The Daily Signal - 20 Years Later, a 9/11 Firefighter Uses His Grief to Help Others

Episode Date: September 11, 2021

Twenty years ago today, Islamist terrorists struck America. Across the country and around the world, Americans were left battered and broken in the aftermath of the first significant attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. Life could never be the same after Sept. 11, 2001. But life didn't stop after that terrible day. Survivors had to go on, amid immense pain and suffering inflicted by those who would destroy our way of life. The question is how? Tim Brown is a retired New York firefighter who survived 9/11. He's also a motivational speaker who uses his grief and trauma from that day as a tool to help others work through their own issues. “For every person who was obese, pregnant, injured, disabled, there were four or five office workers, not cops or firemen, helping that person," Brown says of what he witnessed that day. "And it made me proud of humanity, because we help each other. That's what we do.” Brown, 59, joins this bonus episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss what he experienced on 9/11 and share how others can push past their own awful circumstances.     Enjoy the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, listeners, Doug Blair here. In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9-11, we're giving you a special bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. Today's guest is Tim Brown, a retired New York firefighter who risked his life on 9-11 to save innocent people trapped in the World Trade Center. He shares his story from that day, as well as he worked through the trauma and grief from that tragedy. Enjoy the show, and God bless America. Our guest today is Tim Brown, a former New York City firefighter who risked his life for other. for nearly 20 years. Tim is a survivor of 9-11 as well as a first responder to the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He now works as a motivational speaker and works to honor the

memory of those we lost on 9-11. Tim, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks a lot for having me on. So before we get into some of the heavier topics, I'd like to ask you something that's kind of like always blown me away. So when you were a firefighter, you put your life at risk every day to save other people. What inspired you to become a professional firefighter? Did you always want to be a firefighter or was this something that developed later in life? Here's the backstory on that. When I was 12, 13, 14 years old, I was a bad kid. My home life wasn't that great. My parents were getting divorced. I was lost in the middle of five siblings altogether. And it all ended. I was you know just not not a good kid I was failing in school and a house caught on fire across

a street from where I lived in Newington Connecticut and you know with my dad all the boys went running down and all the fire trucks were there and these poor neighbor's house is burning and there was a classmate of mine I was 15 he was 16 so he was the coolest one in our group because he was he had his license and he was from the other side of town and I said, Jay, what are you doing here? Like, you live all the way the other side of town. And he, like, kind of puffs his chest up and says, I'm a junior fireman. And I said, you're a what? He's like, I'm a junior fireman. What's a junior fireman? Well, come down on Wednesday nights and, you know, see if you like it. You can be a junior fireman

with me. And I, from that day on, I was hooked. and it saved my life. It gave me meaning and purpose outside of high school, outside of my family. You know, they quickly convinced me that getting stoned was not all there was to life. And from that day on, we had a little group of junior firemen who went through all this stuff together. And like four of us became New York City firefighters. Wow. What a great story to find this sense of meaning and purpose and, you know, one of these kind of twist of fates where, you know, if that fire hadn't been there and you hadn't met up with your colleague, that would have been something that just never happened. Yeah, it had gone a completely different way and it was not going in a good way before then, so.

Sure. So prior to 9-11, you had responded some other pretty intense situation. So one of the things you were involved with was the 1993 World Trade Center attack, you went and helped. helped with that, and you also helped with the 2003 station nightclub fire. Do you find that those experiences prepared you for the terrorist attack on 9-11? So definitely all those experiences prepared me for each step, you know, I'm led on this journey, not of my own volition sometimes, you know. And if you learn to learn to live. listen, you'll be guided on the journey that you're supposed to have here on earth. So each one of those built my experience and would come in then handy later on when other similar terrible. Unfortunately, that's what I'm good at is terrible things and helping people in terrible situations.

and looking at it and focusing at it through each situation through the victims and family members' eyes. And that's how I see these things. And the more we can do that as a society and have that compassion, the better we're going to be in helping each other, right? And that's humanity. We certainly have evil in the world. I mean, demonstrated very strongly on September 11, 2001. But you know what the truth is? That's a small percentage compared to the rest of humanity who, when someone trips and falls next to them, what does everybody do?

