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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday March 18, 2002 Volume IV Number 11 |
FOCUS - Greg and Lauren
Last summer, two young French film-makers took an interest in the New York Fire Department, Engine 7 Ladder 1. They heard about the training program for firefighters, how intentional and demanding it was, and how the unique dangers of the job gave birth to an exceptional esprit de corps. There has always been a waiting list for new jobs in the NYFD. Only a select few survive the preliminary screenings, and many wash out in those first months of initiation.
The theme of their story focused on the “coming of age” aspect of life in the heart of the city as a firefighter. The high rise buildings, commercial skyscrapers and residential towers present firefighters with daunting challenges. An ordinary day can be dull and routine, with little more than a noisy trip through crowded city streets to a rescue that will be accomplished before the arrival of the crew and equipment. Fill out a few papers. Make a report. Head back to the Station.
But when a major fire breaks out on an upper floor, the danger is magnified exponentially. Split second decisions make the difference between life and death - not just those victims of the flames, but for firefighters as well. In the training, young aspiring men and women must endure a rigorous break-in program involving high stress exercises that test the physical and psychological strength every the candidate. Survivors progress to a rookie period on the job and in the station. Veterans on site challenge new recruits, testing their mettle. No one knows when the clanging of the bell will signal the big fire that will bring all the study and practice, the drama and the risk, together into a single terrifying moment. It can be a long, tedious wait for the next real fire. But when it comes, and flames rage out of control, the new recruits respond to the call, and with courage mixed in with fear dive headlong into the heart of peril.
Jules Naudet and his brother Gedeon wanted to make a film documenting the transition from civilian wannabe to fully vested Firefighter in the world’s most elite force – NYFD. They were prepared to film for months. Their project funded by a small group of investors, they settled in to Manhattan’s Engine 7 Ladder 1.
On September 8th, Saturday, after just a few days’ taping at the station, the film makers attended a New York funeral procession for a single firefighter killed on duty in another part of town. Thousands of fellow firefighters attended the funeral, from other cities, other states, in full uniform, lined the streets and paid their respect for a fallen comrade. The French videographers learned something that day of the fraternity and respect that exists among the professional men and women who brave the flames.
Three days later, they and their cameras would witness a calamity of unthinkable proportion.
* * * * * * *
Greg and Lauren Manning had it all. They are an American success story. They both achieved a high level of corporate status in the heart of the Big Apple (“If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.”), each on their own turf.
Greg worked in Tower 2 of the World Trade
Center, an established investment banker and Vice President of Euro Brokers
Investment Corporation. Lauren was
Senior
Vice President and Partner of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of world’s premier fixed
income securities broker/dealers. Her office was high in Tower 1.
The two were enormously happy. “Soul mates,” they would tell their friends. Each in their own Tower in the World Trade Center. Their marriage not only produced an extraordinary income and lifestyle, they are the proud parents of a little boy, Tyler.
* * * * * * * *
Jules Naudet accompanied several firefighters on a routine call into the city early morning September 11. Someone smelled natural gas coming through a drain opening downtown. This is a common call for Engine 7, Ladder 1. This footage may be a part of the final cut, Jules thought as he filmed the firemen leaning over the drain, looking for a distinct and potentially dangerous odor.
In the distance, above the familiar noise of the city streets, the camera’s audio picked up the distinct whistle of a low-flying aircraft. The whine grew louder. “What’s THAT?” someone yelled. Everyone looked up, including Jules and his camera. The screech grew deafening. While jetliners crisscross the New York skyline day and night, none fly this low, skimming just above the tops of skyscrapers surrounding Central Park at full throttle.
Jules turned, along with his camera, away from the street, around ninety degrees and upward toward the racing line of screaming jet thrusters - just in time to catch the fiery collision now etched in the memory of the global village. The film would not emerge until days after the catastrophic event. But it would be played and replayed to a stunned audience, over and over again.
It was American Airlines Flight 11 hurtling headlong on a sunny September morning into the glittering side of Tower 1 and the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald. Jules Naudet, French cameraman, and maker of a documentary on the making of a New York firefighter, captured the impact on film. The world would later watch in stunned horror.
