The Moth - 25 Years of Stories: A Look Back at 2001

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

On this week’s episode, we take a look back at 2001. We’ll hear a story from a firefighter who worked on 9/11, and we’ll explore how stories helped people connect to each other in the weeks after the tragedy. This episode is hosted by George Green and Meg Bowles. Storyteller: Keith Young

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slashon to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org-FordslashHuston. Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm George Dawes Green, founder of The Moth. And I'm Meg Bulls, Senior Director at The Moth. Every week in 2022 we've been commemorating our 25th anniversary by taking a look at our history,

counting down year by year. In this episode, we'll be revisiting 2001. A lot of things happened in 2001, but to me, it was the great year of experimentation. We kept playing around with the ideas of themes and how to gather storytellers. Meg, do you remember the night at the Rose Planetarium when we had stories about coming home? I do, I do. It was such an amazing night because all the storytellers brought a different perspective on the theme of coming home.

We had the astronaut Rick Hauk who talked about coming home from space and landing the shuttle and being nervous about it. And we had Frank McCourt who talked about going back to Ireland after the success of his book, Angela's Ashes. And do you remember the soldier who came back from battle at World War II to his little town in Ohio and everybody in the town thought he'd been killed. So when he came into town, everybody thought they were looking at a ghost. I do.

I told, that was amazing. And he came and told the story on stage wearing his full World War II Army uniform. But I think it's really hard to think about 2001 without remembering September 11th, because it was such a huge event in our lives, and especially in New York. And I remember doing a show after those events and how just impactful it was. And so for 2001, we've decided to play a never before aired story from Keith Young. Keith Young was a firefighter on September 11th.

And he told this story on a New York main stage, barely a month after what happened. The theme of the night was Carpe Diem, stories of our most vital moments. Here's Ketia. Thank you. Oh, thank you guys. September 11th actually started out as a beautiful day. It was absolutely beautiful outside.

It was sunny, it was warm. It was actually my four-year-old son's first day of pre-kai. And I remember bringing him to the bus stop. And he was very nervous. And me and my wife were looking at him. And we kind of had a little tear in our eye. It's a little guy. And he's going off to school for the first time in a bus and my wife goes Keith, just let him go.

Yeah. Don't pick him up anymore, he has to get on the bus. So, all right, all right. So, he kind of got on the bus and we told him to turn around so we could take a picture of him. He had that look like he was kind of scared. I had like a little tear coming out of my eyes. He said, give me a smile, Christian. So he gave me a smile and me and my wife and my daughter and our two dogs went walking back to the house.

And then we had a drop off my eight-year-old Kaley so she could get on her bus. And that's how the day started and we were very happy and we got some really good pictures. So I got home, it was about 10 to 9. I got a phone call from my wife's nephew and he said Keith put on a TV, put on the news right now, so I did. I don't watch the news, I don't read the newspaper, I'm terrible at that, I guess it kind of depresses me. Well, I was depressed when I saw what was going on. I saw that the first tower had been hit. And I was just thinking to myself in my own way,

like just being a fireman, I just said, how are we going to put this out? There's so much black thick smoke in there right now. Those people up above have no idea what's going on. They probably lost power. They're probably scared out of their widths. How are we going to get up there and help these people out? What are we going to do?

And they were talking about it being a small plane, but I didn't think it was a small plane. I said, no small plane just hits it like that. It was a big plane. There was a lot, a lot of thick black smoke. So as me and my wife and my mother-in-law watching it, the second plane came in and we noticed the big explosion and it was horrible. It was absolutely unbelievable. What I thought was, all right, we've got definite, there's a terrorist attack. I go, we've got firemen out the

kazoo going up inside. There's both buildings right now. I said, I've got Feynman out the kazoo going up inside this, both buildings right now. I said I'm definitely going to lose some friends today. I don't know how many, but I'm going to lose somebody I know. So I kept watching. I was sick. I was pacing. I was nervous. I was scared.

I almost felt like I was going to throw up. My wife was crying, my mother-in-law was, she didn't know what to do. I kept watching. I'm thinking to myself, all right, how are we going to get out there? How are we going to put this out? I watched the first tower come down and I told my wife I said we just lost 200 guys. I said we just lost 200 guys and it hurt me, you know, it really hurt me bad. And my wife was crying and I was trying to keep it together. I wasn't crying at this point. I didn't cry. I was really nervous. And I said, I'm going to have to go in. And my wife said, you're not going in today. And I said, I'm going to have to. And then we watched the second tower come down. And

I was, I just didn't know what to do. So a couple of minutes later, I got a phone call I just didn't know what to do. So a couple of minutes later, I got a phone call from work, my lieutenant told me Keith, the second tower came down and we think we lost the battery tunnel. Firemen were going through and they can't see anything.

They think they lost the battery tunnel too. So I said I write Lil' Beon and my wife just broke down crying. And then she said, don't go in. Stay here with us. I love you. I said, honey, I gotta go in.