They reach down to try and help that person up. And it's a simple act of kindness and love, but that's how we are. And I saw so many examples of that. in all these different situations, but mostly on 9-11. Right. Well, now that we have 9-11 sort of as our topic, I'd like to talk to you about the day itself. Would you be able to walk us through your experience during 9-11 and sort of like what the situation was at the beginning of the tack, how that changed as the day's events unfolded,

how that happened afterwards? Can you just walk us through your experience with 9-11? The morning was brilliant, brilliant blue skies. The pilots call it severe clear because there's no humidity in there, there's no pollution in the air, and when you're flying a plane, you can kind of like see forever. So that's what the morning was like. I was in New York City firemen, but I was detailed into the mayor's office of emergency management under Mayor Giuliani, who I had become friends with.

I got promoted within that group to a supervisor of field operations. There were about 15 of us that would represent the mayor at the scene of bigger disasters and emergencies. And when you walk onto a scene like that with a jacket that says mayor's office and you have a mayor like Rudy, people pay attention and you get things done. And it worked very, very well for us. Our office was Seven World Trade Center, so we were directly across Visi Street from the North Tower. I was on the third floor of that high-rise building, eating breakfast and reading the newspapers, because we didn't have smartphones then, and just trying to catch up on all the events,

everything that was happening in the city, so I had some situational awareness. the power went out and all the people who were facing the glass that looked at the north tower all at once jumped up and started running to the exit, yelling, screaming. And I grabbed one young lady by the shoulder and I had to kind of shake her back to reality and I said what happened and she said a plane hit the tower. And that's the first I knew of it. My job was to go to the command post and assist the incident commander. I went to my car on V.C. Street and put on my helmet and boots in the mayor's office jacket

and were trained as firefighters to try to always look at three sides of a building before you go into a building that's on fire or collapsing or a plane ran into it. And I wanted to do that. So I ran up an exterior concrete staircase that later becomes known as the survivor stairs. But early on, I ran up that staircase toward the tower so that I could get a look at three sides. When I looked out over the plaza in between the World Trade Center complex, it was loaded with debris, plane parts, and building parts, and it was on fire and black smoke and white smoke. And if you remember in the video, all those papers kind of fluttering down out of the upper floors. and I started to question my initial assumption

that it was a small plane and the pilot had a heart attack. I went into the building at that level and I had to go down an escalator and there were hundreds of office workers trying to get on that elevator and I noticed in that moment something that I did not expect but was happening in front of my eyes. People, these hundreds of office workers,

office workers were not doing what you would expect. They were not kicking, pushing, screaming, trampling each other. In fact, it was the opposite of that. For every person who was obese, pregnant, injured, disabled, there were four or five office workers, not cops or firemen helping that person. And it made me proud of humanity because we help each other. That's what we do. and everyone was trying to help each other getting onto that escalator. I got onto that escalator into the crowd, and I went down, and as the lobby revealed itself to me, I could see hundreds of firefighters and police officers awaiting their orders to go up.

I got to the bottom of the escalator. Right in front of me was firefighter Chris Blackwell from Rescue 3 in the Bronx, the elite of the Bronx Harlem Fire Department, and I had worked with Chris for almost seven years. I was very close with him and Chris and I always greeted each other the same way we came face to face we came to attention

he always had the unlit stub of a cigar in the corner of his mouth he would reach up with his right hand take the cigar out of his mouth we would lean in kiss on the lips and then we'd come back to attention and he put the cigar back in his mouth

and we did that for two reasons We loved each other like we were real blood brothers, but we also thought it was very funny to watch the reaction of all the firemen around us. So in this moment, in this terrible, terrible moment, Chris and I took the time to demonstrate the love we had for each other. And Chris said to me, Timmy, this is really bad, which is really saying something between us. I said, I know Chris, be careful, I love you.