The firefighters turned from the search for natural gas in the drainage system under the city street, shouted audible epithets also picked up by the camera, and began their race to the point of impact, now known as Ground Zero. Jules, unschooled in emergency drills, grabbed his equipment, and followed.
Before long, he was in the lobby of the burning building. His camera recording events from inside, just after the impact.
* * * * * * *
Greg stayed behind that morning. Lauren went ahead to work. But that day, she arrived at Tower 1 much later than usual. She had just entered the lobby at ground level, when she heard the loud whistle, and then felt the impact… like an earthquake shaking the foundations.
As the jumbo jet penetrated the great walls of the tower, engines revved to full capacity, the steel fuselage and wings and engines ripped through the glass into offices and lobbies and conference rooms and cubicles and hallways in a fiery blast. As the wing tanks ruptured releasing vast quantities of jet fuel, spraying flames into every opening, igniting in a hellish fury, the fire consumed everything in its hungry path. The sheer force of the loaded airliner cut through the superstructure of the tower, through steel beams and finally through elevator shafts, dumping kerosene into the openings like a drain. Down the liquid fell, eighty stories, and mixing with the oxygen in the shafts let out with a tremendous blast, the full height of the Tower. It blew through the heavy doors of the elevators, a flash of hot combustion belching directly into the lobbies. All the way to the ground floor.
Where Lauren Manning had just entered the building.
As Jules approached the tower at ground level with the firefighters of Engine 7, debris rained down from above. It was chaos. A war zone. And out of the lobby, several people escaped, running haphazard, zigzagging and screaming, bodies aflame from the explosion.
One was Lauren Manning.
Jules, stunned by the sight, could not film the scene. “No one should ever see what we saw,” he later explained, shaking his head, emotion welling up.
Several heroes tended to Lauren as she wandered aimlessly. They extinguished the flames. They rushed her to emergency care. Eighty-five percent of her body was badly burned.
Lauren later recalled - "I remember getting out of the cab and hearing an incredibly loud whistle... I plunged through the doors wondering what the noise was... a fireball exploded through the bottom of the elevator shafts, and it caught me from behind and spun me towards the doors. I grabbed the handles, and they must have become super-heated, which is what caused my hand burns. I just plunged out, knowing I was on fire. I was screaming for God to save me — to let me live for Tyler and my husband."
* * * * * * * *
When we stand before the Minister or Priest or Rabbi and the family and the congregation and, come to think of it, God Himself, and make our promise, most of us say something like, “for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health.” And then we add, “as long as we both shall live.”
Few of us have any comprehension at the time what that may well involve. We give a nod to the risks, and the possibilities, but not many of us have any real awareness of what challenges just might interrupt the bliss of the honeymoon era.
Carolyn and I returned to our church a couple weeks ago on a Sunday morning just after the trauma of losing Isaac, our first little grandson, nearly six months into our daughter’s first pregnancy. Our daughter and good son-in-law hit their first real roadblock that terrible day, January 17th. And when we returned to our church family, our emotions were still tender. These are our closest friends. They shared in our grief. They welcomed us that morning with teary hugs and affirming smiles.
We sang in worship, but barely. The words helped, “And I lift my eyes to the hills, where my help is coming.” “I have a Maker, he formed my heart; before even time began, my life was in His hands…” I didn’t sing much that morning. Neither did Carolyn. It was more a lip synch. Warm tears crept down my cheeks. But I didn’t need to hide it. Not with this group. They understood. Some of them had tears, too, right there with us.
One of the guys in the band came up to me afterwards. Doug is a dad. He’s got a great family. He plays lead guitar. He’s good. Really good.
“Ken, I was watching you during worship this morning, and it got me thinkin’,” he said matter of fact.
“You probably don’t know it, but several years ago my wife had a miscarriage…” His voice dropped off.
“Doug… I’m so sorry, man,” I said.
“Thanks, Ken. It’s OK. But that’s not my point.”
“Oh?”
