Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Niels Jorgensen,
00:00:03 a New York firefighter for over 21 years
00:00:06 who was there at Ground Zero on September 11th, 2001.
00:00:11 He was forced to retire because of the leukemia
00:00:14 he contracted from cleaning up Ground Zero.
00:00:17 This podcast tells his story,
00:00:20 and the story of other great men and women
00:00:22 who were there that day.
00:00:24 Some of the stories we talk about
00:00:26 are part of a new limited podcast series
00:00:28 that Niels hosts called 20 for 20,
00:00:32 with 20 episodes for the 20 years since 9 11.
00:00:36 To support this podcast,
00:00:38 please check out our sponsors in the description.
00:00:41 As a side note, please allow me to say a few words
00:00:44 about the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001.
00:00:49 I was in downtown Chicago on that day,
00:00:51 lost in the mundane busyness of an early Tuesday morning.
00:00:55 At that time, I was already fascinated by human nature,
00:00:59 the best and the worst of it,
00:01:02 exploring it through the study of history and literature.
00:01:05 In the years before, as a young boy growing up in Russia,
00:01:09 I saw chaos, uncertainty, and desperation
00:01:12 in the Soviet Union of the 1990s,
00:01:14 wrapping up a century of war and suffering.
00:01:18 But after coming to America for me,
00:01:20 there was a sense of hope, like all of it was behind us,
00:01:24 a bad dream to be forgotten
00:01:26 as we enter into the new century.
00:01:29 On 9 11, when I saw the news
00:01:32 of the second plane hitting the towers,
00:01:34 my sense of hope had changed.
00:01:37 I understood that the 21st century,
00:01:40 like the century before, would too have its tragedies,
00:01:43 its evildoers, its wars, and its suffering.
00:01:48 And unlike the history books,
00:01:50 these stories will involve all of us.
00:01:53 They will involve me in however small
00:01:56 and insignificant a role,
00:01:58 but one that nevertheless carries the responsibility
00:02:01 to help.
00:02:03 I became an American that day, a citizen of the world.
00:02:08 I felt the common humanity in all of us.
00:02:10 I felt the unity and the love in the days that followed.
00:02:13 And I think most of the world shared in this feeling
00:02:16 that we are all in this together.
00:02:18 Evil cannot defeat the human spirit.
00:02:21 There were many heroes sung and unsung on that day
00:02:24 and in the years after.
00:02:27 Often politicians fail to rightfully honor the service
00:02:30 and sacrifice of these heroes.
00:02:32 There’s much I could say about that,
00:02:35 but I don’t want to waste my words
00:02:37 on the failures of weak leaders.
00:02:39 Instead, I want to say thank you
00:02:41 to the men and women who rushed to Ground Zero to help,
00:02:45 who put on a uniform to serve,
00:02:47 who make me proud to be an American and a human being,
00:02:50 and give me hope about the future of our civilization
00:02:54 here on a small spinning rock
00:02:57 that despite the long odds
00:02:59 keeps kindling the fire of human consciousness and love.
00:03:04 This is the Lex Friedman podcast
00:03:06 and here is my conversation with Niels Jorgensen.
00:03:11 Take me through the day of September 11th, 2001
00:03:14 as you experienced it, as you lived it.
00:03:17 September 11th, 2001 was a bright, beautiful,
00:03:20 sunny Tuesday morning.
00:03:22 It was a late summer.
00:03:25 There’s a lot of folks who go to the beaches in New Jersey
00:03:27 and call it the short summer.
00:03:29 Everybody’s left there for Labor Day,
00:03:30 but it’s still beautiful enough to enjoy the weather.
00:03:35 I left my house about 6.30 in the morning
00:03:37 and my four and a half year old daughter said to me,
00:03:42 daddy, which truck are you driving today, the fire truck,
00:03:47 the oil truck, or the boar’s head truck?
00:03:49 Because I had three jobs at the time.
00:03:52 Most New York City firefighters and police officers, EMS,
00:03:56 we don’t make the most amount of money.
00:03:58 So in order to live in that city, you have to hustle.
00:04:01 And my wife stayed at home raising the children.
00:04:05 So my daughter said, oh, so you should be safe
00:04:08 because you’re on the oil truck.
00:04:10 I told her I was going on the oil truck that day.
00:04:13 So she said, you should be safe today, daddy.
00:04:14 So I left and worked for this great company
00:04:18 on the North Shore, Staten Island, Quinlan Fuel.
00:04:20 Very nice people, treated me very well.
00:04:23 And it was my first day back actually for the winter season.
00:04:27 Usually get laid off a couple months in the summer
00:04:30 because things, you know, too hot to need oil.
00:04:33 So I took the truck, started my route that day
00:04:36 and plane to New Jersey.
00:04:38 And plane hit the tower.
00:04:42 So initially I’m like, oh, it’s probably
00:04:44 some silly Lear jet pilot.
00:04:46 And he veered off track to get a better picture
00:04:48 for a client and he hit the building.
00:04:50 Probably hit a, you know, bad turbulence, gust of wind.
00:04:55 It’s very windy down in that area in Manhattan.
00:04:57 So that was my first thought.
00:04:58 Can we pause there for a second?
00:05:00 So 6.30 a.m. you wake up, you leave,
00:05:03 and then the plane hits at 8.45 a.m.
00:05:08 It’s just interesting how you phrase it.
00:05:11 So how did you hear that a plane hit something?
00:05:16 I’m a big news radio guy, news guy, bit of a buff.
00:05:20 I’ve been that way since I was a kid
00:05:21 and I had the news radio on the local New York radio station.
00:05:26 And as I was driving the truck,
00:05:28 I heard, you know, an emergency report.
00:05:33 This just in, aircraft has just struck
00:05:35 the World Trade Center.
00:05:37 And where Quinlan’s is located,
00:05:39 it’s on the north rim of Staten Island,
00:05:41 which is right on New York Harbor.
00:05:43 And you could see Statue of Liberty,
00:05:46 you know, a mile or two away in your distance.
00:05:48 And then past that is the towers.
00:05:51 So I just literally stopped the truck and looked out
00:05:54 and I saw the smoke.
00:05:56 So there was smoke?
00:05:57 Oh, it was dark, black smoke.
00:05:58 It was just, yeah, I mean,
00:05:59 it was burning fully at that point.
00:06:03 Did you have fear of what the hell happened?
00:06:06 Or is it? I was initially scared
00:06:08 for anybody involved.
00:06:10 I realized, I said, there’s gonna be lots of fatalities,
00:06:13 obviously, depending on the size of the aircraft.
00:06:15 And, you know, the business day there
00:06:19 had started probably at 8, 8.30.
00:06:21 So those buildings should have been packed at that moment.
00:06:24 So that was a thought that crossed my mind.
00:06:27 But from our being responder perspective,
00:06:31 if you’re off duty, normally you do not go to a scene
00:06:35 that they don’t want you to
00:06:37 because of accountability and safety.
00:06:40 The on duty platoon will handle it.
00:06:42 And if it’s something very horrific,
00:06:44 then they will have something called a recall,
00:06:46 which is any police firefighter or EMS personnel
00:06:50 is obligated to go to their command immediately,
00:06:54 check in with, you know, their command to get their gear
00:06:58 and stand by and await orders for deployment
00:07:01 or to remain in that command for routine duties.
00:07:07 How often throughout history have there been recalls?
00:07:09 I believe the one prior to that was like in the 1968 riots,
00:07:15 possibly, and then maybe in the 70s,
00:07:17 there was another blackout and riots.
00:07:19 And I remember my dad talking about it.
00:07:21 And he actually always said,
00:07:23 just remember if something bad’s going down,
00:07:26 don’t just rush in, you will wait the recall.
00:07:29 Or at the very least, if there isn’t a recall,
00:07:32 you get to your firehouse.
00:07:34 And because if you show up somewhere,
00:07:37 there’s a good chance that no one knows you’re there.
00:07:39 And now you, in your well intended movements,
00:07:45 you get lost or trapped or no one’s looking for you.
00:07:48 So that’s the whole thing with, you know, checking in.
00:07:51 And now you’re with a squad or, you know, group of guys
00:07:55 and everyone knows, you know,
00:07:57 hey, there’s Nels, there’s Lex.
00:07:58 Okay, they’re on, you know, this team.
00:08:01 So I said, all right, they’re not gonna need us.
00:08:05 It’s probably gonna be a fifth alarm.
00:08:07 And you know, there’ll be 250 firefighters there.
00:08:10 They’ll handle it.
00:08:11 It’s gonna be a bad day for those guys,
00:08:13 but you know, our guys take on some heavy stuff
00:08:16 and they’ll be fine.
00:08:18 A few minutes later, the second plane hit
00:08:20 and I knew immediately, I’m like, okay, we’re under attack.
00:08:25 So I just flew the truck back in.
00:08:27 I told my boss, I have to go.
00:08:30 He understood, he knew something was way wrong
00:08:33 and I just was flying.
00:08:35 At the time, I actually had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle,
00:08:38 kind of a goofy car to be driving, but I loved it.
00:08:41 So for people who are just listening,
00:08:42 you’re kind of a big guy.
00:08:43 Well, yeah, I definitely need to lose about 50 pounds.
00:08:47 No, I don’t mean in that way, your frame, big hands.
00:08:50 As my beloved friend, Bobby Adams would say to me,
00:08:54 I was driving around in a clown wagon
00:08:55 and he also says, I have a waving hairdo, waving bye bye.
00:08:59 So thanks, Bobby.
00:09:01 But yeah, he’s a great friend.
00:09:03 Yeah, so I took the Volkswagen and I flew in
00:09:05 and I was heading over to Verrazano Bridge
00:09:07 and hit the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
00:09:11 And my phone rang and my wife normally doesn’t curse
00:09:15 or raise a voice and she was yelling at me.
00:09:17 And she said, don’t go in there, go to your firehouse.
00:09:20 Well, first she asked, well, she knew I was on the way,
00:09:22 but she just wanted to know where.
00:09:24 And I said, I’m on the curve, which is 65th Street
00:09:28 on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway called Dead Man’s Curve.
00:09:31 We actually used to do a lot of car wrecks up there.
00:09:35 And I was hitting that curve pretty fast.
00:09:37 And then right around the curve is the exit to the firehouse.
