Firehouse (14 page)

Gradually the reality dawned on the Lynches that they had lost Michael. Two days after the attack, Jack visited the site with an old friend of his named Mike Dolan, a senior project manager for Turner Construction in Chicago, who had flown in when he learned that Michael had been at Ground Zero and was missing. The two old friends walked down Liberty Street, which ran along the south side of the south tower, and then they walked past the wreckage of Ladder 10, getting as close to Ground Zero as they could. At one point Dolan, who was a few feet ahead of Jack Lynch, stopped and looked at the sight of the awful destruction and then, with tears in his eyes, he turned back to his friend, and said that even in his wildest thoughts he couldn't imagine anyone surviving; with his engineering background, he understood the totality of the pancake collapse of the two buildings and the unbelievable tonnage that had fallen straight down on itself. The chance of anyone surviving it, he said, did not exist. That night, Jack told Kathleen what Michael Dolan had said.

But Jack Lynch could not bring himself to tell Stephanie. He waited a week, not wanting to cast any additional shadow on her, knowing that in the greater optimism and innocence of youth, she still believed that somehow Michael would survive. Finally, when it was clear she had given up all hope, she turned to the man who would have been her father-in-law, and who now loved her as if she was one of his daughters. “What people don't understand,” she told him, “is that no one ever loved anyone like Michael and I loved each other.”

Michael Roberts was the quiet one. Sean Newman, who had worked with him at Engine 224 in Brooklyn Heights, thought that the thirty-year-old Roberts had been more at home there because it was smaller, housing only one rig, and that the sheer size of 40/35 somehow had made him quieter. Certainly it was true that the larger the group hanging around the kitchen table, the quieter he became; he only opened up with a very small group. Roberts seemed more than most firemen to live within himself, somewhat apart from the noise and bawdiness of the house. There was, Newman thought, an intensity to him underneath that quiet surface—he was very competitive when he played sports, and, as a fireman, he would become quite frustrated when he thought the rig did not get out of the firehouse fast enough. He hated the idea that another company might get to the scene of a fire faster than his own.

For Roberts, as for so many of the others, being a fireman was a family thing. His father, Tom Roberts, was a retired captain, and a number of Tom's cousins were also firemen. He thought that his son Michael's earliest memories were of firehouse picnics, of being among all these men who felt so warmly toward his father and himself. When Michael was a year old, one of his first presents had been a navy-blue outfit with a fire truck on it, and his mother had embroidered above the truck the words
Dad and Me
.

Tom Roberts had always thought his was a wonderful life, much better, for example, than the lives of cops in terms of the kind of treatment and respect he got within the neighborhoods he served. The cops, he thought, no matter how well they protected people, almost always generated resentment, whereas firemen, with the exception of a few bad moments, were generally viewed benignly. This affected how you thought about yourself and your job. Besides, when a fireman put out a fire, it stayed out; whereas when the cops arrested a hoodlum, he was, more often than not, it seemed, back on the streets in a few days.

Michael, from the time he was a little boy, had always been both shy and quiet. Part of the reason had been his struggle with vision when he was young. He wore glasses and he had had a lazy eye, for which he had to do years of exercises in order to strengthen it. That had helped him when he took the firemen's test, because as a result of the exercises, his vision and reflexes were very good, and it helped him later in firehouse Ping-Pong games; he was rarely beaten, and, with his long reach, he was known at the Brooklyn Heights house as The Condor.

Tom and his wife, Paulette, had encouraged Michael to go to college, wanting him to aim for more than they had had, but he had been reluctant. He started out at Rockland Community College and after two years went on to the University at Buffalo, where he studied a variety of different subjects, none of which greatly interested him. Tom pushed him toward becoming a social worker and Paulette toward psychology, but he had no interest in either career. “You try and give them the advantages you never had,” Tom Roberts said, “and what they want is the life you had. When I was young, we did it because we had no alternative, no other possibilities. But that was a much poorer country, and most of us who chose the fire department had less opportunity—we were not going to go to college, it was just not in the cards. But now we watch our children grow up in far better circumstances than we did, and we encourage them to go to college the way Michael did, so they will have more choices. And they do that, dutifully, they go off to college and they give it a try, and then, when they finish, they go into the department because they have watched us, and ours is the life they want.”

