ways that just
spreads hate throughout the world and so
you think about this
kind of um 20-year saga and think
what are the ways that money could have
spent be spent better
and what was the way that we could
spread more love in the world versus
hate and you wonder
but then the the other side
uh
what is it i'm not sure who says this
line but um
it's something like
we sleep at night because there's uh
rough men out there ready to
to fight for you
um
there is some sense in which we have to
make sure
that there's strength coupled with the
love right otherwise evil
men
um
will do evil onto the world so it's it's
a very difficult decision but then you
look at the final picture it's like what
have we gotten for the six trillion
dollars what have we gotten for this 20
years
the the thousands of americans soldiers
who died
the uh the hundreds of thousands of uh
civilians who have died
you know it's it's a
it's a troubling subject for me um i'm a
patriot i love this country
i love it so with my soul
and uh i was
just about to head over to the first
iraqi war and we went out for desert
warfare training and then it ended
i was at that time a combat medic
assigned to an armored cav unit so
basically tanks
driving around an armored personnel
carrier and when it gets hit then you
you tend to that guy try to save his
life
i didn't want to go
i may sound like a coward i did not want
to go to war
i would have went
willingly if i was sent to defend my
country i took my oath
i didn't join the military to kill
but if necessary i would
i'll use the analogy of cancer
if you have a cancer and you're aware of
its presence
and you don't annihilate those cells
and take them out quickly
it's going to spread
and it's going to kill you
those evil bastards
that flew those airplanes
one of those airplanes had a little
three-year-old child in it from ireland
where my mom's hometown
a friend of mine who since died of a
heart attack from 9 11 toxins he found
her shoe
with human remains in it
and he thought someone was messing with
us because we didn't know there was any
kids in the building he's his boss this
this there's a baby shoe and it looks
like there's something in it but but
there's no kids in the trade center i
went
the plane
it's a little girl's shoe
i can never get that shoe out of my mind
the evil bastards who perpetrated that
needed to have missiles strike and rain
down upon them and annihilate them like
a cancer that they are
what what just fascinates me is they'll
show videos of these guys flying around
and pick up trucks with 50 cows on the
back it's like well wait a minute if a
camera crew can get this footage
you think all these freaking drones and
planes and radar assisted systems can't
just go
good night you're gone so kill the
cancer
kill the cells get rid of it get rid of
it quickly
and go into remission like an undeniable
show of force that sends a message that
uh gets rid of most
of the obvious centers of um terrorism
and that no that's though because we
offline mention a discussion with jocko
and
maybe a romanticized view and mentioning
brothers in arms by dire straits and
saying we're all brothers in arms
even when it's on the opposite side of
fighting
which is more of a vision and growing up
in the soviet union you saw about world
war ii yes that it's all just kids
thrown into the
kids sent to die in all sides
but then
presenting that to jiako
who was
in iraq
he did not see
it as brothers in arms
which is there's
his basic statement is there's evil
people
and some people don't deserve the
compassion you give them a few chances
they don't take the chances they have to
go because they're spreading evil onto
the world and so it's not we're not
all of us deserve a chance
oh no but uh but the difference though
and and believe me i i jockle i am from
a way way
minor league compared to him right i
mean this man was right there in the
firing line but
i can understand his analogy because
when you think about it right those
young conscripts back in germany and
russia and you know all the countries
where they were being drafted even our
guys were being drafted and thrown into
this
they were
they were gallantly and and bravely
defending their country
now
i'm sure the the young germans felt well
hey hitler must be right
right and young russians fell hey stalin
must be right and you know the young
americans figure hey president roosevelt
must be right
so they
were romantically in a sense defending
the honor of their country of their
motherland
the difference between those so they did
have that commonality if you and i were
firing across each other from france to
germany or you know from germany to
russia
we're just these two kids who got thrown
into this we didn't freaking ask for
this right but the difference with
jocko's enemy is
no one was attacking their country over
there right
no one was taking their country over