00:09:40 And I had to decide, well, am I driving right in
00:09:43 to the battery tunnel to the city
00:09:46 or am I going to the firehouse?
00:09:47 And then I said, but I have no gear.
00:09:51 I’m gonna be ineffective.
00:09:52 How do I show up with no gear, no protection, you know?
00:09:55 So she said, do what your dad would follow the recall,
00:09:59 go to the firehouse.
00:10:00 And I hung up the phone, said, I love you, gotta go.
00:10:04 And I did, I went to the firehouse
00:10:05 and I’m glad I listened to her.
00:10:07 I had my father ringing in my ears.
00:10:09 My dad, beautiful guy, he’s 82.
00:10:13 He did 34 years in the New York City Fire Department.
00:10:16 He came down on end stage, non
00:10:19 and he’s 38 back in, going on 39, 1978.
00:10:26 And this guy, he’s my hero.
00:10:31 He was gonna die, they sent him home.
00:10:34 They said, there’s really not much we can do.
00:10:37 Go get your affairs in order.
00:10:38 And he says, but doc, I have three young kids.
00:10:41 And she called him a couple hours later.
00:10:45 She said, I got in touch with Sloan Kettering
00:10:47 and they have a new drug.
00:11:16 So I’ll take you to the hospital.
00:11:46 and do the same exact reverse route
00:11:48 and he’d get to the cancer center
00:11:51 and my mom would meet him and he’d get his infusion
00:11:55 and within two hours he’d be violently ill
00:11:58 for a few days, really badly ill.
00:12:02 And I just remember, yeah, I was 10 years old
00:12:06 and he just had to have the room darkened out
00:12:09 and he’d be so sick and I’d just go in
00:12:11 and wipe the vomit on his face,
00:12:14 just try to give him a little water
00:12:15 but he couldn’t take it down because he’d throw it up.
00:12:19 And maybe on Saturday he’d start coming around a little bit,
00:12:25 drink down a little bit of tea
00:12:27 and on Sunday morning he’d put his robe on
00:12:29 and he’d go down, mom would make him black coffee and toast
00:12:33 and he’d sit up, watch the news, watch a game
00:12:37 and then Monday morning he’d go back to work.
00:12:39 He did that for four years.
00:12:41 And he’s 82 and he’s still here.
00:12:43 Yeah.
00:12:45 You said that your dad’s a man of a few words
00:12:48 but when he talks, they’re profound.
00:12:50 So what words were ringing in your ear
00:12:54 when you were driving?
00:12:54 I just always remember him saying,
00:12:56 kid, they give the recall, you go to the firehouse,
00:13:00 you don’t go where you think you should,
00:13:02 you go to the firehouse, you follow your orders.
00:13:05 So do the smart thing, do your job.
00:13:07 Yes, sir.
00:13:07 And every time we’d hang up the phone,
00:13:09 it’s fireman talk, he’d say, I love you, keep low.
00:13:14 My dad couldn’t tell me he loved me
00:13:15 until I told him when I first got on a fire
00:13:19 upon when I was 22 and my dad grew up in a tough household.
00:13:22 My granddad was a good man, but a tormented man.
00:13:25 He was sent away from home at 12 years old.
00:13:30 He was from Denmark and I’m named after him, Grandpa Nils.
00:13:34 And I think his demons took up a large part of his life.
00:13:39 His anger, whatever it was, his fear.
00:13:42 We got the sense that maybe when he was a child,
00:13:44 he was an apprentice baker,
00:13:46 living with strangers, working for them.
00:13:49 And we think maybe he was abused
00:13:51 and that’s why he took it out on my dad
00:13:54 and my grandma and my aunts.
00:13:55 But they made it up to each other
00:14:00 at the end of my granddad’s life.
00:14:01 My granddad turned out to be the best grandfather ever.
00:14:04 I think he tried to heal and heal everyone
00:14:07 by his change of behavior.
00:14:08 So he’s proof that you can change,
00:14:12 you can improve if you work on it.
00:14:14 But I know I’m going off track here, but.
00:14:16 But you were man enough in your,
00:14:18 you say in your 20s to tell your dad.
00:14:19 To my dad, yeah.
00:14:20 And my dad, I got on a job.
00:14:23 He said, how’d it go, kid?
00:14:25 That was the tour, we called it Tour of Duty.
00:14:27 I said, oh, dad, it was great, it was great, I love it.
00:14:30 And he goes, well, just remember, you keep low,
00:14:32 you always keep low.
00:14:34 And keep low means you stay down below the flames,
00:14:37 if a room flashes over and it’s burning,
00:14:40 if you stay up high, you’re gonna get burned badly.
00:14:42 But if you get down on your belly and you crawl,
00:14:45 you’ll get out.
00:14:47 So he’d always say that when he’d hang up the phone.
00:14:49 And I said, well, I love you, pop.
00:14:51 And he says, well, thanks, kid.
00:14:53 I said, well, you can say it too.
00:14:57 Oh, nice, you pressured him.
00:14:58 And he did, and he said it.
00:14:59 And now every time we talk, he says it.
00:15:01 So, you know, they talk about masculinity and whatnot.
00:15:06 And my dad is one of those tough, tough guys
00:15:09 with a soft edge.
00:15:10 And that’s how he brought me up, you know,
00:15:14 to be a protector.
00:15:15 I hate bullies.
00:15:16 I was bullied really badly as a kid,
00:15:18 and I really hated it.
00:15:21 And now I find myself sometimes throwing myself
00:15:24 into situations to protect people that are being,
00:15:28 you know, violated and hurt.
00:15:30 And I just can’t walk away from it.
00:15:32 But that’s my dad.
00:15:33 My dad was that, you know, just a great guy.
00:15:36 But anyway, yeah.
00:15:37 You still listen to, therefore, see,
00:15:39 you probably went to rush right to the towers,
00:15:43 but you went.
00:15:43 Yeah, so anyway, I got, I did, I listened to him.
00:15:46 I listened to my wife.
00:15:47 I went to the firehouse, and it was really strange.
00:15:49 It was eerie because the computer dispatch system
00:15:52 was still beeping, which meant it sent a dispatch,
00:15:56 and the truck received it.
00:15:58 Ladder 114, my truck company received it,
00:16:01 and they left, they were gone.
00:16:03 So it was this beautiful old building built in the 1880s
00:16:06 with a spiral staircase, just a narrow old brick garage,
00:16:11 and it was empty.
00:16:13 And I just heard the computer chirping.
00:16:15 And I looked down on a ticket, and it said,
00:16:17 Ladder 114, respond, the Vessian West World Trade Center
00:16:20 aircraft into building.
00:16:23 And I said, oh, God, I just hope they’re not on a death ride
00:16:26 because this now was two towers, and they were burning.
00:16:31 They were free burning, and I knew
00:16:33 this was really, really bad.
00:16:35 And I got on the phone, and I called command right away.
00:16:38 I called the 40th Battalion, and Chief’s aide just said, look,
00:16:43 get 12 guys.
00:16:44 Sign them in to the journal.
00:16:45 There’s a journal of daily events.
00:16:48 Everything that takes place in the firehouse 24 seven
00:16:50 has to be logged.
00:16:53 And I logged myself as coming in, reporting for duty.
00:16:57 And as the guys came in, I logged them in.
00:17:00 And then one of our lieutenants took command.
00:17:03 We grabbed up a bunch of gear, and they basically
00:17:05 told us, get 12 guys, get a city bus,
00:17:09 and get down to the battery tunnel they said
00:17:13 would probably be closed.
00:17:15 There was threats it was going to be blown up
00:17:17 to get to the Brooklyn Bridge.
00:17:20 And so we did.
00:17:22 We got a city bus.
00:17:23 We flagged it down, and the bus driver said, I’m sorry.
00:17:26 I can’t give you the bus.
00:17:27 I will drive you.
00:17:28 And he took us, and we stopped at Engine 201,
00:17:30 which is just about a quarter mile down the road from us.
00:17:35 That’s our affiliated engine company,
00:17:37 and my childhood best friend here, Johnny Schardt,
00:17:44 he was assigned there, and he was on shift.
00:17:46 And then they went through the tunnel.
00:17:51 And we picked up those guys, the off duty guys from 201,
00:17:55 and then we kept going down Fourth Avenue,
00:17:57 and we picked up 239’s crew.
00:18:00 And then we hightailed it down the bridge,
00:18:01 and there was a lot of traffic.
00:18:04 There was a lot of people fleeing,
00:18:05 coming over the bridge in waves, so it affected the inbound.
00:18:11 What was the mood like among the crew?
00:18:14 It was somber, because just prior to getting on the bus,
00:18:17 the first tower went down.
00:18:20 So we figured that I heard 114, my lieutenant, Dennis Oberg,
00:18:27 heard him on the radio.
00:18:28 And he said, 114, Manhattan, we’re on your frequency.
00:18:34 What do you need us?
00:18:35 And they said, Tally Ho, which is our nickname.
00:18:38 Tally Ho, respond to the Vessian West to the command post
00:18:42 and receive your orders.
00:18:44 And I heard Dennis say, Tally Ho, 10 4.
00:18:47 And Dennis, a little while after that,
00:18:52 they were proceeding to go into, I believe it was,
00:18:57 I get this mixed up, and I’m sorry.
00:18:58 I should know this by the back of my hand,
00:19:00 but sometimes it’s just such a haze.
00:19:02 But the second tower hit was the first one to go down.
00:19:06 And they were heading over to go in it.
00:19:08 And all of a sudden, he looked up,
00:19:10 and he saw what he thought to be disintegration.
00:19:12 And he turned the guys around.
00:19:14 He said, run.
00:19:15 Just run.
00:19:15 Don’t look back.
00:19:16 Don’t look up.
00:19:16 Go.
00:19:18 They sprinted as fast as they could.
00:19:20 And they dove under a fire truck.
00:19:23 And the guys that were sprinting behind him 40 feet away
00:19:26 were underneath a pile that was 10 stories deep.
00:19:29 They were killed.
00:19:31 And just further into that pile was his rookie son, Dennis’s
00:19:37 rookie son, who was working in Ladder 105, which
00:19:39 was my first command under the department.
00:19:42 I worked for it, proudly served for three years.
00:19:45 And just aside them was my childhood best friend,
00:19:49 John Chard, and his crew from 201.
00:19:53 And they were all killed.