He said, I love you too. And firefighter Chris Blackwell from Rescue Company 3 turned around and went in the stairwell and went up to save the lives of people he did not know because that was the oath he took. He was fulfilling his oath. And this is an example of the greatest love as defined by the Bible. The greatest love is to give your life for your neighbor. And Chris turned around and went nest farewell and fulfilled his oath. Someone yelled my name across the lobby,

and it was my best friend, Captain Terrence S. Hatton, captain of the Manhattan Elite Rescue Company 1. I ran over to my best friend. He was 6'4 foot 4. We spread our arms out, and I went right into his... chest like my head was on his shoulder and we squeezed each other tight and he said in he kissed me on the right cheek and he said in my ear I love you brother I may never see you again and I blew him off because we had been in very dangerous situations like this before together and we always came out of

it we always beat the odds but Terry was the smart one he was the captain he was the future of the New York City Fire Department. I love you, brother. I may never see you again. And Terry Hatton, captain of rescue company one, took his men into the stairwell, and they went up.

They knew it. They still did it. There is no greater act of love or courage or bravery than what those firefighters and police officers did on 9-11. When the second tower was hit,

myself and Chief Donald Burns were sent to the South Tower. We ran over to the South Tower together, 41 years in the New York City Fire Department and my good friend, Chief Burns. A woman came running over to us screaming that there were people trapped in an elevator

and Chief gave me in a nod to go with her. He went to the command post. This woman took me to the elevator car where the hoistway doors were open and you could see into the shaft but the elevator car itself was stuck at the top and there wasn't enough room for people to get out and they were screaming because they had just taken a ride

a 70-story plunge because the cable was snapped by the plane when it crashed into the building and these people were stuck they were alive but they were stuck in this car and the elevator pit below them was on fire with jet fuel so they were also getting burned almost out of nowhere firefighter Michael Lynch shows

shows up next to me and he may as well have had wings coming out of his back because he was the angel firefighter that just appeared out of nowhere to save the lives of those people he put his hand on my shoulder he squeezed my shoulder and he said to me I got it what those people needed was a fireman

a real fireman not a mayor's office guy like me because Michael had a whole truck of tools and equipment to help those people. Over our radios, third plane incoming, it's ours. Take cover. So I ran to the command post to call for air cover from the military. Completed that mission. People were badly injured filling up the lobby of the South Tower. Chief Burns asked me to go get the paramedics,

and that's why I left the South Tower. I got the paramedics and myself and three paramedics were running back into the South Tower with the stretcher when the building collapsed. We were about 20 feet from the door of going into the South Tower when it collapsed. Because of my training and experience, I know you cannot outrun a collapse. So we ran right next door into the Marriott Hotel. The doors we went in were the tall Ships restaurant. As soon as we got in there, it was as clear as the room you're in right now. With a snap of your fingers, it was pitch black.

The Marriott Hotel was collapsing around us. I know that a vertical column is where we find people alive, sometimes in building collapses. So I found a vertical column, and I wrapped my arms around it and held down as tight as I could. The dust was clogging your nose in your mouth and your ears and your eyes. you couldn't see, you couldn't hear, and the wind was so strong as the air was being pushed out of the building as the building was collapsing, that it lifted me up, it lifted my legs up in the air, and it tried to blow me out into the street. Somehow, with his strength helping me, I was able to hold onto the column, and the building collapsed around me. I waited to get crushed. I was a bit angry that I wouldn't be able to tell my family I love them one more time

and I waited to be crushed and as soon as it started it stopped and I was alive. They did a scientific study of that space where about 35 of us lived because they wanted to know what was the difference and they scientifically proved that the air that was trying to be to blow me out into the street that lifted me off the ground was 185 miles per hour and somehow I was able to hold on to that column 20 years later now I believe I was saved I was not taken by God at that time so that I would have a voice to talk about the heroes of 9-11 my friends over 100,000. of my friends who were murdered by Islamic terrorists. The numbers, 343 New York City firefighters,

