JohnR
09-12-2014, 11:07 AM
I know we have brought this up before but as a tale of 9/11, among others, I offer you the American Hero (originally Brittish) Rick Rescorla. Multiple times.
While the term "Hero" is IMO lessened these days by labeling many people as heroes that hough while their acts are wonderful and occasionally ballsy, do not meed the minimums for Heroic. Read the following - all of it - and you will have perhaps a better baseline to compare. Though in many places in earlier times he felt being called a Hero was inaccurate because the real heroes were already dead.
Rick Rescorla died almost exactly 10 years ago today. He was at his post on the 44th floor of World Trade Center Tower 1 on September 11, 2001, when a psychotic madman flew a passenger airliner into the building. When the Port Authority came over the loudspeaker in the building and ordered everyone inside to stay put, Rescorla muttered "Bugger that Blimy Poppycock" (or something equally British) under his breath, and flipped his brain right back into Commanding Officer mode. It wasn't his first time dealing with a terrorist attack on his place of employment – in 1993, when a truck bomb went off in the basement of the Tower, Rescorla had evacuated his offices, helping everyone out until he was the last man to leave the building – and he wasn't taking any chances this time either. He grabbed a bullhorn and personally ran up and down the 22 floors that encompassed Morgan Stanley Dean Witter headquarters, quickly and calmly getting everyone out of their cubes and down the stairs. Rushing up and down the building despite the fact that he was 62 years old and dying from terminal bone marrow cancer, Rescorla didn't even consider slowing down until all 2,700 of his co-workers were safely out of the burning building. When he saw how terrified the men and women he worked with were, he went back to his old standby of singing British folk songs to try and cheer them up.
He was last seen on the tenth floor of the World Trade Center, headed up. Of the 2,700 people he had been charged with protecting, all but 6 survived the terrorist attack.
Read it all, please: http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=670124511166
You may very well recognize his name from other books, films.
While the term "Hero" is IMO lessened these days by labeling many people as heroes that hough while their acts are wonderful and occasionally ballsy, do not meed the minimums for Heroic. Read the following - all of it - and you will have perhaps a better baseline to compare. Though in many places in earlier times he felt being called a Hero was inaccurate because the real heroes were already dead.
Rick Rescorla died almost exactly 10 years ago today. He was at his post on the 44th floor of World Trade Center Tower 1 on September 11, 2001, when a psychotic madman flew a passenger airliner into the building. When the Port Authority came over the loudspeaker in the building and ordered everyone inside to stay put, Rescorla muttered "Bugger that Blimy Poppycock" (or something equally British) under his breath, and flipped his brain right back into Commanding Officer mode. It wasn't his first time dealing with a terrorist attack on his place of employment – in 1993, when a truck bomb went off in the basement of the Tower, Rescorla had evacuated his offices, helping everyone out until he was the last man to leave the building – and he wasn't taking any chances this time either. He grabbed a bullhorn and personally ran up and down the 22 floors that encompassed Morgan Stanley Dean Witter headquarters, quickly and calmly getting everyone out of their cubes and down the stairs. Rushing up and down the building despite the fact that he was 62 years old and dying from terminal bone marrow cancer, Rescorla didn't even consider slowing down until all 2,700 of his co-workers were safely out of the burning building. When he saw how terrified the men and women he worked with were, he went back to his old standby of singing British folk songs to try and cheer them up.
He was last seen on the tenth floor of the World Trade Center, headed up. Of the 2,700 people he had been charged with protecting, all but 6 survived the terrorist attack.
Read it all, please: http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=670124511166
You may very well recognize his name from other books, films.