The heroic response of educators and other public employees to the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, brought long-overdue respect and recognition to the contributions of educators, firefighters and police officers, healthcare professionals, and state and local government workers. In the midst of tragedy and sorrow, these men and women displayed extraordinary character and courage.

Here American Teacher profiles five AFT members. Their professionalism and dedication to the people and the institutions they serve reflect the spirit of every union colleague who emerged as a hero on Sept. 11 and the days that followed.

COMFORT FOR THE FAMILIES

Debbie Egel, a mental health nurse in Queens, went to Ground Zero a few weeks after the September attack. "I wanted to feel empowered, and I wanted to do something," Egel recalls.

Heeding the call for mental health nurses to help families with crisis and grief counseling, Egel headed to the pier on 54th Street. There, she elected to ride the boat that took victims' families to Ground Zero.

During her three-day stint, Egel met dozens of families, many of whom still believed that their loved ones would be found. "I felt bad for the wives and the mothers, but I felt worse for the children," she says.

In the midst of all the devastation at the site, the beauty of the human spirit came through, notes Egel, a member of the AFT-affiliated Public Employees Federation. When the families stepped off the boat, she recalls, the construction workers, police officers and firefighters who were working there stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads in silence until the families had passed by.

Egel remembers one child in particular: a withdrawn young boy who had lost his father. At the pier, volunteers were handing out all sorts of things--tissues, hardhats and Teddy bears. "I asked him if he wanted a Teddy bear," Egel says. Although he was reluctant at first, he took it.

Later, when the families had returned from Ground Zero, the boy's aunt approached Egel to tell her how her nephew had stood on the grassy plot of land that had become a makeshift memorial to the victims. He had two Teddy bears and a dilemma; he wasn't sure what to do with them. His aunt "didn't know that I had given him one of the Teddy bears," Egel says. The boy's aunt then told Egel that the boy eventually left one bear at the site for his father and kept the other; that way he and his father would always have the same thing.
 

'IN THE BOX' AT GROUND ZERO

Dr. Fazal Hussain parries death virtually every day. The United University Professions member is a radiation oncologist, treating cancer patients at the State University of New York-Brooklyn Health Sciences Center.

But the three weeks he spent "in the box" at Ground Zero changed him as nothing else has, he says.

On Sept. 11, he watched with colleagues as television revealed the horror unfolding just a few miles away. Their hospital went on standby to receive the patients who never arrived.

A week later, he was deployed in his capacity as a captain in the Air National Guard to help with rescue and recovery at the site of the attacks. A commander of the public health section of the Guard for the state of New York, Hussain set up a battalion aid station--or hospital--near the center of rubble. In the end, the experience was beyond his imagination, he says.

"You prepare for war outside the homeland, not to be summoned five miles away."

The numbers, the magnitude of people lost, of families robbed, were devastating to a medical man who fights for the lives of patients one at a time. Now, he fights even harder.

"It has changed my outlook. My heart has always gone out to people. Now, it goes out more," he emphasizes.

Since Sept. 11, Hussain's awareness of the 3,000 suddenly lost has made him work that much harder to serve the living who come through his center's doors. "They come in as cancer patients with no way to pay. I have been helping them in arenas that I should not worry about, such as finding sources" to help cover costs.
 

AN ANCHOR FOR STUDENTS

The question paid a visit to Eric Lewis early one April morning and brought a tear to the Ketcham Elementary School counselor's eye on an otherwise routine commute to school. Stubborn and pain-filled, the question had insinuated itself into life at Ketcham, one of three District of Columbia schools to lose staff and students on Sept. 11.

Why? Why our school? Why our teachers and students?

Newspapers would report that three District teachers accompanying three students on a National Geographic ecology expedition lost their lives aboard a hijacked jet that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Lost were sixth-graders Rodney Dickens, Asia Cottom and Bernard Brown, and teachers James Debeuneure, Sarah Clark and Hilda Taylor. Students understood that. What they didn't get is why--a question that fed on uncertainty, posited itself without warning in school meetings and student-counselor conferences and hung heavy over Ketcham, Leckie Elementary, Backus Middle and the District public school system for much of the 2001-02 school year. And it will be there this fall to greet students on the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11.

We won't find answers to why, Lewis gently reminds students and, at times, himself. We need to ask, what now? Hatred, cruelty, disregard for others--emotions that held sway that September morning--can be countered with kindness, consideration and respect, Lewis tells them. "Be 'peaceful warriors,' even in all the small things," he explains.
 

CALM AMID THE CHAOS

High school teacher Portia Siddiq-Bilal walked into a New York City public restroom, brushed the gray dust from her clothes and performed ablution, a Muslim ritual of washing before prayer. On this day, the afternoon of Sept. 11, there was much to grieve. And much to be thankful for.

Hours earlier, Siddiq-Bilal and other staff members at the High School of Economics and Finance were shepherding their students to safety after two jetliners slammed into the Twin Towers, just a short block from the school. Hours earlier, students and staff were running for their lives as a hellish cloud of dust and debris descended upon lower Manhattan and rolled down the darkened city streets. Some students ran to the river. Some hopped ferries and tugboats out of Manhattan.

Others, like Siddiq-Bilal and her students, joined the long, grim line of ordinary New Yorkers walking north along FDR drive to the Brooklyn Bridge--a passage to safety on a day when death would claim innocent lives by the thousands.

Spared this tragedy, however, were the schoolchildren. None died or was seriously injured on Sept. 11. Teachers like Siddiq-Bilal made sure of that. She and other educators responded to the chaos, confusion and sheer panic of the moment with calm reassurances and clear directions to their kids. They made a lifesaving difference.

Siddiq-Bilal remembers thanking God for sparing her students and her co-workers on this darkest of days. She remembers thanking God for keeping her and other educators calm and focused at a time when it mattered most. She remembers thanking God for being alive.

"I walked, I prayed ... and eventually I cried."
 

'THERE WERE NO PATIENTS TO TREAT'

Joel Vetter was listening to the radio Sept. 11 as he laid bricks for a poolside patio in his backyard on Long Island. That was when he first learned that an airliner had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Within minutes, his pager went off. "While I was on the phone with my office, the second plane crashed" into the south tower, says Vetter, a state flight paramedic at SUNY-Stony Brook Medical Center assigned to the aviation unit of the Suffolk County (N.Y.) Police Department. It was time to go to work.

Vetter headed to Long Island's MacArthur Airport where he and two police department pilots took off in an MD902 Explorer helicopter. It was quiet on the radar--air traffic nationwide had been grounded. As the crew flew along the south shore of Long Island, Vetter says, smoke covered the entire city skyline.

In the blink of an eye, "a little dot dropped from [behind] and it was a Navy fighter jet--something I have never seen in my life," says the paramedic, noting that the fighter jet was sent by air traffic control to verify "we were who we said we were."

During the next 10 to 12 hours, "we flew in and out of lower Manhattan with necessary resources and personnel," says Vetter, a member of the New York State Public Employees Federation. "We functioned in a new alternative mode."

The role change was unsettling for Vetter, who has worked in emergency services for 14 years, nine of them as a paramedic. "We respond to major accidents or incidents with potentially multiple patients with grave injuries," Vetter points out. "The difference between that and Sept. 11 was that there were no patients to treat. What makes it hard for us to deal with is not being able to actually physically help someone. That is part of our coping mechanism."