maybe in their mind they didn't want
people trying to build their government
this and that i don't i don't know i
don't know enough about the history
there to to really elaborate
we didn't attack them
and
if a soldier attacks a soldier that's an
understood concept amongst warriors but
when a soldier attacks a civilian now
you're after a different beast
and you've written that beast off if
that makes any sense yeah and then the
the enemy i mean as jocko explains the
the enemy uh in iraq and just uh certain
parts of the middle east
is um essentially
terrorists who are
who don't value the lives of the
civilians of their own country they
don't and so it becomes like this weird
guerrilla warfare slash game of violence
that
ultimately allows them to gain more
power within their country but they
don't care if they're playing with
civilian lives as pawns if you have a
child who dies
on their on um that's a civilian in
their country that could be seen as a
positive for them because they can use
that to leverage for more and more power
within that country so when you're
fighting an enemy like that
that's a vicious that's an evil enemy
absolutely it's like snakes are
beautiful but if you go pet a rattler
you're getting bit and you're getting
dead right yeah and that's with
terrorists you got to cut the head of
the snake off and and i feel no don't
commit our guys to me there anymore but
what we need to do is go with tech
warfare if we have intel from drones or
planes or whatever it is that so and so
and so and so and so so-and-so are
driving down in that pickup or whatever
take it out
and do it again tomorrow and tomorrow
and tomorrow and maybe they'll get
they'll get the message after a while oh
shit these guys aren't messing around
instead of throwing wave after wave of
our brave warriors brave seals brave you
know special ops guys and god bless them
for what they do i couldn't do it
i could not have done it but
they have to be now sitting home going
what the hell
my friends
my body myself like they must feel so
betrayed
because they passionately went over
there to cure a cancer the cancer of
terrorism
and now the cancer is back
and i hate to say it but i think the
cancer might start running wild
we need to change our tactics up this is
just my opinion
i can't see committing all of our guys
to to a continuous
eternal war but i think what we need to
do is hit
surgically and hit hard
at that cancer that is over there we are
never going to rebuild that region
it's just it's it's thousands of years
of traditions that you're not going to
change it's just some people are
unchangeable
because they don't want to
and we have so many social problems here
in our country i think that we need to
fix first you know
i heard this spoken in the past by many
people it's like the garden theory you
have your garden with a fence around it
you tend to your garden there may be
weeds on the outside of the fence but as
long as they're not inside your garden
your garden will prosper
and i know some people don't agree to
that america first and you know the
whole
take care of our own but it's like
how are we gonna take in more people now
and and i
i have a human feeling for them
but it's almost like the lifeboat theory
how many people can we take into the
lifeboat before the lifeboat itself
sinks
as the ship is going down so if we can't
take care of our own homeless vets and
our own homeless people and
it's just going to become worse
and and it doesn't make any sense it's
just like we we need to just take a time
out and i
think switch our tactics a little bit
and
invest
into helping people here at home
absolutely absolutely
there's very few
as obvious of cases as the first
responders in 911
uh
that
one one of the things that i really want
to kind of
talk about at least a little bit
we've already talked about the amazing
project that you're doing the 24-20
podcast
um that you host
we mentioned one story stephen siller
is there other stories or maybe you can
speak out at a high level what are you
hoping to tell and all these different
stories that are weaved about um
that that connect the
the tragedies and the triumphs the
heroism of uh of that day and the and
the days and the years that followed
you know alex it seems like the common
few themes the common threads are
being selfless
helping out others even though they
might be a stranger
in acts of kindness acts of love
and it seems to all be weaved together
with faith they all seem to have some
sort of faith
i mean we have one gentleman
uh mark hannah
and he he's a coptic egyptian priest
and he's an is an immigrant to the
united states he was a port authority
building engineer
and with his crew who subsequently
passed away
the crew did
he was effectively rescuing dozens of
people on the upper floors
and his boss ordered him to assist an
elderly gentleman who was 89
down 78 flights of stairs