“When it happened, my wife Traci was really hurting. I knew it. But you know what? I couldn’t handle it. I just walked out, looked for somethin’ else to do. I left. I don’t know that I ever talked to her about it.” And then his eyes welled up. He’s a strong guy. Tough, but tender. He went on.
“Ken, when I was thinkin’ about it this morning, it hit me hard. I was wrong. So wrong. She needed me. And I wasn’t there. It wasn’t right.”
“Wow. Doug.” His confession touched me. “Have you told her?”
Then he laughed. “What do ya mean? I just thought of it this morning. I haven’t seen her yet. I’m just gettin’ around to tellin’ you.”
“Doug. You’ve gotta tell her,” I said with a keen sense of the obvious.
“I know. You’re right,” he nodded. “I will.”
And I guess Doug knows me pretty well.
“Now Ken, don’t you go tellin’ her first,” he added.
* * * * * * *
When Lauren woke up from her doctor-induced coma, Greg was there.
The burns were so devastating, eight surgeries were performed. She fought infection, including pneumonia, and the grafts were so painful, the medical team kept her unconscious for six full weeks.
Back when she first arrived at the hospital, while she was conscious, she told her husband Greg that when her body burned, she believed she would die… but a powerful force took hold. She wanted to live. For her family. For her husband. For her little boy, Tyler. Greg said later, “I took her at her word.”
For six long weeks, Greg did not leave her side. He read to her. He told her stories. He played music on the boom-box.
Then every night he went home and wrote a long e-mail. It was a kind of journaling. But it was addressed to the hundreds, even thousands of people who knew Lauren’s story. They were interested in every detail. Many of them prayed. Good people from all over the world.
Greg settled in to poetry. He wasn’t sure she could hear, much less comprehend, but he wanted her to catch the sound his voice. And know he was there. To know something of his love for her. Prior to this, he wasn’t much of a poetry man. But in the reading, he discovered the language of love, from Shakespeare’s Sonnets to the Robert Burns classic… which, he says, is his personal favorite –
My Love is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June:
My Love is like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune!
As fair thou art, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt with the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
When the sands of life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Love,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Love,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
When Lauren regained consciousness after six weeks in a coma, Greg stood beside her bed. She said, “Hi.”
Greg
calls it the happiest moment of his life.
Lauren has pursued her “recovery” with the same determination that got her an executive position on the eightieth floor of Tower 1 in the World Trade Center with one of the nation’s foremost securities firms. Observers, including physicians and physical therapists and specialists call it remarkable. Greg calls it “Lauren’s Way.”
She is walking. She is regaining the use of her hands. She's been reunited with her little son, Tyler. The e-mails took on a life of their own. Thousands asked to be on the mailing list.
Greg and Lauren recently received a
beautiful American flag in a package from the Middle East. Master
Sergeant Rich Davin included a note. Inspired by Lauren’s story, he personally
asked an American fighter pilot to carry it along with him in a sortie over
Afghanistan, hitting the al Qaeda network. His mission was in honor of Lauren,
and was a success. The flag went to Lauren and Greg.
The e-mail messages have been compiled into a new book – “Love, Greg and Lauren.” It’s a love sonnet all its own.
* * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning, you are a leader.
The human toll of the September 11 attack has a human face. Real people suffered. And are suffering still. Real people died.
The heroes still inspire. The video images cement the reality into our awareness. We will never forget.
But emerging from the ashes of two collapsed superstructures is a new understanding of the place of family. The power of the love between a man and a woman. The healing grace of a living God. The place of a child in giving life meaning and purpose and even a will to live.
Doug made his confession to Traci. She told me. And when she did, there was a heartfelt sparkle in her eyes. She knows her husband well. And she loves him. But this new level of sensitivity made that love a little deeper.
May Lauren’s progress continue. Tyler needs her. Greg, too.
Money and appearance fade away, but not love.
Take a look outside. The roses are coming out. Pick one. A red one.
Give it to someone you love.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
LeaderFOCUS is brought to you by Good Stewardship Associates
Special Thanks for Design by my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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