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To: VOA
Brave American Bump. V's wife.
13 posted on 10/13/2002 9:15:27 AM PDT by ventana
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To: ventana; ALOHA RONNIE; PhiKapMom; OKSooner
To those I ping...thanks to V's wife for the ping...
and I apologize for pinging folks again for this article.
Why not ping for visibility and traffic on a Sunday for the memory of a good man...

Then, on September 11, 2001, he faced the ultimate test.

Other factoids about the Rescorla story that hit me:

1. He was the last man out of the WTC tower that the radical Islamists (from a mosque/
Afghan resettlement center in NYC funded by Osama) failed to topple in 1993.

2. Rescorla and his friend Hall (a Muslim convert, how 'bout that?) had already figured
it would be an attack from the air the next time the radical Islamists came for the WTC Towers.
Of course, Rescorla got a reputation as an obsessive-compulsive for harping on this scenario.

3. IIRC, Rescorla was originally suppossed to be on vacation on Sept. 11, 2001. I think he
traded vacation days with a fellow worker.

To me the real takehome message of Rescorla's life and sacrifice is this:
He saw the bullet coming...and on the day it arrived, he didn't flinch.
Even though probably no one would have blamed him for his first sweep and sheparding the
bulk of his charges down the stairs.
He knew the risk, stayed and paid the price.

A book review posted here (Business Week?) slammed the book for being too reverential
to Rescorla; I think the reviewers argument was Rescorla was made to look too saintly.

For me, just from what I've heard, I suspect that Rescorla was probably bigger than life,
maybe not always easy to get along with every day...but showed the good example of
what a fallible human can rise to in the clutch.
And Rescorla seemed to have made this sort of performance a major part of his life-style.
We're just lucky (especially the Morgan-Stanley employees that escaped) that
this man (not a saint) was around at the right time.

Oh, I'll also turn this into an OU Sooner bump, as Rescorla was a graduate of
the University of Oklahoma earned degrees there, including his law degree.
I suspect he may not get much in the way of public recognition there as
his resume says he was a "mercenary" in Africa before he found a new home in the USA.
14 posted on 10/13/2002 10:43:47 AM PDT by VOA
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