A stirring tribute to the supreme sacrifice of American heroes.
A collection of remembrances of New York City firefighters and police officers who died on 9/11 as told by their parents.
Besides the physical devastation wrought by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in 2001, there was a reverberating emotional toll, especially on the families that lost loved ones. Debut author O’Donnell gathers 10 of those stories here—nine detailing the lives of firefighters and one a police detective. Each chapter provides a concise biography of the fallen, including the details leading up to the fall of the towers, and then explores the grieving aftermath of their families chiefly from the perspective of their parents. Two of the civil servants profiled were brothers—John Vigiano was a firefighter and his younger brother, Joseph, a police detective. Joseph led a life of valor. He was wounded by gunfire three times in a career dotted with commendations. The biographical vignettes cover much more than the professional outlines of their subjects; they reach back into their childhoods and furnish a full account of the kinds of men they were. Firefighter Christopher Pickford took theater classes and wrote plays and spent countless hours writing and playing music. Firefighter Capt. Tommy Haskell was a successful high school athlete and a star on the New York City Fire Department’s football team. Parents of the deceased mourn in strikingly diverse ways. Barbara Hetzel, the mother of firefighter Thomas J. Hetzel, joined a group specifically for grieving parents run by the fire department. Maureen Santora, mother of firefighter Christopher Santora, wrote two children’s books, one about a mother’s unconditional love and another about the horror of the 9/11 attacks. O’Donnell’s research is both journalistically rigorous and brimming with empathy. He’s a New York City firefighter who also responded to the attacks on the twin towers. His prose is always accessible and often affecting, especially when it depicts the profound vocational calling to which all firefighters respond: “One dominant and shared attribute among all the families is the ability to confront loss with grace and dignity—even though, at times, they were encroached upon by the media and others.”
A stirring tribute to the supreme sacrifice of American heroes.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973604-62-4
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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