37 Port Authority police officers, 23 New York City police officers who all did what Captain Terry Hatton, firefighter Chris Blackwell did. They all did it. They knew it. They knew it. They knew it. They knew they were not coming back, and they still went up those stairwells.

to help people they did not know. The greatest act of love and courage and bravery and kindness I have ever seen, maybe in the history of America, you know, I don't know, but it just moves me so much what they did. I think that one of the things that I'm noticing out of this story, and as heart-wrenching and as horrific as the events that you've described are, there is this running theme of heroism. There is this running theme of people sacrificing everything to do the job

that they are sent there to do to save lives, to save innocent people. So your friends like Terry and Chris and Michael, who didn't make it out of the towers, they are true heroes. I guess my question for you then is, even though we are, you know, 20 years removed from this event, you were somebody that was there and lost people. How do we memorialize this event? That's kind of the big question, right? We're coming up on this 20th anniversary.

What do we do? How do we effectively memorialize heroes like your friends that didn't make it out of the towers? Yeah, it's a good question because it's not something we're celebrating. I mean, we can celebrate their heroism. We can celebrate their courage and break. and their kindness and their love and all those things. But we have to, my whole thing is we have to tell the whole story, warts and all, even if people don't want to hear it.

Nearly 3,000 innocent human beings were murdered intentionally by Islamist terrorists. And that's the whole story. So we have to talk about the evil. Because if we don't do that, then we're bound to. repeat it, right? So we have to do that. We have to talk about it. We have to point the finger and we have to call them out. We also have to tell the story of the heroes of 9-11. Look, now there's more to the story, right? We've lost nearly the same amount of people since 9-11 in the last 20 years from 9-11 illness. We've lost over 7,300

volunteer U.S. military, young people who went overseas to serve justice for us. Many of them wearing New York City Fire Department patches on their uniforms as they died, or they got blown up. So we're very close with them. You know, for the very first time on September 12th, we'll be reading the names of the 9-11 responders who have passed away. since 9-11 and then on Veterans Day we'll be reading the over 7,300 names of the American military heroes who went overseas and gave their lives to defend America

and to serve justice for America. So 9-11 is a big umbrella that costs America a lot of blood and treasure. And we can't make the same mistakes we made leading up to 9-11. We cannot do that again. We can't do it with foreign policy. We can't do it with domestic national security policy. We have to get over ourselves sometimes and actually share information with each other and, you know, take a little humble pie and work with each other because if we don't do that, and we're much better at it than we used to be,

but we just can't go back to that old place that we were or this is going to happen again. And for me personally, my niece Taylor became a Providence Rhode Island firefighter. My nephew, Mitchell, became a Wilmington, Delaware firefighter. And these are, if we fail again, it's their lives that are in danger from this terrorist threat. Firefighters and police officers throughout America will pay the price

again if we make the same mistakes again, and we can't have that happen. I think you're totally right that we need to take this knowledge that we learned from 9-11. And we just don't want to have a tragedy of this scale ever again. We want to be the best people that we can be in the sense that these people, like your friends, gave their lives so that we could have freedom and liberty and we could have our lives with us. So kind of following up on that positive theme, you've used your experience as a firefighter and as a 9-11 survivor to speak about emotional recovery and grief to others, to teach people how. to move through their grieving processes and work through their own forms of trauma. Can you speak to that a little bit more about how you personally made it through the grieving process after 9-11?