00:19:59 And a strange irony to that is that Dennis’s son, Dennis Jr.,
00:20:05 was working underneath, under the wing of a senior man,
00:20:10 as we say.
00:20:10 A senior man is a guy with a lot of experience.
00:20:13 And he’ll watch over you, make sure you don’t veer off,
00:20:18 like I veer off a lot in talking.
00:20:19 And you don’t veer off, and you get yourself hurt.
00:20:24 In the morning of 1993 bombing, Henry Miller was my senior man.
00:20:35 And I was the young guy under his wing.
00:20:38 And he protected me.
00:20:41 And toward the end of the day, he looked around.
00:20:43 He said, kid, it’s a bad day.
00:20:46 He said, they didn’t do it right.
00:20:48 They blew it up in the middle.
00:20:51 If they did it in a corner, they would
00:20:53 have dropped this building half a mile down at Canal Street.
00:20:57 But don’t kid yourself.
00:20:58 They’ll be back, and they’ll do it.
00:20:59 And they’ll do it right next time.
00:21:02 And it’s so strange and so prophetic,
00:21:03 because he was there with them.
00:21:06 He died with Dennis.
00:21:07 He knew it.
00:21:09 And like 1994, we had a training manual
00:21:11 with a picture of the towers with a target.
00:21:14 And this is not a matter of if, but a matter
00:21:18 of when, be prepared.
00:21:22 And it’s haunting.
00:21:22 It was like people knew, right?
00:21:25 And we didn’t stop it.
00:21:27 And so we got off the bus, but just prior to that,
00:21:33 coming over the bridge of the second tower, it’s gone now.
00:21:36 And we’re just destroyed, because we’re like,
00:21:38 our guys are there.
00:21:39 They’re all in there.
00:21:39 Now we’re feeling like cowards, because we got there late.
00:21:43 And initially, we’re thinking there’s
00:21:45 500 guys that are gone, because there was a tent alarm
00:21:49 assignment, which means 50, 60 fire trucks, five to six guys
00:21:56 per, you know, you’re looking at.
00:22:00 At least there was even more tent alarm,
00:22:02 plus multiple alarms on top of it.
00:22:04 There was a dispatch, basically equivalent of five
00:22:07 to 600 firefighters.
00:22:10 We figured, oh, they’re all in there, all gone.
00:22:12 All the police officers, Port Authority police,
00:22:15 NYPD police, court officers just up the street
00:22:18 from the courts, transit cops from the train tunnels.
00:22:23 Like, just, you know, we knew everybody was going there,
00:22:26 and now they’re gone.
00:22:28 So what you saw, what were we looking at?
00:22:31 What did it look like?
00:22:32 So you saw rubble, and then you knew that many, that 105
00:22:37 and 201, many of those guys are in the, they’re dead.
00:22:41 Yeah, and we thought 114 was in there, too.
00:22:43 We didn’t realize at that point.
00:22:44 We didn’t even realize that they had gotten under that truck.
00:22:47 We thought they were all gone.
00:22:48 But yeah, it looked like, it looked like a movie scene
00:22:53 with just end of the earth destruction.
00:22:56 It’s just massive piles of intertwined steel,
00:23:01 what was left of the steel.
00:23:02 And you know, there was no cement.
00:23:05 It was all just dust.
00:23:06 And it was just a burning pile of dust and concrete
00:23:12 and plastic.
00:23:13 And it was just, everything was just pulverized.
00:23:15 And it was truly hard to mentally compute that.
00:23:20 Like, it was like, what?
00:23:22 And then there was just fighter jets, a couple of fighter jets
00:23:25 just circling.
00:23:26 And you just heard them flying by over your head.
00:23:31 I mean, you’d literally see the guy banking
00:23:32 a turn around a Brooklyn bridge and just coming back.
00:23:35 And I’m like, holy shoot, we’re under attack?
00:23:38 And we couldn’t really get concrete intel
00:23:41 as to what exactly we knew planes.
00:23:43 But then we kept hearing there was multiple devices.
00:23:47 There was devices in a battery tunnel.
00:23:49 And there was devices on a George Washington bridge
00:23:51 and in the subways.
00:23:52 And it was just chaos.
00:23:54 It was, I mean, we kept it together, obviously,
00:23:56 because that’s kind of, we try.
00:23:58 That’s what we do.
00:23:59 But the just constant barrage of different reports,
00:24:03 it was like, holy shoot.
00:24:06 And then as we were being deployed,
00:24:07 it was a little frustrating.
00:24:09 But they were trying to take command and send us
00:24:11 in groups now because they realized
00:24:13 we have to start searching this.
00:24:15 You could hear the alarms on the Scott Air Mask, the packs
00:24:20 we wear to go into the building.
00:24:22 It has a motion alarm.
00:24:23 And if you stop moving for 30 seconds,
00:24:25 it just sounds like this whining, just screaming bell.
00:24:29 And it just keeps going and going.
00:24:32 And you could hear multiple units of those going off.
00:24:35 And you’re like, wait a minute.
00:24:37 There’s guys with those.
00:24:38 Where are they?
00:24:40 And it’s emanating from underneath the pile.
00:24:42 And it was just surreal and truly like a war zone.
00:24:51 I mean, I was a soldier in the reserves.
00:24:53 And I never saw combat.
00:24:55 And I would never claim that I did.
00:24:56 But we trained.
00:24:58 We trained for a lot of situations.
00:25:00 And we trained in real life atmospheres and whatnot.
00:25:03 And this was just beyond that by leaps and bounds.
00:25:06 It was bizarre.
00:25:08 Did you see the towers collapse?
00:25:10 As we were coming over the bridge,
00:25:11 the first one, as we were deploying from the firehouse,
00:25:15 we had a television on.
00:25:16 And I saw it go down.
00:25:21 And we were so involved in getting gear together
00:25:24 and getting teams set up and, OK, you’re
00:25:27 going to be with these two guys.
00:25:29 And I just yelled, there’s the guys.
00:25:31 And they’re looking at me.
00:25:32 I dropped to my knees.
00:25:33 And I started praying.
00:25:34 They’re like, what the hell’s wrong?
00:25:36 I said, I couldn’t even say.
00:25:37 I was like, 114, they’re in there.
00:25:40 And they’re like, what?
00:25:41 I said, the tower’s gone.
00:25:43 And all you saw on the TV was just this pile of dust.
00:25:46 And I guess because they didn’t see it going down,
00:25:49 they probably thought I truly lost it.
00:25:51 And then the realization came.
00:25:55 It was like, wow, the tower’s down.
00:25:57 So now it was like, wow, this is really on.
00:26:00 So we just took off and got that boss.
00:26:02 And so if you thought many of the guys on 114 were dead,
00:26:10 if you thought that, did you think you were going to die?
00:26:14 I mean, if you’re rushing towards the rubble?
00:26:19 As crazy as it sounds, I never thought that the other tower
00:26:22 would go down.
00:26:23 I said, OK, maybe some freak chance that one went down.
00:26:27 But no, the other one’s not going to go.
00:26:29 They’re built so strong.
00:26:30 I was in those towers so many times.
00:26:32 I mean, I ate dinner up in the top floor restaurant windows
00:26:35 on the world.
00:26:35 And I’m saying, nah, there’s no way.
00:26:38 Like, how the hell did this one happen?
00:26:41 But I was having a hard time mentally processing
00:26:45 that the building was gone.
00:26:46 And believe me, if you don’t have fear in this industry
00:26:51 and police, fire, military, then you’re kidding yourself
00:26:55 or you’re a danger to everyone.
00:26:57 I don’t care who it is, as tough as they are, this and that.
00:27:00 Everybody has a certain level of fear
00:27:02 with doing this.
00:27:03 And I don’t care how long you do it,
00:27:06 there’s always that chance of something going bad.
00:27:08 And everyone who does it has that certain amount of fear.
00:27:12 But at that point, it was such a feeling of disbelief
00:27:16 that fear wasn’t even kicking in.
00:27:18 It was just like, what the hell just happened?
00:27:20 And I honestly think it was almost like a shock.
00:27:24 And it just stayed that whole day.
00:27:27 So the building is, before it collapses, is burning.
00:27:30 It’s just burning.
00:27:31 I mean, upper floors, up in the 78th, up to the 80s.
00:27:35 And then the way that the cut was from the plane,
00:27:39 it wasn’t just straight across.
00:27:40 It was from the 78th, then on up to maybe the 86th.
00:27:43 And then the jet fuel had come down and was burning down.
00:27:49 And there was people on the ground
00:27:51 who were doused with jet fuel that was already burning.
00:27:56 And they were lit on fire on the ground.
00:27:59 It was just insane how vast the destruction path was.
00:28:04 As a firefighter, what are you supposed
00:28:06 to do with that scale of fire?
00:28:11 I think the first bosses in, the first chiefs,
00:28:14 were just going to do their best to get,
00:28:18 as we get hose lines, what our whole theory is,
00:28:22 or our tactics is, to get water at the fire,
00:28:25 at the base of the fire, and get the truck company,
00:28:28 which is the ladder company.
00:28:30 They’re the guys who break the doors down, put ladders up,
00:28:32 this and that, to get them to where the life is most
00:28:35 expected and get them out of there.
00:28:38 So I think the chiefs tactics at that point
00:28:40 was, let me get multiple engine companies.
00:28:42 Let me get four, five, six hose lines
00:28:45 fighting this fire, this massive fire.
00:28:47 And let me get 15, 20 truck companies up there just
00:28:51 yoking people out of there.
00:28:52 Yeah, but you got to go up the stair.
00:28:54 Everything’s not working.
00:28:55 Yeah, guys had to walk up 80, 80, 90, 100 flights of stairs.
00:29:00 And there’s audio of officers and firefighters
00:29:06 speaking to each other on the radio channels.
00:29:08 And unfortunately, at that point in time,
00:29:09 we had very, very bad communication system.
00:29:12 We’d been fighting for years to get radios
00:29:14 that work properly.
00:29:15 We couldn’t because it was a lot of money.
00:29:18 We fought for years to get the full bunker firefighting
00:29:21 suits, which is the pants and the coat.
00:29:23 We used to have just coats and these roll up rubber boots
00:29:26 and guys were burning to death and we had to fight.
00:29:29 And unfortunately we lost three guys
00:29:31 in one vicious, vicious fire in 1994.
00:29:35 And then they finally said, enough’s enough.