to get him out and in stopping on the
21st floor
he figured they would just wait there
for medics he came across
captain patty brown of ladder company 3
who told him no sir you need to evacuate
and captain brown picked his brain a
little bit about the structure because
he figured he found out he was an
engineer
and captain patty brown continued on to
defect rescues and he and his crew were
killed
but father he's now mark was able to e
effectively evacuate this gentleman
they were the two known last survivors
to come out of the tower
he now has dedicated his life to
becoming a coptic priest in st mary's
church in east brunswick new jersey
he did this for a total stranger and he
said he was inspired by his his bosses
who died
and uh hit his friends you know one of
his best friends was an italian man the
other man was a retired navy seal
hispanic man and they were part of this
melting pot
and no one looked at each other that day
what color what race what belief are you
they just said hey you're a human in
need let's go
and
you know we have uh the story about john
feel on his mission to to help the
responders
um we have a young lady mariah whose
birth father was on flight 93. she had
not even met him
and she had this premonition that
somebody in her family was killed that
day and and
her her adopted mom said no everyone's
fine well three years later when she was
legally able to find out who her dad was
she found out that her dad tom was
actually on that plane as part of the
let's roll team
and we have a gentleman robert burke
who's an actor
sweetheart of a man he's a gentleman and
he's a very very popular actor in
hollywood he's on rescue me blue bloods
gossip girls and and bobby my friend as
i call him is is a volunteer fireman now
this man doesn't need to get out of bed
at two o'clock in the morning and help
people with a stroke or a burning garage
or a burning house but he does because
he wants to because his best friend is
captain patty brown and his other best
friend was father michael judge who was
our chaplain
who was killed literally blessing the
victims at the site
had just given last rights to the
firefighter i mentioned earlier danny
who was killed
and father judge was in the lobby of the
building giving a blessing praying to
god to please stop this
and he was struck by debris and he was
killed
and
bobby goes on to elaborate about father
judge's story father judge used to walk
the streets of new york city helping
aids patients just with whatever they
needed and
he was a franciscan friar they wear
sandals and a robe they're just they
just live very humble lives of
and it's just the common denominator is
loving each other
and helping each other regardless if you
know the person or not and really when
you think about it that's how america
was made we we fought for independence
stranger fought next to stranger
and and fought tyranny and because they
wanted freedom
they wanted to be able to
live love
pray
and prosper
and they fought and died alongside of
strangers and it's sort of symbolic of
what happened that day and then
strangers from around this great country
just flocked in
by the thousands to help they didn't
know who was in that pile but they
didn't care that was another american
and what i ultimately am trying to do
involved in this beautiful project
is
spread the message of doing the right
thing
look at these examples
these brave people who didn't have to
especially to civilians they weren't
paid to run back in there and help
person after person and they had no
obligation they could have just said hey
man i'm out of here and just bolted
but they didn't
so we're just trying to say to people
let's bring back that unity and that
feeling of 9 12.
as strange as 9 12 of the day it was it
was so sad because
it we it was the first dawn of the sun
where we realized
this wasn't a dream this was real and
it's not going away
but the beauty of it was there was
thousands of people lined up along the
west side highway with signs
and american flags and they were from
every country and every race and every
creed and it didn't matter who they were
but they all shared one bond love
and they were hugging and crying
and thanking rescuers
and it
brought the morale so high
for a group of people that was so beaten
down the day before
it just started lifting them around
making us realize you know what
people really do give a crap they really
do love each other
and now i'm gonna be honest with you
i've been doubting that a little bit
lately
i still have these examples of it you
know that lady who helped me last night
with the phone and just you know i know
there's these shining little examples
but sometimes i think
i don't know are we running out of them
well i got to give you some advice
says uh two words that were repeated
often
in the days and the years after 9 11
which is never forget so
might i remind you
to never forget about 9 12.
