Chicken Soup for the Soul of America Read Free Page B

Beaven
    [EDITORS’ NOTE: When Manhattan singer/composer Anne Hampton Callaway heard the Vedic prayer, “Let Us Be United,” she was inspired to put it to music. Later, Anne recorded the song with Sonali and members of the Siddha Yoga International Choir. “Let Us Be United” is available through the SYDA Foundation at (888) 422-3334 or at www.letusbeunited.org where you can hear a preview. All proceeds will go to support the work of nonprofit organizations, including Save the Children, the SYDA Foundation and The PRASAD Project. For specific information regarding these organizations, please see the previously mentioned Web site. ]
    Contributions to The Alan Beaven Family Fund can be sent to 2000 Powell St., Suite 1605, Emeryville, CA 94608.

    Sonali sings at the California Day of Remembrance.
    San Francisco Chronicle/ Darryl Bush.

Do Unto Others
    C ourage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
    Ambrose Redmoon
    Of all the sadness that came out of September 11, one story shines like a jewel in the dust. It is a story of giving and receiving—a story of saving and being saved and not knowing which is which—the story of the firefighters of Ladder Company 6 and Josephine.
    More than three hundred firefighters perished in the tragedy of the World Trade Center. On September 29, at a time when the country was desperate for good news, NBC Dateline reported “The Miracle of Ladder Company 6.” By the time I sat around their table in the back of the firehouse two weeks later and heard them recount it, the firefighters of Ladder 6 had said these words many times, but every word was still flooded with the vibrant sound of their gratitude.
    They had gone to the World Trade Center that day to give. To rescue. That’s what firefighters do. They run into burning buildings against instinct and nature, while the rest of us are running out, trying to save our own lives. They had entered the building at Number One, as had so many of their brothers, after the first plane had mortally wounded it. People were streaming down beside them, saying words of thanks and encouragement to them, offering them drinks from the machines and telling them they should get a pay raise.
    They, in turn, offered words of encouragement back. “It’s over for you,” the firefighters said to those lucky enough to be exiting. “Go out through the lobby and go home now. You’re okay.”
    The stairwells were narrow, only room enough for one person to move past another in either direction. Each of the firefighters climbing the steps carried at least a hundred pounds of equipment. At the twenty-seventh floor, some of them learned that the other tower had gone down, and the effort to save the building was rejected for the more pressing job of saving the people. Somehow in all the confusion, somewhere between the twelfth and fifteenth floors, the men of Ladder 6 were entrusted with the safety of a sixty-year-old bookkeeper named Josephine Harris. Josephine worked on the seventy-third floor, and she had been trudging down those sixty flights of steps through smoke and heat until her desire and ability to go on seemed completely exhausted.
    Now getting her safely out was their assignment. So, despite her unwillingness to continue down the stairs, the firefighters encouraged her on. They reminded her of her grandchildren, who were waiting for her when she escaped the building. They told her she could do it. They cajoled. They encouraged. They promised to get her out if she would just keep moving.
    On the fourth floor, she finally stopped in her tracks. She could not take another step. Would not take another step. She seemed willing to let them go on without her, but she was done walking. Never even thinking about leaving her, the firefighters began looking around for a chair on which to carry her down the rest of the stairs.
    They were tired, too, and