00:29:38 Give these guys the gear.
00:29:40 So it’s a strange phenomenon in the first responder world
00:29:45 and in the military world.
00:29:47 It’s really one of the most important things
00:29:49 that takes place in society.
00:29:51 The most pertinent organizations.
00:29:54 And we can’t get the funding we need.
00:29:56 It’s crazy.
00:29:57 They’ll throw money at every nonsensical thing.
00:30:00 But when it comes to gear, equipment,
00:30:03 protective equipment, trucks, this couldn’t get it.
00:30:08 Just all the ways you could take care of people.
00:30:10 I saw since 9 11, the wars in the Middle East
00:30:14 have cost America over six trillion dollars.
00:30:17 And the amount of that money that was spent
00:30:20 on the soldiers, in this case the first responders,
00:30:24 is minimal.
00:30:25 Compared to it, yeah.
00:30:26 Almost nothing.
00:30:27 They, Lex, they closed down.
00:30:30 I believe it’s either seven or eight.
00:30:33 In May of 2002, they closed down nine firehouses
00:30:40 in New York City for budget reasons.
00:30:42 We hadn’t even finished cleaning up
00:30:44 the World Trade Center site and they slashed the budget.
00:30:48 And still to this day, have not reopened those firehouses.
00:30:52 There’s a million more people now living in New York City
00:30:55 than there were in 2001.
00:30:57 And the fire protection is way less than it was.
00:31:00 And it’s a sin.
00:31:02 It’s really a sin.
00:31:03 Can I ask you a difficult question?
00:31:07 So there’s this famous photograph of a falling man.
00:31:13 So many people had to decide when they’re above the fire,
00:31:17 in the fire, whether to jump out of the building
00:31:19 or to burn to death.
00:31:21 What do you make of that decision?
00:31:23 What do you make of that situation?
00:31:25 Those people who jumped,
00:31:28 those were acts of sheer desperation.
00:31:31 I’ve been in fires and just minor burns,
00:31:36 but minor in situation.
00:31:37 But I’ve been trapped, caught somewhat.
00:31:39 Ended up in a burn center for nothing serious at all.
00:31:43 But for those brief seconds, half a minute was,
00:31:49 thank God, if I didn’t have my fire gear on,
00:31:51 I would have been burned to a very, very horrible level.
00:31:54 Those people were burning alive.
00:31:58 And they had the choice of either to stay there
00:32:01 and burn alive or to launch themselves.
00:32:05 And some of them, I don’t fault them,
00:32:09 but they had a few folks, they won’t show it anymore
00:32:12 because they say, I don’t know why it offends some people,
00:32:15 but they had a couple folks that took umbrellas
00:32:18 and they took garbage bags
00:32:20 because they thought that it would slow down
00:32:22 their acceleration rate to the ground
00:32:24 and maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t be killed.
00:32:27 And that’s, to me, a true sense of desperation for humanity
00:32:32 to say, I’m going to die either way,
00:32:34 but let me take my chance.
00:32:36 And I don’t know the exact number of those folks
00:32:39 who did that, but our first member of the fire department
00:32:43 killed firefighter Daniel Serf, aged 216,
00:32:47 was struck by a jumper.
00:32:49 And one of my dear friends was ordered to help take him
00:32:54 and they knew he was passed away
00:32:56 because he was hit by a flying missile.
00:33:00 I mean, 120 miles an hour, a body lands on you.
00:33:03 Those two bodies are now crushed.
00:33:06 And they were ordered to take that firefighter
00:33:08 and bring him across the street to Engine 10, Ladder 10.
00:33:11 It was literally a firehouse, less than 100 yards
00:33:16 from the facade of the Trade Center,
00:33:18 from the Trade Center complex.
00:33:19 They were literally right there.
00:33:22 And there was plane parts that went into that firehouse,
00:33:25 landed into the front doors onto the roof,
00:33:27 but the building itself was not destroyed.
00:33:30 So it was used as a mini command center for quite a while.
00:33:35 So my friend was ordered to take Daniel’s body
00:33:37 in respect and bring it over to this firehouse
00:33:43 and give it some semblance of dignity
00:33:45 and lay it out on one of the bunk rooms,
00:33:47 the bunks we have in the bunkhouse,
00:33:50 and just cover it with a sheet and put a sign,
00:33:53 please firefighter killed, do not disturb,
00:33:56 and then we’ll get to him later
00:33:57 because obviously this operation is gonna go on for days.
00:34:01 And my friend, who’s such a great, wonderful guy,
00:34:03 is so still to this day, filled with guilt
00:34:06 because if they weren’t taking his body out
00:34:10 with the respect and dignity that they did,
00:34:12 it took a while because it’s a tough situation.
00:34:17 His ladder company was coming over the bridge.
00:34:20 There’s a famous picture of Ladder 118.
00:34:23 You see this tractor trailer fire truck.
00:34:26 It’s the one when the guy in the back also drives.
00:34:29 And it’s a zoomed out shot, and you see the Brooklyn Bridge,
00:34:32 and you see only the fire truck in the middle,
00:34:35 and you see the two burning towers in the distance.
00:34:38 Well, his engine company was just ahead of them
00:34:41 on the bridge, and the only reason that engine company lived
00:34:44 is their initial duty assignment
00:34:46 was to take that firefighter and bring his body over.
00:34:49 It’s like the military.
00:34:50 We don’t leave anyone behind.
00:34:51 These are our guys.
00:34:53 As some guys say, it’s all about the guy right next to you,
00:34:56 and nothing else really matters.
00:34:58 When that guy right next to you goes down, it stops.
00:35:01 You get that guy to safety,
00:35:03 or if he’s dead, you get him out.
00:35:05 So in that time frame, that saved his life.
00:35:10 But that’s a heavy burden to carry now
00:35:11 for the rest of your life,
00:35:12 because you say, if I wasn’t helping my dead friend,
00:35:15 I’m dead.
00:35:16 Yeah.
00:35:18 What did it look like at Ground Zero?
00:35:21 What did it feel like?
00:35:22 What did it smell like?
00:35:24 What, you said there was a sense
00:35:27 that it was almost like a war zone,
00:35:29 but can you paint a picture of how much dust is in the air?
00:35:33 How hot is it?
00:35:35 How many people are there?
00:35:37 And again, how did it feel like?
00:35:40 It was just, it was a scene of controlled chaos,
00:35:45 controlled because there was a semblance of command,
00:35:47 and we were just trying to do our jobs.
00:35:51 But it was such a frantic pace
00:35:53 because we’re now digging frantically,
00:35:55 knowing that there’s life underneath this pile.
00:35:58 And this is throughout the afternoon
00:36:00 of that day, the evening.
00:36:01 Yeah, I mean, this was nonstop,
00:36:04 just nonstop, really, for days.
00:36:06 But for my particular crew, we literally kept going.
00:36:10 We initially were dispatched over towards number seven,
00:36:14 had just gone down,
00:36:15 and we were searching the post office that was there.
00:36:17 There was reports of people trapped.
00:36:20 And we painstakingly searched every single inch
00:36:22 of that building to make sure no one was left in there.
00:36:25 And then we were deployed to the pile,
00:36:28 and the pile is sort of ambiguous
00:36:30 because it was just such a vast, vast pile.
00:36:32 I mean, it went for city blocks.
00:36:35 And we were assisting in the retrieval
00:36:38 of two Port Authority police officers.
00:36:42 We’re lucky enough to survive, but they were trapped.
00:36:45 They were deep down into a crevasse,
00:36:46 and they had to be physically dug out and extricated.
00:36:50 So there was a couple hundred, few hundred guys involved
00:36:53 in that process of bringing in equipment,
00:36:56 jaws of life, airbags to lift steel,
00:36:59 to cut pieces of steel.
00:37:00 It was just a huge operation.
00:37:03 And we were back toward the logistics end of it,
00:37:05 shuttling in gear and bringing in stretchers,
00:37:09 bringing in oxygen, whatever was needed.
00:37:11 And you were trying to climb over
00:37:13 this jagged pile of debris.
00:37:16 It wasn’t like you just walked 100 feet
00:37:18 on a street with something.
00:37:20 You were trying to climb over this I beam
00:37:22 and then down into this hole and then back up that hole.
00:37:25 I mean, just to run one piece of equipment
00:37:27 took a half an hour to get 100 feet, 200 feet.
00:37:32 You know, mind you, some of these pieces of equipment
00:37:34 are 100 pounds, you know, generator for hearse tools,
00:37:36 this massive motor on a frame.
00:37:39 Unstable ground.
00:37:41 Unstable ground, just horrible conditions.
00:37:44 Fires were still burning aside you, beneath you.
00:37:47 And at one point, I kind of veered off to the side
00:37:51 and I was with this other fireman
00:37:52 from my father’s old ladder company, 172.
00:37:55 And it was strange because we were quite a bit down,
00:38:00 like 70 feet down into this ravine of debris.
00:38:04 And he says, brother, what do you hear?
00:38:06 And at the time it was like dust,
00:38:08 it was like sand just falling down a pile
00:38:11 and it was hissing from gas pipes and water pipes.
00:38:15 And I said, I hear the gas lines,
00:38:17 I hear the sand, I hear the concrete.
00:38:20 He goes, no, no, what else do you hear?
00:38:23 And just the side of us was a lady’s pocketbook
00:38:26 and a high heel shoe and someone’s sneaker
00:38:31 with nobody with it.
00:38:33 And I said, I don’t know, I don’t hear anything.
00:38:37 He says, me neither.
00:38:37 He goes, no one’s coming out of here.
00:38:41 And I said, no, no, no,
00:38:42 there’s gotta be someone coming out of here.
00:38:44 I mean, there’s just thousands of people in here
00:38:45 and they’re coming out.
00:38:47 He says, brother, we would hear them calling for help,
00:38:51 they’re gone.
00:38:52 And I still at that point thought there was a chance.
00:38:55 And after about the fourth day,
00:38:59 they just said, this is a recovery now.
00:39:02 There’s no more life, there’s no more chance.
00:39:05 And then that first night we went full tilt
00:39:07 till my crew, my specific crew of 12, 15 guys.
00:39:11 And four in the morning, we just couldn’t breathe anymore.
00:39:14 We couldn’t see, we were caked just with,
00:39:16 it was like if you took flour
00:39:18 and just kept dousing yourself.