i mean those words uh you talked about
that you know there's people
what is it college freshman maybe they
weren't even born they weren't even born
and there's people in the 20s that were
too young to remember to understand the
events of that day
but i think what that day as you're
describing means it's not about a
terrorist attack it's about
the unity that followed
it was tremendous lex i never felt so
proud i was always proud of this country
you know i remember my grandpa nelson
used to walk by i'd see a flag i hear a
star spangled banner and he'd tear up
and i'd say grant why are you crying he
said
i'm not crying is the tears of joy i
love this country so much
and i just remember like feeling that
way i felt that way 9 10
i felt that way on 9 11 but then on 9 12
i was just so proud of just the people
the way they stepped up
and i just want to try to see if that
can happen again and i hope it's it's
not necessary for us to have another
tragedy to bring that about
let's do that without the tragedy let's
just stop and say hey
you know what let me listen to what this
guy has to say
and maybe he's he probably won't
convince me but maybe i'll go well you
know i never thought of it that way
stop the finger pointing the bickering
the tantrums the fighting it's just not
necessary it gets you nowhere right it's
like you know i was two years old like
stomping around because i wanted a
cookie or a piece of candy i still
didn't get it right you know turned blue
in the face and whatever got a swat in
the rear end but it didn't get the candy
and that's what we got going on right
now everybody's just stomping around
being a baby
stop just stop we're really lucky look
country's not perfect right
you know but it's damn good
yeah it gives us all these opportunities
you know like i said no one's rushing
out the gates to get out of here they're
they're freaking i got a cousin of mine
i love him dearly my cousin tony in
ireland
and he said he's he's just a little
older than me in his 50s he said man i
should have done it
i should have went to america my dad
said go to america i went to england
and he and he went back to ireland and
you know he but he's happy in ireland
it's his home but he said wow what a
place of opportunity
and i said it's never too late he goes
yeah but you know what you get tied down
and i understand that
i thank god my mom came here at 16. i
thank god my grandpa got on that shit
but
in his 20s 27 i think you know
not a nickel to rub together
i thank god they did it because i don't
know where else i would have ended up
there's no place else i want to be
and uh i thank god that there's people
like you who rushed towards ground zero
to help other human beings and i believe
that that that human spirit is
ultimately represents the best this
country and the best of this world you
know thank you for the stories you're
telling for your perseverance and that
and uh thank you for welcoming me to the
crew
you're very welcome i'm proud and uh
i'll take you any day you look like you
can do the job just fine i love lifting
heavy things and doing dangerous things
so um it's i'm proud to be part part of
this country and part of the tally now
well you are you are definitely an
attribute to america and we're glad you
chose to come here um you know like it's
it's such a beautiful place it's a
beautiful melting pot you know if we're
all the same it would be kind of a
boring place right kind of boring it
really would but it just it's just such
a great place and i just want to say
thanks it's an honor
it's an honor to have someone to let me
sound off and and it'll be even bigger
on her if somebody will listen to me and
just say hey you know let me just try to
do something good today
and you know that's that's the tunnel to
towers mantra is let us do good
and i just
you know
i uh
i got a really big credit card with god
a big balance right i i need to pay him
back a lot and i need to pay him forward
and
i'm just gonna spend the rest of my days
trying my best i don't know where this
is gonna go what it'll lead into but
i really would like to get those dogs
for those vets and build them that
village and and just keep going on from
project to project to just say
when my final day comes
and i'm laying there and i say you know
what
i really made the most of that second
chance god gave me way back in 2011. i
hope it's 30 40 years from now but even
if it's
30 months from now or
giving it the best shot so thank you sir
i appreciate it and uh wishing you
blessings and success in your career
keep up the good fight and you're always
welcome back to texas well i love it uh
it's great food and uh a little hot a
little hot ah come on
we don't do so good irish in the sun you
know but uh well the barbecue and the
people are worth it no they are awesome
i was down here for some storm relief a
few years ago um and i tell you what i
fell in love with it the people are
great it's a great state and uh
yeah i'll definitely uh definitely be
back again for sure thanks for talking
to danielle thank you sir appreciate it
thanks for listening to this
conversation with niels jorgensen to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description
and now let me leave you some words from
franklin d roosevelt
human kindness has never weakened the
stamina or soften the fiber of a free
people
a nation does not have to be cruel
to be tough
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you