This is what we do. I'm a fireman. And they need me and he can't give up now. So I didn't say it. I wasn't crying like I am now, but I was, I was like, I gotta go in. So she said, if you're going in,

then we're going to get the kids. And you're gonna wait till Christian gets off the bus. And then you're gonna go into work. I said, okay. So my son got off the bus and he was smiling and I grabbed him like I never grabbed him before and I picked him up. I kissed him.

And I said, we gotta go get Kayley up, I kissed them and I said we got it we could Kaley out of school so we went and we got my daughter Kaley and she of course was happy to see us oh we're getting out of school early so I get her and she goes bad why is everybody coming to school today why are we leaving early I said Kaley um something bad happened today some bad people did some bad things and I got to go to work And she said when he coming home, and I said Kaley, I don't know I'm gonna come home when they let me come home, okay? So I told her I was taking a raffer ice cream and of course

Our encryption were all psyched So we got to the ice cream stand and I sat them down. And I got their favorite ice creams, and I got them two scoops instead of one. And I said to Kaylee and Christian, I looked in the eyes, and I said, you too know I love you, and I gotta go to work. And I don't know if I'm gonna be home.

So I want you to take care of each other and I said I want you to take care of mom because your mom you could do your grandma and I'll see when I get there. So my daughter Kaylee said there can you come home tomorrow morning? I said, I really hope I'm gonna be home tomorrow morning. So, driving into work, it was chaotic. I was trying to go west on Merrick Road and sunrise highway on Long Island. And it was totally packed.

So I went up to Southern State and there was nobody on the road but had to get by a couple of police barricades and there was no cause on the road. I passed a couple of cause, I had like five guys and it probably cops just rushed into the scene and then I just drove on belt parkway and there was nobody and it was the strangest thing I ever saw. It was the strangest thing I ever felt being on belt parkway by myself in the middle of

the day and I drove. So I got to my fire house. I'm in Latter 156 in Brooklyn. It's in the Midwood section, South of Flatbush, North of Coney Island. And I got into work and I said, Lou, where do you need me to go? And he said, you gotta stay here.

And I said, Lou, I wanna go. Let me get in there. He said, no, you gotta stay here. You gotta work the brush fire unit. The brush fire unit is like the lowest of the low and the fire department. If you're fighting brush fires in New York City, there is a problem. So I watched as the night unfolded and all I could do was cook because I was I was tense.

I was freaking out and cooking is the only thing that kind of soothed me a little bit. The next day comes and I was asked to go home by the chief. He said everybody that's worked last night, you're going to be in tomorrow for 24. I want you to go home and get some sleep. Me and my buddy got in my car and drove straight to Manhattan. And thank you. Ha.

Ha. Ha. The, thank you. But it was everybody. Everybody that was a fireman that day was there. Anybody that cared about the city of New York was there. We had firemen working together, we had cops working together, we had iron workers working, we had construction workers working, we had

volunteers working, we had nurses, doctors, dogs, people from around the country came together as one and we worked. And it wouldn't have mattered if I didn't get paid for that day but it wouldn't have mattered. It couldn't pay me enough. It did the money had no meaning at this point. Nothing did. If you saw the devastation of that site, what we looked at when I got there, the dust, the covered downtown area Manhattan, the debris that was everywhere,

the papers that were in fire scapes of apartment buildings two blocks away, the dust in the streets on my boots, too interesting, the dust in everybody's nose and their eyes, the smoke that was still coming out of the buildings, it was indescribable, and it felt like it was a two-mile area. It could have been two miles, but it felt like it was so huge. And we started working in my body, and we went out, we crawled up a pile, and there was things that I did there

that day that I'd never would have ever thought of doing, nor do I ever want to do them again. We were climbing up steel girders, we were just digging and moving stuff with our hands. We were finding bodies and another body and another body. And we were putting these bodies and body bags and the only thing I could think was I'm giving these families some clothes because that's the only thing that kept me going at that point. It was devastating and we did a couple of different groups, we worked with a couple of different teams and nobody was a chief, nobody was a lieutenant, everybody was one. We worked together, we didn't becker, we didn't argue.

And I believe that's the way God wants it. So when I was there, I'd heard about a couple of guys that had died that I knew or that I had heard of that I didn't know personally. The first firefighter that died, his name was Danny Sir, and he had actually died from a body fallen on him. Another firement, Captain Timothy Stackpole. This guy was an inspiration to anybody that's on the job. As a lieutenant, he got burned severely and fired in 1998.

He almost lost his foot. He rehabilitated himself. He could have been out in three quarters at any time. He came back to the job. He did something unheard of. He came back to the job that he loved so much. And it was his first day as a captain in Midtown. And he lost his life that day. And another fireman, a very good friend of mine, Richie Moldowni, who was actually off. He just been relieved as many firemen were that day.

They were relieved of their duties that could go home. And he wouldn't have died any other way though, Richie. He wasn't going to go in a little house fire. He went with the big boys, and he was the best. But I had never been so proud, and I had never been so scared at the same time. And seeing everybody work together actually gave me a sense of hope that I probably never had before in my life.