00:39:20 And the Lieutenant just said, look, guys,
00:39:22 we’re gonna go back, we’re gonna get some medical aid
00:39:25 and then we’ll come back in a few hours.
00:39:27 And we took a city bus back through the battery tunnel
00:39:33 and unbeknownst to us that morning,
00:39:37 this off duty firefighter,
00:39:39 Steven Siller from Squad Company One,
00:39:42 he raced down there with his pickup
00:39:44 and he couldn’t go any further
00:39:47 because the traffic was stopped up
00:39:49 because they had a report of a bomb.
00:39:51 So everything was held up and he grabbed his fire gear
00:39:55 and he put it on, stuff weighs about 60 pounds.
00:39:59 And he ran through the tunnel.
00:40:02 Two and a half miles, got to the end of the tunnel,
00:40:05 fire truck was coming in from the other way.
00:40:08 He hopped on the back, got him up to West Street,
00:40:11 jumped off, tried to look for his company,
00:40:14 where they were and he was never seen again.
00:40:19 He just ran through the tunnel.
00:40:21 Ran through the tunnel and he got there
00:40:24 to help his team, right?
00:40:26 It’s all about the team,
00:40:26 it’s all about the guy right next to you.
00:40:28 And he’s the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Steven.
00:40:31 His brother Frank decided in his name in perpetuity,
00:40:35 he’s got a fund that now builds a home
00:40:39 for every Gold Star family,
00:40:41 for every seriously battle wounded warrior,
00:40:44 for every seriously wounded first responder
00:40:47 or killed in a line of duty first responder.
00:40:49 If they had a home, they’ll pay the mortgage.
00:40:52 If they didn’t have a home, they give them a home.
00:40:56 And especially if it’s a severely battle wounded,
00:40:58 they give them a smart home
00:41:00 because these poor guys come home with no limbs.
00:41:03 And so the beauty of Steven and his selfless act
00:41:07 was that he’s now helped thousands and thousands of people.
00:41:12 I mean, the Tunnel to Towers is incredible.
00:41:14 That’s part of our mission is to bring awareness
00:41:17 to these great people at Tunnel to Towers, what they do.
00:41:19 They’ve raised $250 million to help protect the protectors,
00:41:25 to rescue the rescuers in a what’s become, unfortunately,
00:41:30 a somewhat ungrateful society.
00:41:33 But they will not forget these great guys.
00:41:37 So you tell Steven’s story.
00:41:39 He’s one of the 20 people that you talk about
00:41:42 in the new Iron Labs 20 for 20 podcast series.
00:41:46 If you can just linger on his story a little longer,
00:41:51 what does that tell you about the human spirit?
00:41:54 That this guy, the Tunnel couldn’t drive through,
00:41:59 so he just puts on that heavy pack and runs.
00:42:03 What do you make of that?
00:42:04 That shows the depth of a man’s soul.
00:42:08 He didn’t have to do that.
00:42:10 He could have turned around and went home to his family,
00:42:13 and nobody would have shamed him.
00:42:16 But he’s one of those beautiful, brave people
00:42:21 that take a job that really doesn’t pay a lot of money.
00:42:25 And you become a cop or a firefighter or a nurse or an EMT
00:42:30 or a medic or a soldier or a Marine or airman, sailor.
00:42:36 When you take these jobs, you don’t do it for fanfare.
00:42:41 You definitely don’t do it for money.
00:42:43 I mean, those 13 brave souls we lost a week or two ago
00:42:47 in Afghanistan, they’re brand new soldiers and Marines.
00:42:51 They make $22,000 an hour,
00:42:54 but they don’t work 40 hours a week.
00:42:56 They work 80, they work 90 hours a week.
00:42:58 So they make it about six bucks an hour.
00:43:01 And you know what?
00:43:02 They sign off.
00:43:03 And firefighters and cops and medics and EMTs,
00:43:07 nurses, emergency room doctors,
00:43:10 they don’t really make a lot of money.
00:43:12 I mean, they’re starting salary right now for a New York cop.
00:43:14 I was a New York cop for two years first.
00:43:17 I made 12.25 an hour back in 1989 to get shot at
00:43:23 during the crack wars.
00:43:24 If you made $11 an hour with a family of four,
00:43:30 you were entitled to welfare back then.
00:43:33 So I was just above the welfare level, risking my life.
00:43:38 And these are the guys that are getting ripped up now.
00:43:41 Right?
00:43:42 And look, I won’t get into any politics,
00:43:44 but like that says something about someone’s soul
00:43:48 that they’re willing to take a job like that
00:43:50 and get now, get zero respect.
00:43:53 So a guy like Steven, what that shows is the depth
00:43:56 of that man’s soul and courage and determination.
00:44:00 It’s hard to be selfless in this world anymore,
00:44:04 but I still know a lot of selfless people
00:44:06 that just put on equipment every day, bulletproof vests,
00:44:09 fire bunker gear, stethoscopes,
00:44:13 you know, flak jackets, military helmets,
00:44:17 and they go in and they do it smiling.
00:44:19 That young Marine that passed last week,
00:44:23 she was photographed and quoted as saying,
00:44:26 I have my dream job,
00:44:28 but she was holding a little Afghani baby.
00:44:30 And she was dead a few days later.
00:44:33 She was so thrilled to be making $7 an hour
00:44:36 helping people, right?
00:44:36 Isn’t that huge?
00:44:37 Like that to me says,
00:44:39 that’s a true sign of character right there.
00:44:42 And it’s important for our society
00:44:43 to elevate those people as heroes.
00:44:46 Let me ask you about firefighting.
00:44:50 What do you think it means to be a great firefighter
00:44:53 and a great man, a great human being
00:44:57 in a situation like you were in in 9 11?
00:45:03 You know, that’s kind of a broad term.
00:45:06 Like some, you know, you can go to different firehouses
00:45:08 and they might have a different definition
00:45:10 of what they consider a great firefighter.
00:45:12 But I think in the industry as a whole,
00:45:15 if you’re willing to put everyone else before you,
00:45:19 especially your team, you know,
00:45:22 as we say, there ain’t no I in team, right?
00:45:24 It’s T E A M and there’s no I in there.
00:45:26 It’s all about those guys and girls next to you.
00:45:30 If you can do that, that makes you pretty great.
00:45:34 You put everything else second and you just run in
00:45:38 and you run in with that team for strangers.
00:45:40 You know, I’ve had the honor of,
00:45:43 I spent almost 25 years of my adult life serving humanity,
00:45:48 my country, my former city.
00:45:52 And the people I worked with were giants.
00:45:55 And I don’t mean that in height,
00:45:57 I mean, but I mean that in spirit and in soul.
00:46:00 I saw some of the most heroic, selfless acts.
00:46:04 And then I saw some of the behind the scenes
00:46:06 that were so impressive.
00:46:08 You know, we’d go to the movies,
00:46:09 so impressive, you know, we’d go to a fire around Christmas
00:46:13 and the family would lose everything.
00:46:16 And even when I was a cop, same thing,
00:46:17 you’d come back either to the police precinct
00:46:19 or the firehouse or the EMS station.
00:46:23 And someone would put together a collection and say,
00:46:24 hey guys, hey Lex, 50 bucks a man,
00:46:28 you know, the Smith’s down the street,
00:46:29 just lost everything, we’re gonna go get some presents
00:46:31 for the kids and some turkeys.
00:46:33 And not one of those guys questioned that.
00:46:36 And they were making 12.25 an hour
00:46:39 and they still came up with 50 bucks for that family.
00:46:42 But see, that’s the stuff the press won’t show you, right?
00:46:45 They don’t wanna show that humanity, that soft edge.
00:46:49 See, when you’re a warrior, you need to have
00:46:51 this rough shield, this rough exterior.
00:46:54 Cause if you don’t, you die.
00:46:56 But a true great firefighter or responder or a cop
00:47:02 or military personnel, they have that rough exterior
00:47:06 with that soft underbelly, that heart, right?
00:47:11 And that’s, to me, the true great ones.
00:47:14 Some of them, they just have a hard time doing that.
00:47:17 There’s no shame in showing your soft side.
00:47:20 Well, you got your dad to say I love you back.
00:47:23 No, that was huge, man.
00:47:25 That took me 22 years, Lex.
00:47:28 So you were a firefighter for 21, I was 22 years.
00:47:31 Why did you become a firefighter?
00:47:33 Oh, my dad, I mean, I was five years old
00:47:36 and I went to his firehouse and there was these,
00:47:39 at the time, they looked like giants to me with mustaches
00:47:42 and the trucks smelled like smoke and the gear smelled
00:47:47 like smoke and the tires and the diesel fuel
00:47:50 and that one was like, this is what I’m gonna do.
00:47:53 And then they bring you in the kitchen
00:47:55 and they stuff you with ice cream and cake and everything.
00:47:58 And then I go home to my mom, shaking with a sugar cone
00:48:02 and she’s mad at my dad, but yeah, it was just,
00:48:04 oh, I was like, I gotta do this.
00:48:06 It was like, they were like a baseball team in a garage
00:48:09 with a truck and these big tools and big coats and helmets
00:48:12 and they were just laughing and having fun
00:48:14 and I’m like, yeah, man, I’m doing this.
00:48:17 And I knew, I was obsessed with it.
00:48:19 I mean, I was so pissed that the fireman’s test came out
00:48:22 when I was 14 and I couldn’t take it, you had to be 18.
00:48:26 And it was done, the test was graded and whatever.
00:48:29 So my dad, now there’s a copy circulating
00:48:32 because it’s old now.
00:48:34 And he goes, yeah, yeah, this is what you’re in for.
00:48:37 And I took it and I did it like it was real
00:48:40 and I got a 99 and I was so pissed.
00:48:42 I said, I wanna get hired.
00:48:43 He goes, you can’t, you’re 14.
00:48:45 But I just wanted to do it so bad
00:48:49 and I just wanted to help people.
00:48:50 I just wanted to be like my dad,
00:48:53 he’d come home smiling as tired as he was
00:48:56 and he fought fires in the 60s and 70s
00:48:58 when the city was burning and he’s still
00:49:01 as exhausted as he was, he’d still be smiling.
00:49:05 I wanted to smile at work and I used to,
00:49:08 I got paid to laugh and joke.
00:49:10 I got paid to cry sometimes.
