Project Rebirth (17 page)

Tim was able to put a bit of distance between himself and the carnage, take a deep breath, and try to reason out the most important next steps. Shortly thereafter, he heard that same foreboding creak again. “I saw the top of Tower One lean over and then disappear,” he recounts somberly. “I knew Terry was in there.”

Terry Hatton, captain of Rescue 1, died, along with 342 other firefighters who headed high into the burning towers on September 11, 2001. Tim personally knew 93 of them.

Tim grew up in suburban Connecticut, where most of the fathers were more akin to Ward Cleaver than to Clark Kent. The insurance business was a big employer among the families in Tim's cohesive, middle-class neighborhood, but his father was actually a research scientist for United Technologies, a defense contractor. It often felt as if his little town was insulated from the cultural shifts going on in the late sixties; women were still stay-at-home moms, sometimes frustrated mothers, and men were suited, mostly absent fathers.

Even as a child, Tim was surrounded by a brotherhood. He was one of five kids, with only one girl in the mix. He and his brother Chris would watch the television police drama
Adam-12,
and then pretend they were cops staking out the perimeter and dodging danger among the broken-down cars in the backyard. Their true heroes were paramedics Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto from another hit drama of the early seventies,
Emergency!
which mixed actionadventure and medical drama. They were Boy Scouts together in Troop 341.

While he loved the camaraderie of having so many brothers, by high school he was feeling undeniably lost. He didn't like school, particularly because he didn't like to be told what to do. Tim's struggle with authority was seeded in those early days of rebelling against his teachers and school administrators.

He'd rather be playing ice hockey at Mill Pond down by the tracks across from his house or smoking cigars in the fort that he and his boys built. From the age of about twelve until seventeen, when Tim's parents finally got divorced, the family was often in turmoil—fights, financial woes, and disappointment after disappointment. Tim longed for a different kind of life from the unhappy suburban one he had known. He longed for a vocation with more adrenaline than life insurance policies or lab research. He wanted to feel like he really mattered.

Jay, a childhood friend, was the first one who introduced Tim to the excitement of chasing fires. They would sit in Jay's car, talking, and listening to the squawk of the radio scanner. When the dispatcher announced that a fire had broken out, it was like Jay and Tim had won the jackpot. They'd start up the engine and hightail it toward the site, prepared to watch the real heroes fight the flames. Before long, they became junior firemen together. Tim reflects, “That steered me away from trouble and gave me a true passion to be a fireman. I enjoyed the freedom of going into a fire and coming out triumphant.”

Being a firefighter comes with the reward of brotherhood, but also the risk of great harm. It is a dangerous profession that requires sacrifice, as reflected in the sacred oath of those who fight fires for a living:

The burden of death is the ultimate sacrifice of firefighters and their families everywhere—the great price that comes with wearing the uniform, with feeling that deep sense of purpose, with helping people. Tim explains, “They all did something for us that is bigger than we even realize now. Over time we will see what they did for us.”

For Tim, the sacrifice is not just noble or abstract. It is personal: “It's hard when it's your friends that did that. I'm very proud of them. I don't know that a lot of people realize the gravity of what happened. It's something that will be told over time, historically, by our children's children.”

In the meantime, Tim and his brother Chris pitched in with the recovery effort. Together, united by a sense of duty and deep integrity, they spent the first four months following the September 11th attacks working eighteen-plus-hour days at Ground Zero and at the forward command post in the OEM. They—like Brian and Charles and so many other generous and inexhaustible souls—did what needed to be done, whether that was coordinating communication between city agencies, securing necessary gear and tools for the rescue and recovery workers, or rolling up their own sleeves and digging through the rubble.

Tim found new purpose doing the heavy lifting at Ground Zero, but he also found meaning in doing the little things that he believes Terry would have done had he lived. “People don't remember that someone has to take the garbage out, cut the lawn, hang the mirror, move the furniture, and give a hug,” Tim explains. He has vowed to step in where his friends left off, to be a helping hand and an emotional support to his friends' grieving widows, mothers, and fathers as much as he can.

Tim listens to the sound of his paint roller against the naked wall—up and down, up and down, in a soothing rhythm—as he paints the walls of baby Terri's bedroom pansy pink. Just ten days after the attacks, Beth found out that she was pregnant with her husband Terry's child—their first and only. Tears roll down Tim's cheeks, even though it feels good to help out. It's a relief to focus on the mundane—not the loss of ninety-three personal friends, but the installation of a light fixture soft enough that it won't hurt a baby's newborn eyes. In the face of such vast and profound loss, Tim craves the simple and the mindless, the sound of that paint roller, the space to let tears come without self-consciousness.

Those quiet moments of grief are soon crowded out by big moves that Tim feels he must make in order to play his part in the nation's recovery. When Secretary Tommy Thompson of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calls in July of 2002 and asks for Tim's help coordinating the response to anthrax, he is convinced that it is the next step in his predetermined path. He explains, “My fate, although I didn't realize it, is to go to Washington and work on a different scale. We can share our experiences with the whole country, instead of just New York City. We can make things better.”

