September 11 Attacks: 20 Years Later People Have Not Forgotten the Pain or the Heroism
NEW YORK CITY — On Sept. 11, 2001, Father Conrad Osterhout of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal was living in St. Joseph Friary in Harlem on 142nd Street as head of the house.
“The first alarm for us were the people in the street calling out to us,” he told the Register of that tragic day. The friars could see nothing directly, but soon they got confirmation from radio reports. And then a firefighter “rode up to our house on a bicycle, asked for a scapular, prayer and a blessing” as he raced to lend a hand to brother firefighters far downtown.
Later that day, when Father Osterhout arrived at Ground Zero with other friars, a gate barring entry to the immediate site had already been put up. The acrid air was filled with smoke and dust, with the friars unmasked.
“Standing under a lamppost, four or five friars were praying,” he vividly remembered. “A fireman came up to some of the brothers and told them, ‘When we go in there, we feel like we’re on the edge of hell, and when we come out and see you praying, we feel we’re gaining the victory.’ There was on our firemen clearly a lot of distress, some looking for fellow workers, partners, assuming in some cases those firemen would never be found. It was very distressing.”
The next day the friars could not get as close as the previous night.
The weight of that fateful day remains two decades later.
The horrific nature of 9/11 shocked the citizens of the United States “because we’ve never experienced something so close, and there’s a loss of words because of the shock of that.” He finds consolation in the memorial New York City erected that represents all life lost that day, including the unborn children.
He added that “we’ve made some progress in our mourning in 20 years. But we still need to pay attention to it … and know that we’re in God’s hands.”
“Without a doubt, every year since 9/11, pretty much everyone connected to the New York Fire Department at the time is affected,” FDNY Deputy Assistant Chief Michael Meyers, the chief of safety, told the Register. “You know when that clock turns to September you’re going to feel bad all over again. It takes a couple of weeks after 9/11 to get past all the pain.” He said it is exceptionally important for his fellow firefighters and other first responders to remember those who gave their lives, to keep their names alive, to remember the loss of friends, and to thank God for one’s life.
The numbers at the FDNY counseling service unit — a model program for the whole country since 9/11 for peer as well as professional counseling — definitely pick up this time of year.
Yet not all memories are tragic. Chief Meyers emphasized, “What was incredible on that day is the worst in humanity brought out the very best in humanity.”