00:49:13 But man, we laughed a lot.
00:49:14 We really, it was, the chop breaking is just,
00:49:17 it’s just unending and it’s great.
00:49:19 If you don’t mind, can you tell me,
00:49:21 you were really kind enough to give me
00:49:25 one of these shirts with 114.
00:49:27 Can you tell me the story of 114 and Tally Ho?
00:49:31 I wear proudly, I served eight years in that command
00:49:34 and I didn’t finish my career there.
00:49:36 I passed the lieutenant’s test
00:49:38 and once you do, you have to leave.
00:49:41 The story behind Tally Ho is back in World War II,
00:49:46 there was this gentleman named Bad Jack Carroll
00:49:48 and Jack was an airborne ranger
00:49:50 and my father in law was also on the department
00:49:53 and he knew Jack.
00:49:54 And Jack came home, Jack jumped Normandy
00:49:59 and stormed up through the Battle of the Bulls in Bastogne
00:50:02 and he came back, greatest generation as they all did
00:50:07 and they got jobs and they went right to work
00:50:10 and they were treated better back then, vets, right?
00:50:14 And he got on the New York City Fire Department
00:50:16 and he got assigned a ladder 114
00:50:19 and they first got radios back then
00:50:23 and when Jack, he would drive the truck,
00:50:25 you’re up there with the officer,
00:50:27 either the lieutenant or captain,
00:50:28 so if the boss is off the truck,
00:50:31 you operate the radio for them as the driver.
00:50:33 So when they called him and they’d say,
00:50:35 you know, ladder 114 responding to 52nd Street,
00:50:38 3rd Avenue, Structure Fire,
00:50:40 you’re supposed to get back and say,
00:50:41 ladder 114, 10 four, but he refused to do that.
00:50:44 He’d say, ladder 114, Tally Ho,
00:50:47 because that’s what they’d yell
00:50:48 when they’d jump out the plane.
00:50:50 So all these years later, it stuck
00:50:52 and it’s a little bit of a bragging right,
00:50:54 but out of 350 engine and truck companies
00:50:58 in the whole New York City Fire Department,
00:51:00 we’re pretty much the only one
00:51:01 that’s called by their nickname on the radio,
00:51:03 not their number.
00:51:04 So it tweaked some guys off in other places,
00:51:07 you know, they may F you, Tally Ho,
00:51:09 but it’s just, yeah, it’s a great, great heritage
00:51:13 and we’re really proud and Shamrock was,
00:51:17 he was Irish and a lot of the guys back then
00:51:20 were Irish immigrants from the area,
00:51:23 from the neighborhood,
00:51:23 and they would actually take the fire truck
00:51:26 to church on Sunday and park out front
00:51:28 and one guy would stay in it to hear the radio
00:51:31 in case they got a call.
00:51:32 So yeah, that’s the proud history.
00:51:35 And you said that if I wear this around New York,
00:51:37 am I getting a little bit of?
00:51:38 You might get a guy from the Bronx,
00:51:39 go, hey, Tally Ho, screw you, you know?
00:51:41 But I mean, it’s all that good rivalry, you know?
00:51:44 We like to, you know, we like to kid each other
00:51:47 back and forth, you know, guys from Manhattan,
00:51:51 we’ll say, yeah, you guys are in Brooklyn,
00:51:52 yeah, short buildings, tall stories.
00:51:54 And they’re like, yeah, you guys are in Manhattan,
00:51:56 tall buildings, no stories, you know?
00:51:59 Like it’s just all that jocular ball break
00:52:02 and it’s good stuff, you know?
00:52:04 Let me ask, I guess, a difficult question.
00:52:08 If you just step back on the events of 9 11,
00:52:11 on the side of the people that flew into the towers,
00:52:15 what do you take away from that day about the nature,
00:52:20 about human nature, about good and evil?
00:52:23 How did that change your view of the world?
00:52:29 I witnessed evil firsthand.
00:52:32 I remember later on, well into that night
00:52:35 when we were trying to help get those police officers out,
00:52:38 I remember looking up at the building, Century 21,
00:52:41 the store runs along the east side of the towers
00:52:45 and it was still there and the debris had come down
00:52:48 right almost to the edge.
00:52:50 Century 21 is this old storied department store
00:52:53 in New York City and the sign was there
00:52:56 and it was still lit up, like some of the neon was broken
00:52:59 but I think some of it was actually still lit up
00:53:02 and I just looked around and I was like,
00:53:05 this is a war zone, like we’re at war.
00:53:08 And we knew we were attacked, we heard the fighter planes
00:53:11 and back then it wasn’t the extensive communication
00:53:15 network and we had cell phones but they were the old school
00:53:18 flip phones and there was no news on them
00:53:20 and so plus we didn’t have signal down there anyway.
00:53:24 I couldn’t reach my family for like 12, 13 hours
00:53:27 and my dad had deployed down to the ferry terminal
00:53:31 to retrieve bodies.
00:53:33 He was retired but he still went and they deployed him
00:53:37 to go be basically the morgue transport guys.
00:53:41 They expected to be sending hundreds and thousands
00:53:44 of bodies across on the ferry and they set up
00:53:47 these tractor trailers as a mobile morgue
00:53:50 and that never happened because there were no bodies
00:53:53 to take, they were all buried.
00:53:58 So I saw evil firsthand, I don’t know how someone
00:54:01 can inflict such revenge or a vengeful act
00:54:07 in the name of anything, in the name of a religion,
00:54:10 in the name of a cause, in the name, like what the hell?
00:54:14 Were you ever able to make sense of that,
00:54:16 why men are able to commit such acts of terror
00:54:19 in the days and the years after?
00:54:22 No, Lex, I haven’t.
00:54:26 My mom’s from Ireland and I still have a lot of family there
00:54:30 and my great uncles, one of them was dragged out and shot.
00:54:35 He lived but just based on a rumor that he was in the IRA
00:54:39 and I wasn’t happy to see what happened to my mom’s people
00:54:44 because they were victimized and brutalized
00:54:47 by England at that time.
00:54:50 But blowing up bombs and killing innocents
00:54:55 in the name of that, it doesn’t make it right.
00:55:00 I couldn’t justify something like that.
00:55:02 I can see, I was a cop, I was a soldier
00:55:07 and you never wanna take life and those jobs
00:55:12 but sometimes you have to.
00:55:15 But you don’t do it with a vengeance,
00:55:16 you don’t do it with a thirst,
00:55:18 you do it because it’s necessary for survival.
00:55:22 When you do it out of a bloodlust, out of a thirst,
00:55:25 out of a cause, that’s evil, there’s something wrong
00:55:28 with you, I have no, I respect life to the highest level.
00:55:33 I mean, I’m very, life is sacred to me, it’s precious,
00:55:36 it’s beyond, it’s not a commodity, it’s a gift.
00:55:42 But to take life just so randomly,
00:55:45 so there’s something way wrong with that person
00:55:47 and maybe I’m a conflicted soul
00:55:50 but I would have no problem seeing someone like that
00:55:53 put to death because they do not deserve life.
00:55:59 There’s many children around me
00:56:02 and many children around this world
00:56:04 that are being taught to hate someone
00:56:07 who’s different than them just because the person
00:56:10 who’s allegedly teaching them says so.
00:56:13 I don’t understand it.
00:56:14 Well, that starts with just having a basic respect
00:56:19 and appreciation of other human beings
00:56:21 and that starts with empathy.
00:56:24 And one of the reasons I love this country,
00:56:27 while joking that I’m Russian, maybe you could say the same
00:56:31 as you being Irish, you’re actually truly an American
00:56:35 and that’s why I consider myself very much an American.
00:56:37 And one of the reasons I love this country
00:56:40 is it serves as a beacon.
00:56:42 I still believe it serves as a beacon of hope
00:56:46 and that empathy and love for the rest of the world
00:56:50 that hate is not gonna get you far,
00:56:54 that love will get you a lot farther.
00:56:55 And I still think sometimes it’s easy
00:56:58 to see the press, mainstream media,
00:57:03 you could see social networks.
00:57:05 Because you can make so much money on division,
00:57:08 sometimes because it makes so much money,
00:57:11 it’s easy to think like we’re really divided.
00:57:14 I honestly don’t think we are.
00:57:16 That’s just like the very surface level thing
00:57:18 we see on Twitter and so on.
00:57:20 It’s that you’re 100% right.
00:57:23 There’s people out there that are maximizing
00:57:25 off this whole division, right?
00:57:27 They want us divided, they want people angry
00:57:30 because it sells.
00:57:32 A lot of these people that are in charge
00:57:34 of certain organizations, well, they all seem to have
00:57:38 nice cars and nice houses and nice vacations
00:57:42 and they’re constantly trying to convince everybody
00:57:45 that we hate each other.
00:57:47 To me, I’ll use a fireman analogy, right?
00:57:49 It’s like a little campfire.
00:57:51 And if you just let the embers flutter, they’ll go out.
00:57:55 But if you take a little cup of gasoline with those embers,
00:57:58 boom, it’ll blow right up in your face.
00:58:01 And that’s what a lot of these politicians
00:58:04 and a lot of these media folks are doing
00:58:06 because there’s something in it for them.
00:58:08 And I think it’s possible to defeat them
00:58:11 with great leaders, with great spokespeople,
00:58:14 with great human beings having a voice.
00:58:17 One of the powerful things with the internet
00:58:19 is more and more people have a voice.
00:58:21 And I ultimately believe, certainly in America,
00:58:25 but in the world, the good people outnumber the assholes.
00:58:30 Oh, I agree.
00:58:31 And there’s days when I think the assholes
00:58:33 are overrunning us, but you know what?
00:58:38 I think what the downfall of the world is
00:58:41 is ego and arrogance and people that think they’re better
00:58:45 than that other guy.
00:58:47 My parents raised me to be this way.
00:58:49 My mom is such a sweet, gentle soul.
00:58:52 She’s an immigrant.
00:58:52 She came here at 16 years old.
00:58:55 She helps everybody but herself, right?
00:58:57 She’s just one of those people.
00:58:59 She’s sick.
00:58:59 She’s got Parkinson’s.
00:59:01 You’d never know it.
00:59:02 And she’s still flying around her condo complex
00:59:04 helping everybody because that’s what she does.
00:59:08 She loves to help people.
00:59:10 But she’s been in their shoes.
00:59:12 She’s been poor.
