I find myself hoping the eagle tears some chunks of him for its young...
Posted on 09/06/2006 8:52:24 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
In the next few days you’ll hear a lot about the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001. I’d like to tell you about just two of them, two people whose names I look for every time I see a list of the casualties. Let me tell you about Ted’s wife and Ryan and Dylan’s dad.
Barbara Olson started out as a ballerina and ended up as a famous lawyer. She danced with the San Francisco Ballet and the Harkness Ballet in New York City, then moved on to Hollywood because working as an assistant producer would allow her to save up for law school. She worked for Stacy Keach’s production company and HBO before going to Yeshiva University. She eventually served as an Assistant U.S. attorney and as chief investigative counsel for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, where she looked into Travelgate and Filegate. After the publication of her bestseller “Hell to Pay” she became a frequent guest on TV political shows to represent the conservative point of view.
Her husband Ted said she was a popular guest because she was “very direct” but at the same time “very pleasant.” She could disagree without a trace of rancor, a sunny smile on her beautiful face. But she wasn’t just a talking head. “She was always full of energy, sparkling all the time,” her husband told Newsday, adding that “his three small granddaughters would follow her around ‘like little ducks’” and “thought she was the best thing in the world.”
Barbara was on Flight 77 because she had shifted her schedule to spend more time with Ted for his birthday. He talked to her just before she died. Ted Olson was the Solicitor General at the time, and she called to tell him they’d been hijacked, asking him what she should tell the pilot. They had time to discuss personal matters and reassure each other, and then, he said, “the connection was broken.” Not long after that, Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.
John Moran also had an ambition to be a lawyer and held a law degree from Fordham University. But firefighting was the family business and more suited to his personality, so he joined the FDNY. In an irony that must be especially painful for her, John met his wife Kim on September 11, 1990. His fire station was across the street from her apartment. “I just fell in love with him instantly,” she said a few days after his death, while she and their sons, 7 year old Ryan and 4 year old Dylan, were still hoping he’d come home.
John didn’t have to be in the World Trade Center that day. A Battalion Chief with 22 years of service, he was part of the department’s Special Operations Command, which oversees special rescue companies, fireboats, hazmat units and major incidents. He had just finished a shift, but when the call came in, he “jumped in the truck and away they went,” Kim said.
John’s funeral was conducted by his uncle, Father Paul Moran. John was lost he said, on “a mission of love.” Mayor Giuliani asked for the mourners to give John a standing ovation and said he wanted the Moran boys “to understand for their entire life that their father is a great man.” His brother Michael, a firefighter who survived serving at the Trade Center—and later became famous for defiantly telling Osama bin-Laden to come to Rockaway and kiss his “royal Irish ass”—said “I didn't see him there that day, but now I see him all the time.”
But the best eulogy a man could ask for was what his relatives told Newsday just a few days after his death. Kim Moran said, “He's the love of my life…a wonderful father, a great husband. There's nobody more generous than John.” His cousin, Democrat Congressman Joe Crowley described him as “a Viking Irishman who has calves thicker than my thighs, the heart of lion and touch of a teddy bear.”
I picked John and Barbara because they were both members of Free Republic, an internet forum I’ve posted to for years, but I didn’t know either of them. I didn’t even cross paths with them and “know” them in the online sense, as far as I remember. But that’s irrelevant. I could have picked any of those we lost that day and found something glorious or generous or beautiful about them that would have amazed you the way John’s bravery and Barbara’s joy and determination amaze me.
We didn’t lose almost 3,000 people that day. We lost one wonderful person at a time, almost 3,000 times.
In a sense, Giuliani was right on that bright September afternoon when he said that we had lost “more than we can bear.”
Thanks for posting that. I'll try to make time to view it...still on dialup here.
I find myself hoping the eagle tears some chunks of him for its young...
Great piece. Would you please add me to your ping list? Thanks.
Me, too!
Thank you, and you're added! Next piece runs on September 21.
What a wonderful tribute. Perhaps we could put something special up on their profile pages.....
God bless them both. I pray that if I ever face what they did, I'll have the courage to fight also.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You will, if it comes.
AMEN!!
Oh man... did you have to make me cry, Silverback? Thanks for the tribute. I remember that guy when he said Bin Laden could kiss his a#$.
Yeah, whenever I hear these morons talk about how WE detonated the towers, I want to scream. I watched a very excellent PBS show about the man who designed the Trade Center and it showed in great detail EXACTLY how a plane could make each tower come down in exactly the manner in which it did. They went into all the structural stuff and it was fascinating, even though I'm neither an engineeer nor architect. These people want to believe everyone is EVIL but the actual EVIL people.
bump
Thank you Mr. Silverback. It's good to remember. Ieep me on you list.
Thank you Mr. Silverback. It's good to remember. Ieep me on you list.
Yep, I did. Sorry about that. :-)
I remember that guy when he said Bin Laden could kiss his a#$.
I remember I was at the doctor's office on 12 November that year when that 757 crashed into Queens, and I remember thinking, "Is that bin-Laden's doing? I know the guy's a hateful piece of scum, but come on!" Turned out not to be a terrorist act, but what a bizarre coincidence!
Thanks!
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