They’re reading names out over the radio
All the folks the rest of us won’t get to know
Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda
Their lives are bigger, than any big idea
–U2
Two weeks ago yesterday I drove to my 9am class full of hope and pride. On that day my first column of the year appeared in these pages and I thought it was going to be the start of something big. I had imagined walking down to the Collegian office after my class and finding hundreds of comments on our web page praising the column and its author. I was proud of what I had written; it was humorous, thought provoking and full of obscure references. I had set out to craft something that everybody would read and enjoy and I believed that I had succeeded.
However, because of events happening just a few hours away I don’t know how many people actually read my column. That day was September 11, 2001 and I’m sure that most people did not read the Collegian that day. Even I didn’t.
Suddenly it didn’t matter whether the Patriots had lost to the Bengals or the Red Sox were as good as finished in the playoff race. Sports had become secondary and we all knew it. These attacks had forced the world to stop, but just for a moment. As a nation we needed to get back up, and we did. These attacks left a wound on the American psyche, a wound that will only heal with time.
I was reminded of this exactly one week later when I returned to work at Fenway Park. Security was tightened and extra police were visibly present. Just as visible were a plethora of American flags and signs echoing pro-American sentiments. During the rousing singing of the “National Anthem” and “God Bless America” before the game I stood with the visiting Tampa Bay Devil Rays in front of their dugout and noticed small children waving the stars and stripes from their seats and grown men crying both in the stands and on the field. And I joined them. Never had I seen so many people united behind a common cause before the game had even begun.
After a Boston firefighter and a Boston cop threw out the ceremonial first pitch, I could not help but think of their brothers in New York who had given their lives trying to save others. When you are the only one walking up a narrow stairway with everybody going down you must fight your natural instinct to join them and save yourself. These men had a job to do and they did it to the very end.
One of these men is named Gerard Nevins. He was a firefighter in New York on Rescue 1. His unit was one of the first to arrive at the scene and he has not been heard from since. He had called his wife earlier that morning saying that his shift was done and he was just waiting for his replacement to come in, he would be home soon. Despite all this, he responded when duty called for that was his job.
While nobody knows exactly what happened to Gerry in the ensuing hours I would like to think that he gave his life saving and trying to save others. He went into the smoke and the darkness and he made a difference, he always did. Whatever he did, he always made a difference. I wish that all of you had gotten to see Gerry as I had. He was a husband, a father and a friend. And I miss him.
When I returned to my home in East Bridgewater on Thursday night after another Red Sox game one of the first things that I saw was a stack of pictures of Gerry. There he was happy and smiling, his whole life ahead of him. It just didn’t seem right that he was now gone. The final picture was one of my brother and I with the Twin Towers behind us and at that moment this tragedy truly hit me. He gave his life running up step after step of these enormous structures trying to save the lives of others. He had to have known the danger and peril that was all around him, but he put it behind him and carried on.
It is men like Gerry who have made myself and many others rethink our hero worship of professional athletes. Sure Mark McGwire can belt 70 homers and Michael Jordan can amaze us time and again on the basketball court, but this is simply entertainment. These men play a game. True, they play it better than almost anybody else and that should be commended, but it is still just a game.
True heroism was on display in the streets of New York City and Arlington, Va. on the 11th. Men were risking their own lives to save those of others, others who they had probably never met. I never got to tell Gerry how much respect I have for him and people everywhere who do what he did. People who put the lives of others before their very own, people like my father.
He is a captain on the Boston Fire Department. He goes into work each and every day and puts his life on the line protecting others. Sadly it has taken a tragedy like this for me to see how important he really is. I would like to think that he would have done just as Gerry did on that fateful day. I know he would, because he is a hero. I consider myself lucky that I get the chance to tell him this everyday, and I wish that I told him more often for I know Danny and Andrew, Gerry’s two sons, would give everything for the chance to say it just once more to their dad.
Every game now at Fenway Park, after the top half of the third inning, Lee Greenwood’s patriotic anthem “Proud to be an American” is played through the PA system. People stand and people sing and people wave flags proudly and it brings a tear to the eye of even the coldest of souls. It has taken a national tragedy to bring us all together. Not as Red Sox fans or Yankee fans, but as Americans. Let’s do what we can to make it last. None of us will ever forget this day and those who gave their lives but we must walk on and rebuild. We will get through this, together. One nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Justin Pearson is a Collegian columnist and proud to be an American.