00:59:13 She’s sick.
00:59:14 Her husband was sick.
00:59:15 She’s had all sorts of suffering and loss in her life.
00:59:19 My granddad died when my mom was 10
00:59:23 and she was one of 10 children that survived out of 14.
00:59:27 She knows hard times, but she so appreciates the good times
00:59:32 and the goodness of this country.
00:59:35 You know, the fire department
00:59:38 and the police department, military,
00:59:40 it taught me a lot about empathy
00:59:41 and trying to really feel for someone
00:59:43 and put yourself in their situation.
00:59:48 I remember years back, I was a much younger fireman.
00:59:50 I was probably five years on the job.
00:59:53 And I was sent down to the next firehouse over to fill in.
00:59:58 You know, we would get sent around randomly
01:00:00 when they needed an extra guy.
01:00:03 And someone came banging on the firehouse door
01:00:06 and in the tenement apartment next door,
01:00:09 they said there was an older woman that was unconscious.
01:00:12 So we dispatched ourselves
01:00:14 and we ran over with a medical kit
01:00:17 and it was an elderly woman laying there on the bed.
01:00:20 And she was obviously not breathing.
01:00:23 She was obviously in cardiac arrest
01:00:26 and an older gentleman that was holding her hand,
01:00:29 just inconsolably crying.
01:00:31 And it turned out it was her husband
01:00:34 and they were married for 65 years.
01:00:37 And normally we would just respectfully ask
01:00:40 the family members to just step aside
01:00:43 and let us do our work.
01:00:45 And I realized that he wouldn’t leave her side.
01:00:47 So I kind of gave the crew a wink
01:00:49 and they were doing CPR on what they had to.
01:00:53 And I just let him keep holding her hand.
01:00:57 And I said, sir, if you, you know,
01:00:58 could you just come over just a little bit so we can work?
01:01:02 And I held his hand as he held hers.
01:01:06 And I said, sir, I said, do you have faith?
01:01:09 And he did.
01:01:10 And I said, would you like to pray with me for your wife?
01:01:14 And he said, I would like to.
01:01:17 So we said the Lord’s prayer
01:01:19 and you know, I just asked God to protect her and bless her.
01:01:23 And I think he realized that she didn’t have a chance,
01:01:27 but we still gave her that chance.
01:01:30 And we, you know, got her in the ambulance
01:01:32 and maybe it was wrong to try to make it look
01:01:35 like we could save her, but you know,
01:01:37 you can’t really not try.
01:01:41 But the one beautiful moment was he thanked me
01:01:44 and he was almost okay with it at that point.
01:01:49 Like he wasn’t as upset.
01:01:51 He wasn’t as distraught because I tried to just humanize
01:01:54 that situation of what we were trying to do.
01:01:56 We were trying to do our best,
01:01:58 but we also tried to be compassionate to his sadness.
01:02:01 And it just, I walked away just feeling so good,
01:02:06 even though it was a tragic situation.
01:02:07 And she did pass that, you know, he came by to, you know,
01:02:11 thank us days later and just heartbreaking.
01:02:15 But you know, there’s just, it’s just happens many,
01:02:17 many times throughout the country every day.
01:02:21 People get that opportunity as a responder to be
01:02:23 that last bridge to the family and the loved one.
01:02:27 And you only get that opportunity once sometimes
01:02:30 and you really have to, to me,
01:02:32 it’s like your moment to shine.
01:02:34 You know, you could just be very,
01:02:35 very dismissive and very rude,
01:02:37 or you could be compassionate and just show,
01:02:40 hey, I have a mom, I have a grandma, I have, you know,
01:02:43 and just in your mind, pretend that that’s
01:02:45 who you’re working on and that’s who you’re with.
01:02:47 So that moment of compassion, that moment of empathy,
01:02:50 even if his brief can be the thing that saves the person
01:02:54 from suffering, make the difference between suffering
01:02:59 and overcoming in the face of tragedy.
01:03:01 Yes, like I felt that even though obviously his loss
01:03:05 was still huge, it just made it a little more bearable
01:03:08 and, you know, tried to just take his grief down
01:03:11 to a lower level and it made me feel,
01:03:14 just feel really good about doing it.
01:03:17 That’s a powerful way to see the job of a first responder.
01:03:19 Of course, you have to deal with certain aspects
01:03:21 of the tragedy, but it’s to provide somebody
01:03:24 with that moment of compassion.
01:03:26 Yeah, and you know, I made it a little habit
01:03:29 because sometimes with faith,
01:03:30 it’s a little bit of a tricky subject.
01:03:32 So every time I had someone who died,
01:03:35 which unfortunately was many, many times,
01:03:37 I would just touch their hand
01:03:40 and just say a little quick prayer and just say,
01:03:42 look, you know, I hope you’re moving on to a better place.
01:03:44 I hope if you did have faith that it’s strong as you depart
01:03:50 and if you didn’t have faith,
01:03:51 I hope maybe at your last moment that you found some
01:03:53 and you just found some closure.
01:03:55 So that was just my little ritual, I think.
01:03:58 I just, you know, I felt it was important
01:04:01 that that person, even though they were a stranger,
01:04:03 just had someone there just sort of hoping
01:04:06 for the best for them in their last moments.
01:04:10 You mentioned cancer.
01:04:12 You had a rare leukemia due to all the work
01:04:20 that you did at Ground Zero.
01:04:22 Can you maybe talk to the experience
01:04:25 of just breathing through those days
01:04:28 and what that was like, being unable to breathe,
01:04:32 being overwhelmed by all of the dust in the air?
01:04:37 Yes, the first day especially, we didn’t have equipment.
01:04:43 We didn’t have breathing apparatus
01:04:45 and then we were handed little 69 cent
01:04:49 hardware store dust mask, you know,
01:04:50 it was a little thin paint mask
01:04:52 that would just get sweated up
01:04:54 and sticking to your face within 30 seconds.
01:04:57 So you would just, they were useless.
01:05:00 And what you wound up feeling like was
01:05:02 that you swallowed a box of razor blades
01:05:05 because there was glass and there was cement
01:05:07 and it was just so caustic.
01:05:09 And I remember that night, you know,
01:05:12 when we went back just to get some medical relief
01:05:15 for the few hours, we were walking up the hill
01:05:18 to the firehouse because they dropped us off
01:05:20 like a block away down at Engine 201’s quarters
01:05:25 and one of the older firemen as we’re walking up the block,
01:05:29 we’re all struggling, we’re all having a hard time breathing
01:05:31 and just, I mean, I felt like I was dying,
01:05:33 literally, it was pretty bad.
01:05:36 And I just remember the one guy going out,
01:05:39 we’re all dead.
01:05:39 And I said, no, no, we made it, we made it.
01:05:41 He goes, no, you don’t get it, kid.
01:05:42 He said, we just breathed in poison after poison for hours
01:05:47 and then that went into days and then went into months.
01:05:50 He says, we’re all dead, man, this is gonna take us all.
01:05:54 And I thought he was crazy and then now years later,
01:05:58 like starting in 03 or 04,
01:06:00 guys just started coming down with these really rare
01:06:04 and advanced cancers and then it just stopped
01:06:08 being a coincidence with the number of guys
01:06:11 and they were young, one of the first guys, John McNamara,
01:06:14 he was 33 or 34 and he came down colon cancer
01:06:18 and it took him quickly in 2000, he was in 2005.
01:06:23 And I kind of said to friends and family,
01:06:28 I said, I feel like I’m running through a minefield
01:06:30 and I wonder when I’m gonna step on my mind
01:06:33 because everybody’s gonna get sick.
01:06:35 And I wasn’t feeling well from 2008 on,
01:06:39 I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I just wasn’t right.
01:06:44 And in 2011, I failed my medical,
01:06:49 my bloods came back horrifically wrong
01:06:53 and they pulled me off the truck,
01:06:55 but they strung me out for a month,
01:06:58 the doctors in the fire department,
01:07:00 one of them said my spleen was engorged
01:07:03 because I was probably drinking myself to death,
01:07:05 like as he said, most of the guys did after 9 11,
01:07:10 which was pretty wrong of him and stereotypical,
01:07:12 just to stereotype and to categorize
01:07:14 and guy couldn’t have cared less,
01:07:17 he just, he was so crude and nasty.
01:07:19 And then my one doctor who was my doctor on the outside,
01:07:23 my blood pressure was 240 over 140,
01:07:26 my spleen was about to rupture,
01:07:28 she didn’t even show up for my appointment
01:07:30 and I went down, passed out, the paramedics responded,
01:07:34 she got into an argument with a paramedic
01:07:36 because for big ego and basically telling him
01:07:40 there wasn’t really anything wrong
01:07:41 and he’s looking at my paperwork going,
01:07:43 this guy’s got leukemia and he overrode her,
01:07:46 he raced me out of there down to Brooklyn Methodist
01:07:49 and the doctor, the charge physician, the ER physician,
01:07:55 he says, you’re not leaving, you’re in a bad way.
01:07:58 And I said, what is it?
01:08:00 He said, I need a little while to figure it out,
01:08:04 he goes, but you probably have one of a few different types
01:08:09 of leukemia, he said, I’ll drill into your hip,
01:08:11 take your marrow and find out.
01:08:13 And he said, but in the meantime,
01:08:15 we’ll get the swelling on the spleen down,
01:08:17 I guess some sort of rapid medicines and whatnot
01:08:19 because my spleen is about to rupture.
01:08:22 I had no blood platelets left which is your clotter
01:08:25 so I basically would have bled to death
01:08:27 and I found out from my team of doctors
01:08:31 that I had about 48 hours to live
01:08:34 and that really set me off, I was infuriated
01:08:37 because I was telling them for a long time that I was sick.
01:08:41 The doctors failed you,
01:08:42 the few doctors in the beginning failed you.
01:08:44 I felt very betrayed and other guys had died
01:08:49 and I had it out with that one doctor,
01:08:53 I basically told her she was fired from my case
01:08:55 and she’s pretty politically in charge person
01:08:59 and I didn’t care, I jeopardized my job for it
01:09:02 because it was my life and I got the sense
01:09:04 that it didn’t really matter to her.
01:09:07 She didn’t have any empathy, as you say.
01:09:09 It was exact, so why for her, why for a few others,
01:09:13 was there not a special care, a special compassion
01:09:18 for, first of all, all humans,
01:09:20 but human beings in your position,
01:09:22 especially a firefighter, a first responder?