When Michael Roberts started going through the process of preparing himself for the firemen's test, his somewhat uneasy father questioned him. “Are you sure this is what you really want?” he asked. “After all, you've got a college education.” Yes, Michael replied, he was sure this was what he wanted. “Why?” his father asked. “Because you always came home from work happy,” his son answered.

Tom Roberts was quietly pleased when his son went into the department; now they could talk shop, critiquing fires and the performances of men from different units. It was odd, Tom thought, but when he had been a fireman, he had never worried much about his own safety. Now, however, he worried about his son. For the first time, he had a sense of what it must be like to be the spouse of a fireman. The Astoria Father's Day fire, in which the three men had died, had shaken him.

Teresa Ivey and Michael met at a barbecue on Labor Day in the summer of 1999. She was twenty-five at the time, and that summer, thinking of prospective boyfriends, she had decided it might be nice to date a fireman because what they did each day was so valuable. At the barbecue she had noticed a tall, attractive young man standing off to the side. She asked him what he did, and he said he was a fireman, and she said something to the effect of how admirable that was. This surprised him, and he asked her, “You'd be willing to date someone knowing that each time he went off to work he might not come back at night because of the danger?” “Yes,” she answered, “because if something terrible happened, I'd be able to say that the person I loved died doing something for other people.” He called her for a date almost immediately afterward, and they had been together ever since.

Teresa thought he was the gentlest kind of man, soft-spoken, and, above all, selfless. That last quality, she was sure, was why he had become a fireman. If you had met Michael at a party, she thought, you might well have gotten his profession wrong. What she especially loved about him was that his belief in her career matched her belief in his. She was a schoolteacher, with one master's degree, in English, and he was pushing her to go for a second one, in administration, because he was absolutely sure she would be a brilliant principal. If she was ever overloaded and pressed for time, he would help her grade papers. And he would not hesitate to shift his schedule to be with her and her eighth-grade students on a field trip or at a musical program at school.

They had been dating for two years, and two days before the tragedy she had teased him about when he was actually going to propose. “You'll know when I ask,” he answered, laughing. She wanted a specific date, and he wanted a little more mystery. But she knew they would be engaged sometime in the middle of 2002, and she knew as well they were rock solid as a couple. Early in this relationship, she had, as in past ones, started to build an emotional wall around herself, to protect herself from any serious commitment. But he would have none of it. “You can try to leave, but you're not going anywhere,” he told her. “I'm meant to be with you, and you're meant to be with me. So forget about getting out of it.” He had been right, she decided.

Teresa was teaching at the Suffern, New York, middle school on the morning of September 11, and she was pulled out of class at exactly 8:59
A.M.
, thirteen minutes after the first crash. Her bosses knew that her father worked for the Port Authority in the south tower, and her sister worked in the Bankers Trust building just across the street.

Teresa called Michael at work, but he had already left on the truck, so she got him on his cell phone. “Oh my God,” she said, “my father's there, and my sister's there.” “I know,” he said, “Kenny's there too.” Kenny was Michael's younger brother, who had taken the written exam to become a fireman and who at the time was working for the Securities and Exchange Commission on the twelfth floor of Building Seven. Teresa knew Michael was going into a terrible situation. Her last words to him were: “Whatever you do, keep in touch! Keep in touch! Keep in touch!” He had promised he would, and then she said one more time, “Keep in touch!”

Her father and sister got out safely, as did Kenny. Later, Kenny discovered that Michael had called him at work after he, along with most of his friends, had left. Much later he heard on the phone message system the voice of a concerned older brother he would never see again.