The fact that we could just work together and all these different agencies that normally don't give a shit about each other or talk to each other, nobody was a cop, nobody was a fine, and we were just there and we were were busting our ass. To do the best thing we could, you know? And I give my friends hugs now, you know? I didn't always do that. I started to pay a little more attention to my friends and appreciate my life a little more, my kids. I just want to say that that day actually being on that pile of rubble and debris and despair, I actually had a glimpse of hope and strength. And I did feel this feeling of life in me. And I know that any people, any firemen, any cops that died there

wouldn't want us to give up on our lives and our dreams and our hopes and just crawl up in a ball and die. They want us to go on because that's what we're here to do. We're here to be happy. And they died for us. That's the way I feel. I feel like they died for us. And we got to make it good for them. And we can't forget them. And thank you for letting me talk. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

That was Keith Young. In addition to being a New York City firefighter, Keith was a father, author of the cookbook Cooking with the Firehouse Chef, and a two-time winner of the Food Network Show chopped. In 2018, he passed away from a 9-11-related cancer. So Meg, I'm remembering when we were organizing that night and that it was a great challenge because we didn't want to be horrifically grim. And I think that, to me, is the beautiful thing about Keith's story that, even though it's about these horrible events, Keith is talking about blizzes that he had throughout that day, taking his child to school for the first time, or picking his kids up from school and taking

them out for ice cream or the beauty of connecting with his colleagues. And the grimness, of course, is there. You know, we feel it. We feel the pain. And we know that Keith and all of us are healing is going to take a long time. But I remember that it was beautiful to hear him talk about the beauty of life. And all those moments that so many people collectively had just been through. I remember right after 9-11 talking about doing a show and we were all kind of daunted by that. You know, how do we respond to this moment? And I remember you saying we should do an evening of stories with a theme of carpet DM

that we shouldn't have like a retrospective of 9-11 stories that we should play with the theme carpet DM and come at it from different perspectives, which we did. We had a very funny story from Mark Katz about being a speech writer for Clinton and we had Griffin Dunne. And I remember we had Reno who talked about trying to get back to our apartment, trying to cross 14th Street, the demarcation and Keith Young, of course. So we had a couple of 9-11 stories because we felt it was important to say something, to address and to the elephant in the room, this thing that we had all just been through. And I remember that all of us were thinking,

we don't want this theme of healing to be crammed down our throats. We will heal when we heal. Healing will come and might take a long, long time. It's funny. I don't even think I thought about healing. I think I just wanted to be in a room with people. You know, it was like, we, I remember going down to Nell's on 14th Street, ironically, on 14th Street, that demarcation between just the chaos of below 14th Street and and the semi normal above 14th Street, but we all went to that small, pretty small venue really of Nells, and we were all crammed in there. There were so many people and I don't even think I thought about healing.

I think I just wanted to be around people. I wanted to talk to people. I wanted to hear what other people have been through and I wanted to be around people. I wanted to talk to people. I wanted to hear what other people have been through. And I wanted to hear stories. And it was, I remember it making, it made such a difference. I just never was a time. There never was a time when, when that moth magic came in more usefully. That sense of we gather as a community, we start listening to stories. If the stories are true, we are moved together and there's just something about being in a community when you're hearing stories and the community are responds. We could tell was changing the stories on stage. And we were helping Keith

to get through this story, and he was helping us. And that sort of magic communal experience that you have at the mouth. We were all processing, right? We were all and it was it was such a communal moment I'll never forget it nor will I well shall we leave it there yes from everyone here at the moth have a great week George Dawes green is the founder of the Moth and in New York Times' best-selling author, his first novel, The Caveman's Valentine, won the Edgar Award and became a motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson. The juror was the basis for the movie starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. Ravens was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal,

the Daily Mail of London, and many other publications. The Kingdoms of Savannah, Green's latest novel, was published this July to widespread a claim. Neil Gaiman called it the Apotheosis of Southern Gothic. The New York Times says that it's layered, but like a parfait, goes down sweet, chilled, and easy. Green shows how you can love a place's stink, find it splendid even as you despise its sediment. Green grew up in Georgia, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Meg Bowles is a senior director of the Moth and co-host of the Moth Radio Hour, signing on as a volunteer for the Moth in 1997. she had no idea where the Moth would take her.

Over the decades, she has directed mainstages everywhere from Anchorage to London. Although her background in television and film served to sharpen her editorial sense and eye for detail, she has recognized for her ability to spot stories in the wild and to hone in on what transforms a seemingly small story into something universal. For her part, Meg loves working with people one-on-one, witnessing and supporting their progress. She is especially excited to see people who never imagine themselves as having a story, go on to proudly claim the moniker of Storyteller. This episode of the Mouth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Geness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The story in this episode was directed by Meg Bulls and Joey Zanders. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Katherine Burns, Sarah

Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucche, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Leanne Gully, Ingeglialski, and Aldi Cosm. All Maus stories are true as remembered by the storytellers. For more about our podcast information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PIRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at pirex.org. helping make public radio more public at purex.org.