Before long, Tim's work is collapsed into the Department of Homeland Security, which was formed in 2003 from a restructuring of preexisting federal agencies—the biggest government reorganization in American history. Its mission is to protect America from future terrorist attacks, as well as respond when natural disasters strike. It is now the third largest Cabinet department, with more than two hundred thousand employees and a $50 billion average annual budget.

When Tim signed on, DHS was still in its early stages, grappling to figure out the most effective structures and systems to prevent and prepare for future attacks and emergencies. Tim dove into his work—relieved at the distraction of twelve-hour days, seven days a week. Underneath the demands of work, however, he felt a sadness more profound than any he had ever known. He was plagued by a sense of unceasing loneliness.

His brother Chris left his own family behind to move down to Washington, D.C., hoping to give his mourning brother some companionship, at least temporarily. Tim remembers those days fondly: “We worked together, had dinner together, had a cigar together, then we'd go to sleep, get up, and do it all again. I will love my brother forever for that.”

But eventually Chris would have to go back to Providence to be near his children, who had needs of their own. Without the salve of brotherhood, Tim's loneliness calcified. His sense that he was not, as he'd hoped, in the right place, doing the right thing, began to gnaw at him daily. He remembered the crystal-clear thought that had echoed in his brain as he clung to that column as the world crashed down around him: “By being separate from him I broke the promise that I made to myself—that if I lived, I would be near my brother for the rest of my life.”

On the evening of February 20, 2003, fate stepped in once again. Chris called Tim at about midnight and told him to turn on the television. Tim saw the first breaking news reports about a deadly night-club fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island. It appeared to be very bad.

Twenty hours later, Tim was there, working with emergency personnel and city and state health officials, at the request of Secretary Thompson. Twenty-four hours after that, Tim had stepped into a role advising Governor Donald L. Carcieri, whose team had been in office for only thirty days, on a range of emergency issues. They would go on to create the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, identifying ninety-six badly burned bodies in just three days and returning their remains to their loved ones.

The fire began in that nightclub when one of the night's acts used pyrotechnics that ignited flammable sound-insulation foam on the walls and ceilings around the stage. Within just five and half minutes, the whole club was engulfed in flames, the heavy smoke obscuring the exits and making it difficult for people to find their way to safety. More than 230 people were injured and 100 were killed, making it the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in American history.

Tim's temporary detail to Rhode Island would eventually lead to a full-time position helping the governor coordinate all the state's public safety agencies. He moved to Providence, where he could be near his brother Chris once again and continue his firefighter brothers' legacies of assisting civilians in emergencies.

On September 8, 2003, Tim and his brother Chris stood together among a sea of thousands of other brave men and women in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, at the very last funeral for a firefighter killed on September 11. The wake and church service for Mike Ragusa, age twenty-nine at the time of his death, were over, and everyone stood outside. Helicopters flew overhead in the clear blue sky. People sniffled quietly, overcome with the emotion of finally being at the end of the official mourning rituals. The firefighters held formation, held their breath, held their pain.

The pipe band marched by while the trumpeters played taps for the 343rd firefighter since September 11, 2001. Tim explains, “The pipe band made a promise that they would not play a happy song until the last fireman was buried. They came back the opposite way and played two of the happiest songs that they knew. As they went by, the whole line of five thousand firemen gave them a standing ovation for, like, ten minutes.

“It was kind of closure for us, you know,” he goes on. “Especially for the band. I don't know if you can imagine playing these sad dirges more than 343 times. It was a good sign for us, time to move forward and try and start seeing the happy things in life again.”

Being in Rhode Island had its perks. Tim took daily walks by the water, reflecting on his life and its many twists and turns. He had a new hero in Governor Carcieri—“After so many bad things,” Tim describes, “he represents honesty.” Tim was also regularly seeing a counselor, whom he instantly trusted, as she had also seen his brother. And best of all, he was able to see Chris regularly. “We yakety-yak like two old washwomen,” Tim jokes. “When I'm with him, that's all I need. I don't need anything else in my life. He fulfills me.”

Tim also craved a deeper, more consistent relationship with the families that his friends in New York left behind. “It's sometimes hard for us to have a relationship,” he explains. “Some of these folks who were so horribly impacted—[they] need to leave that whole life behind. That's the only way they can survive. Maybe these folks don't really need me in their lives anymore. It's not out of a lack of love, but out of pain.”

Terry's wife, Beth, moved to Long Island to live a quieter, easier life. Baby Terri, not such a baby any longer, thrived in elementary school. Tim dreams of taking her down to Ground Zero when the Freedom Tower is finally finished, pointing to the top of the building way up in the sky, and telling her that this is her daddy's legacy.

Tim needed to feel needed. He worked excessively at his new job in Rhode Island, trying to stave off the dark thoughts and deep sadness by spending hours and hours at his desk. Some days were good. He felt as if he was really building support for a more comprehensive emergency plan for Rhode Island, really making a difference in people's lives. Some days were bad. He would stare at his computer screen and a dead blankness would fill his mind. At these moments, he felt a fatigue unlike anything he'd ever experienced, as if his very soul were tired. “Sometimes I'll just sit there and cry quietly,” Tim explains.