Absolutely. I was very lucky to have a strong relationship with my siblings, very strong, who came down to be with me. I also have a very good friend named Paul who came. to support me and look out for me. So I was very lucky there. However, we were going to five funerals wakes a day. I had to make the difficult choices of which one of my friends' funerals do I have to miss today because I have four others. So through this, I finally found, I knew I needed help And I found, after going through 10 people, I found a wonderful therapist named Ashley Teheri, who unfortunately passed away a few years back.

But she understood the place I was in. And she gave me the tools to get through every day successfully. And she taught me how to compartmentalize. And that was the biggest tool she gave me. So every morning for an hour, I put my noise-canceling headphones on, and I sat in a dark space, and I listened to my favorite, Andrea Boccelli's voice in my ears. And I sobbed and cried for the loss of my friends.

But then when the hour was up, I turned it off. I took the headphones off. I wiped my tears and I tried to have a productive day. And tools like that from therapy are what saved my life. And I am very blessed to have had Ashley the angel help me. I highly recommend therapy if you need it and stay at it. If there's not someone that you get along with immediately, find another one, find another one, find another one,

until you find the right person. Because it is so worth it. I have such a beautiful life now. I have so many wonderful friends in my life. I have great purpose and meaning in my life. I am so happy I'm alive despite the struggles. And I, you know, if things went differently back then, you know, I would not have had all these experiences and I would not have this voice to teach the next generations and all that. So, you know, I recommend it.

and the other thing is confronting your demons. I know people that firefighters who lost so many friends like me who have never been to ground zero in 20 years. And I encourage them to confront that because I've seen it happen over and over and over again. Do it with your friends, do it with your family, do it by yourself, however you want to do it. You know, do it with me.

I'll take you, but confront it. And it's going to be hard and difficult, and we're going to cry. And it's going to be painful. But at some point, you're going to work through it, and it's going to be such a weight of emotion lifted off of your shoulders. I think that's such a great way of thinking about it and, you know, taking a positive step and acknowledging that it's going to be hard

and that's going to be something you need to work through, but it's worth it in the end. Tim, we are running a little bit low on time, but I wanted to give the last word to you. As, you know, we're starting to discuss how we teach this to people that were born way after 9-11 happened. Where should people go to get resources about learning about this event? You know, where should kids go?

Where should adults go? where should we get our resources to learn about 9-11 to make sure we never let something like this happen again? Right. If you go on the National September 11th Memorial Museum website, there's a tab that says education. And the museum has developed recommended educational programs for different grades and things like that. That is probably the biggest resource right now. but this now I didn't know this before I learned this but 20 years is it is now officially history so hopefully this will be getting into the history books and we'll be teaching it in I guess around eighth grade classes I know a few eighth grade social studies teachers in the northeast

who have been doing it for 10 years or just of their own volition but we we need to inculcate that into all of the educational systems throughout America so that as our voices are cut short from 9-11 illness it you know these lessons will be in the history books and these lessons will be in social media just because we don't want this to happen again as the younger people take over positions of national security. It's our responsibility as leaders, as adults, to pass this knowledge on. I feel I have done well within my own family. I'm very, very proud of the young people in my family,

and they've just about all gone into public service, and I'm very proud of that. So never forget. Absolutely. Well, Tim, I want to thank you so much both for joining us today on this podcast and for the, I can even describe how amazing and heroic the acts that you performed on that day were. I think that as we are getting further and further away from it, it just becomes easier and easier to say, well, that happened 20 years ago, that happened 30 years ago, that happened 40 years ago. but your story, I hope, if our listeners take one thing from this, is something that we can never forget this and that we absolutely must keep those stories alive of the people that went in and sacrificed their lives to save others.

So that was Tim Brown, a former New York City firefighter who risked his life for others for nearly 20 years. Tim is a survivor of 9-11 as well as a first responder to the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He now works as a motivational speaker and works to honor the memory of those we lost. on 9-11. Tim,

thank you so much again for joining us. Thanks for having me, brother. Appreciate it. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinko, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.