Thomas and Paulette Roberts did not learn about the attack until relatively late on Tuesday. They had been driving to Hilton Head, South Carolina, for a vacation, and they had spent the night in a motel in North Carolina. They had breakfast early, before the first plane hit, and then got back on the road. Their daughter Lisa had given them a bunch of CDs, so they were not listening to the radio. They were anxious to make good time, and they did not stop for lunch until about 1:00
P.M.
At the restaurant, Paulette overheard some people talking about a plane crash, but she had been unable to pick up on it. After lunch they pulled into a gas station, and for the first time they found out that two planes had hit the World Trade Center towers. With that, they drove on to Hilton Head as fast as possible, while trying unsuccessfully to place phone calls home from the occasional phone booths along the highway.

Upon their arrival around 4:00
P.M.
, they turned on the television and for the first time they understood the totality of the tragedy. They struggled to get through to their family in New York, because it was still extremely difficult to make phone connections to the city. At first they were more worried about Kenny than about Michael. They finally reached a neighbor, whom they told to break into their house because there might be a message on their answering machine, and they had forgotten the procedure needed to pick up messages from the road. But there were no messages from their kids. While they were on the phone, a call came in from Lisa, and a message was taken by the clerk at the front desk saying that Lisa and Kenny were all right, but that Michael was working and that no one had heard from him.

Tom and Paulette were exhausted, and they briefly debated whether or not to spend the night in South Carolina before heading back to New York. In the end, they decided, exhausted or not, to return because they knew they weren't going to get any sleep that night if they stayed in the motel. Taking turns as drivers and napping along the side of the road, they finally arrived home around 3:00
P.M.
on Wednesday. Kenny and Lisa were there, but there was still no word from Michael. They immediately feared the worst.

Vincent Morello was the son of a fireman, brother of a fireman, cousin and nephew of firemen. He, however, had never intended to be a fireman. His father, John Morello, who had reached the rank of battalion chief in Manhattan, never pushed the job with him, and when Vincent finished high school, his only interest seemed to be working as a mechanic at a local gas station. The Morellos wanted more for their son than a career in a gas station, though, and encouraged Vincent to try college—at least, John argued, go to college and take some business courses, so you can one day own your own garage—but it had not interested Vincent. After only one year at St. John's University, in Queens, he was back at his first love: the garage, where he was so innately gifted with tools. When John suggested that Vincent think of becoming a fireman and take the exam—just as a fall-back position—Vincent merely laughed and placed a hand on each of his father's shoulders. “Dad, when a building is on fire,” he said, “the smart people are the ones running to get out.”

If anything, that answer had seemed to please John Morello. He was sure that he had never pushed either of his sons to follow him into the department. Actually, he was sure he had discouraged them—in part, he later said, because he wanted them to have something more than he did, and in part because he knew, as only an experienced fireman could know, just how dangerous the job could be. There had been a moment in 1980 when, as a captain at Ladder 161 in Coney Island, he was sure that he was going to die. There was a fire in a restaurant on the ground floor of a building, and he and two men from his house had gone up to the second floor, looking for survivors. As the fire got worse and worse, he sent the other two firemen down, upholding the tradition that said the captain should always be the last man out. Handling the remaining search himself, he tried to take one last look around. Suddenly, the fire exploded, jumping up the side walls to the ceiling. Then the ceiling collapsed. John Morello found himself completely disoriented—something that happens occasionally even to veteran firemen—and he could not find his way out. He was sure at that moment that there was no escape, that he was going to die. He also became aware in some strange way that while he had been fighting the fire, it had gone from the night of January 5 to the early morning of January 6, which meant that it was Vincent's thirteenth birthday. John later remembered thinking how terrible his death would be for his son and that for the rest of Vincent's life, whenever he tried to celebrate his birthday, the birthday would be a reminder of the day his father died.