The deep bonds of brotherhood
Compared to other Chicagoans, the crews of Engine 95 and Truck 26 were both slower to find out what was happening on Sept.11 and quicker to realize the import. Slower, because it was a busy day for the two fire companies, which operate out of a station on the West Side. So they could only catch a glimpse of the World Trade Center on the firehouse’s television set between runs.
Quicker, because a fireman’s experience and instincts could fill in the blanks. “The announcer was talking about people getting out,” said Rich Guditis. “I thought: My guys are going in!” His guys were New York firefighters he’d never met–343 of whom he’ll never get a chance to met because they rushed into the crippled towers even as civilians were rushing out. To every fireman, every other fireman on the face of the Earth is a brother. It is a profession in which survival depends upon a fellow crew-member being there for you when floors collapse or smoke overcomes you.
So instantly the ordeal of the New York Fire Department became part of the living history of Engine 95 and Truck 26. There is small room in their firehouse where off-duty crews hang their fire-fighting uniforms. Drewone Goldsmith Jr. , the house’s rookie fireman, calls it: “The character room.” In the rips of the veterans’ heavy coats, his mind’s eye can see the infernos their owners fought, the rescues they’ve made. It is matter of pride for firemen not to trade in their old, battered helmets. Goldsmith can hardly wait for his to have some character, too.
For a while after Sept. 11, civilians seemed to understand those kinds of feelings. Even in their inner-city neighborhood, where a uniform is a symbol of hated authority, folks waved when the pumper and hook-and-ladder went by. Lt. Mike Krolicki likes to think that others might always remember the sacrifices of their New York brethren.
“Hopefully, it’s going to be treated like the Holocaust,” he said, “something that happened 60 years ago, but isn’t forgotten.” Still, life gets back to normal pretty quick in Engine 95 and Truck 26’s small corner of the world.
“Just the other day,” said firefighter John Enright, “we got a rock thrown at us.”
Looking out, back
After the initial shock, something between a sense and a wish that the scenes on television couldn’t be real, Mark Chmielewski remembered the Gomez brothers.
He and they had worked together at the Rainbow Room atop New York’s Rockefeller Center.
He had gone on to a Chicago restaurant in the sky, the Hancock Building’s Signature Room, and was at home the morning of Sept. 11. Executive chefs get to come in late. Enrique and Jose Gomez were prep cooks, who chop and skin the ingredients chefs later assemble. The Gomez brothers were famous for the spicy, pungent soup they could throw together from last night’s leftovers: a bit of fish, some chicken, a little broth. They didn’t make it for the paying customers; it was a gift to fellow workers. “We called it the Gomez breakfast soup,” Chmielewski said. “One bowl, and you’re ready for the day.”
Looking at his watch on Sept. 11, Chmielewski already knew what must have happened. The restaurant business being an extended family, he knew the Gomezes were working at the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. And prep cooks come in early.
For days afterwards, it was quiet in the Signature Room. None of the bantering and arguing that is a kitchen’s background music. When the restaurant reopened, they served nine customers, the whole day. Looking out the Signature Room’s 95th floor windows, airplanes seem to be flying at the same altitude as your table. In the aftermath of 9-11, that view wasn’t a draw but foreboding, and, as business slacked, waiters, busboys and kitchen staff had to be put on reduced hours until the reservation book filled up again, at Christmas.
The Hancock put in new security measures that forces Chmielewski to go through electronic checkpoints, five times a day, to get down to the loading dock to inspect his purveyors’ deliveries. But after a while, he notes, you get accustomed to changes in your routine. You might even forget what occasioned them–except that every so often, in the aroma of a bubbling stockpot, you get a whiff of the Gomez brothers’ breakfast soup.
A reaffirmation of the life force
Sometime last June, delivery-room nurses at Loyola Medical Center noticed something funny. Their workload usually goes in spurts. One day, they’ll help a lot of babies get born; the next, not so many. But this time, once the curve spiked, it didn’t start down again.
In a ten-day period, 76 babies were delivered–twice the usual number. So the nurses got out the conception calculators they dub “The Wheel of Fortune.” Dial a date on its cardboard face and it shows the corresponding one, nine months earlier. This time, it pointed to Sept. 11. That was both unexpected and reassuring. Working in a hospital, notes nurse Crystal Pullen, is a lot like what you see on “ER.” Nurses and doctors are witness to pain and grief.
A hospital is where people go to die. But others go there to give birth, and that is why Pullen and other delivery-room staff love coming to work in the morning. They are in the business of life. “No matter how many births you’ve attended, it’s always a miracle,” said Paula White, an obstetrics resident. Still, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, some staffers had second thoughts. “You get a feeling that, if terrible things like that can happen,” Pullen said, “why would you ever want to bring kids into the world?” The feeling was hard to shake.
But then came what Bridget Uiglione calls ‘the baby tsunami”–one birth after another, day after day, until the new-born nursery became a sea of babies. For a while, it looked like they’d soon run out of room for so much as one more.
Finally, it dawned on them, that some of those new mothers and fathers must have grasped something they had missed. “Life has to go on; you can’t let evil folks get the best of you,” said nurse Sarah Winter, pointing to the latest crop of newborns. “People must have realized you can’t put off things for tomorrow. There might not be a tomorrow.”
Tending the light of patriotism
On September 12, Bill Grzonka brought a good-sized flag into the American Slovak Club and pinned to the wall opposite the bar. The following day, Jerry O’Drobnik came by with a string of Christmas tree lights. Jerry does the annual holiday decorations in the club, for almost a century a fixture of the working-class social scene in Whiting, Indiana. They ran the light bulbs around the flag, to make a sort of frame, and tipped a ceiling fixture so it shines on Old Glory. It’s not that the members are a sober lot, or pretend to dwell on the nation’s tragedy more than others. Life up and down the Slovak Club bar is more a matter of horseplay than reflection. A regular ritual follows each member through the front door: A barrage of insults, followed by myriad offers to buy the new arrival a drink. But they do like flags here.
They’ve always flown an American flag outside the club, and say they were flying Whiting’s flag long before the city fathers put one in front of town hall. It puzzles them that other Americans didn’t share their feeling until last year. “It shouldn’t have taken Sept. 11 to make people go out and buy a flag,” said Dan Kazmierski. Respect for tradition is an unwritten bylaw for the club, which had its origins as a fraternal society providing their forebears insurance policies that main-line companies didn’t write for immigrant steel mill and oil refinery workers. In the back room, where older members while away retirement years putting together jig-saw puzzles, a poster still commemorates local Slovak boys who went off to fight in World War I.
“My father belonged to the Moose and the Slovak Club,” said John Minax, still tending bar at 75. “When we boys turned 21, you had to join both.” Love of country, undying hatred for its enemies, is similarly thought of here as something that ought to be as automatic as an involuntary reflex, as enduring as love for your parents and your kids. Grzonka’s flag across from the bar will be there forever, members say. “When we close up and turn out the other lights, we leave the one over the flag burning all night,” saidm Bob Vasilko. “It’s the right thing to do, don’t you think?”