01:09:26 You know, Alex, I think what it is in the department,
01:09:28 their title is just to get us back to duty
01:09:31 as quickly as possible when we are either injured or sick
01:09:35 because what happens then is your replacement
01:09:38 is now in overtime so you’re out being paid on medical leave
01:09:43 but then they need to replace your spot
01:09:45 and then that costs more money.
01:09:47 So I think it just behooves them
01:09:49 to get as many personnel back
01:09:52 and especially during the summertime,
01:09:54 they look at it like, oh, maybe you want a few extra days off
01:09:57 to go to the beach and this one doctor,
01:10:02 he tipped his hand back as if I was drinking
01:10:04 an alcohol beverage, he says, hey, busy summer?
01:10:07 Because I asked him to look at my spleen
01:10:09 which was sticking out of my abdomen like a football
01:10:13 and I said, excuse me, sir, I said,
01:10:14 how dare you assume that I’m abusing alcohol
01:10:18 because alcohol abuse sometimes will present itself
01:10:22 as the spleen is engorged and having an issue.
01:10:26 So he automatically just assumed that that was my situation,
01:10:29 wouldn’t even give me an exam and I was horrified.
01:10:32 I was so angry, I mean, I wanted to punch this guy out
01:10:35 and I literally was screaming at him
01:10:37 and an executive officer came in to diffuse it
01:10:41 and sent me to another doctor
01:10:42 and when I showed her my paperwork, she was horrified.
01:10:44 She was like, what did he say?
01:10:47 And she said, oh, okay, go to your regular doctor tomorrow
01:10:50 who was one of the department doctors
01:10:52 and it was just an indifference.
01:10:55 It was like, I don’t know,
01:10:57 I was shocked at the lack of compassion
01:11:00 but you know what, that being said, I’m past it,
01:11:04 life moves on.
01:11:06 The team of doctors, I ended up with a Methodist
01:11:09 and my subsequent oncologist, Dr. Peter Menzel,
01:11:13 world class, just incredible human being.
01:11:16 My Dr. Pete is just, I love him.
01:11:18 I just, I love him like a friend, like a big brother,
01:11:21 like a father, like my primary oncology care nurse,
01:11:25 Mike Nunez, was just an incredible human being
01:11:28 and he knew I was frightened
01:11:30 because I had to get two and a half years of chemo
01:11:33 compressed into seven days or I was dead.
01:11:37 And these massive bags of chemo that never stopped
01:11:40 and they burned, the minute they went into your body,
01:11:46 you felt like you were burning to death
01:11:47 from the inside out.
01:11:49 And Mike, when Mike came in to hook me up,
01:11:51 he said, look, I have to wear a hazmat suit.
01:11:54 This stuff is so caustic that if it drips,
01:11:57 it’ll burn whenever it touches.
01:11:59 And I was like, but Mike, you’re gonna put that in my body.
01:12:02 How the hell is it not gonna kill me?
01:12:04 He says, no, no, this is exactly what it’s supposed to do.
01:12:07 Trust me.
01:12:08 So when he prepped the IV tube to get it flowing,
01:12:11 it spilled onto the tube
01:12:13 and the tube started to smoke and burn.
01:12:15 And I said, no effing way, Mike,
01:12:18 you’re not putting that in me.
01:12:19 No way, no way.
01:12:20 And he goes, listen, let me get another one.
01:12:22 Let me start it over.
01:12:23 And here he is wearing a hazmat suit, looking at me
01:12:25 and I’m going, this is insane.
01:12:27 And he goes, he looked at me, he took my hand
01:12:30 and he says, Nels, if you don’t take it, you’re dead.
01:12:34 He says, you got those three kids.
01:12:35 I’m sorry, I have no other option.
01:12:37 You’re dead.
01:12:38 And I said, all right, Mike, okay.
01:12:41 And he hooked me up.
01:12:42 And you know what, it was like, you know,
01:12:45 if you do drink alcohol and you have like a shot
01:12:47 or want, you know, strong type spirit
01:12:50 and you start feeling that burn.
01:12:53 Well, the minute he hit me in the vein,
01:12:56 it just started going up my arm, burning
01:12:58 and then up my shoulder, across my neck, into my head,
01:13:03 across the rest of my body,
01:13:04 within a minute down to my feet.
01:13:06 And I was writhing in pain for seven days
01:13:09 and I was praying to die.
01:13:12 I was the seventh rescuer in six months
01:13:14 to come down with the rarest leukemia there is.
01:13:17 There’s only 500 cases in all of North America a year.
01:13:20 And seven of us came down in six months.
01:13:22 Two guys died during treatment.
01:13:24 Seven responders, police, fire.
01:13:27 Two guys died in the first couple of days of the treatment
01:13:29 because it’s so vicious, your liver, your heart,
01:13:32 your kidneys, something will fail.
01:13:35 And I was praying and I was praying, but I wanted to die.
01:13:37 I was in so much pain.
01:13:39 And I wouldn’t take a painkiller
01:13:40 because I know people with some issues
01:13:42 and I just didn’t want to go there.
01:13:45 And finally on the last day I gave in,
01:13:48 I said, please, I can’t do this anymore.
01:13:50 I was literally like jumping out of my skin
01:13:53 and they gave me something.
01:13:55 But it had burned out my mind, it burned out my body.
01:13:58 I couldn’t hear, I could barely see, it was vicious.
01:14:01 But it worked.
01:14:03 And my nurses especially,
01:14:05 they just, they were so dedicated and devoted.
01:14:08 And I was not an easy patient
01:14:10 because I was in a lot of pain.
01:14:11 It was bad and it was, drove my friends, my family crazy.
01:14:16 It was just, it wasn’t good.
01:14:18 But on that first night I had a quick vision
01:14:22 of all these people that I loved that were dead, that died.
01:14:26 A lot of them in a trade center and I saw Johnny,
01:14:28 I saw friends I grew up with.
01:14:32 The last one was my mother in law
01:14:34 who had passed six months before and she died of,
01:14:37 she was in a coma, she had a stroke.
01:14:39 She had a horrible, horrible last six months of life
01:14:42 and it wasn’t fair because she was so religious.
01:14:45 She went to church every day, devout Catholic woman.
01:14:49 And all of a sudden I see her and she’s smiling
01:14:51 and we used to talk a lot, it’s the Irish thing,
01:14:55 like the gab, the gift of gab.
01:14:56 And she used to call me her boyfriend
01:14:59 because we’d sit and talk for hours
01:15:00 and talk about books and about movies and about food.
01:15:03 I loved her, she was my friend.
01:15:06 And she’d say, you know, my boyfriend’s here.
01:15:08 And all of a sudden she’s smiling
01:15:10 and she goes, hi, my boyfriend.
01:15:11 And I says, Nan, Nan, what are you doing?
01:15:13 She goes, he’s not ready, he doesn’t want you.
01:15:16 You gotta go back, you got things to do.
01:15:19 And I’m like, no, Nan, Nan, it hurts so much.
01:15:21 Please, please take me and she left.
01:15:23 She goes, no, no, not yet, I’ll see you.
01:15:26 And she just faded away.
01:15:28 And one of my doctors on my team,
01:15:30 she had a problem with religion.
01:15:35 And that’s okay, I understand that.
01:15:38 I’m not a preacher, I have a faith,
01:15:40 but I don’t preach it, I don’t push it.
01:15:41 I just live and let live.
01:15:44 So she sent in this shrink to see me.
01:15:47 And I was messed up from the chemo,
01:15:49 but I knew what I was seeing, I knew what I was saying.
01:15:53 And he was a Jewish gentleman.
01:15:56 He was a rabbi also in a synagogue.
01:15:59 And I actually had responded in that district
01:16:01 and he knew 114 would run into Borough Park.
01:16:04 Oh yeah, I see Tyler, oh, they come down the street.
01:16:08 And he asked me to tell him the story and I did.
01:16:11 And he started laughing and he scared me now.
01:16:14 I says, Doc, am I really crazy?
01:16:15 He said, no, no.
01:16:17 He said, I believe you, my friend.
01:16:19 He said, we share the same God.
01:16:23 He goes, we work in the same corporation,
01:16:25 but in different departments.
01:16:27 And he says, you did see your mother in law.
01:16:30 He says, your faith is that strong.
01:16:32 He said, I’ve had many patients
01:16:33 express the same sentiments.
01:16:35 He said, so I want you to listen to her
01:16:38 and fight and be strong.
01:16:40 And he said, so what else do you want to talk about?
01:16:42 I said, well, I don’t know, Doc, am I that messed up?
01:16:44 He goes, no, no.
01:16:45 He goes, they’re paying me for an hour.
01:16:46 It only took 20 minutes.
01:16:48 So we watched the Yankee game together and that’s less.
01:16:51 But it was just, again, it showed the human condition.
01:16:53 Here’s these two men of two totally different faiths.
01:16:57 And yet we shared that bond of faith.
01:17:00 And he had empathy and he had sympathy.
01:17:03 And he saw me in many other patients.
01:17:08 So he just didn’t assume.
01:17:10 And he gave me a fair shake
01:17:11 and I will always be grateful to him for that.
01:17:15 Through any of this, the pain you had to go through
01:17:18 with the leukemia, but also the days of 9 11
01:17:21 and after, did your faith get challenged?
01:17:26 You know, Lex, it was strange.
01:17:28 It was times I was so angry.
01:17:30 You know, there’s that range of emotions,
01:17:31 the anger, the denial, the depression, the this, the that.
01:17:36 And this is the weirdest thing.
01:17:37 It was mostly, I knew my career was over
01:17:41 and they retired me out of the job.
01:17:43 That, I got sick in August and that October,
01:17:46 they told me I was out.
01:17:48 And by the time I was processed and, you know,
01:17:51 used up my leaves and whatever you want to say it was,
01:17:54 I was officially retired in January of 02
01:17:59 and it was less than six months.
01:18:01 And I’m there walking my dog one day,
01:18:03 my rescued Greyhound who I miss.
01:18:05 She was such a soul.
01:18:06 God, she lived to be almost 13, Katie.
01:18:09 And we were walking in the snow and I got the call.
01:18:12 I was retired and I looked at her and I’m like,
01:18:14 Katie, what am I going to do?
01:18:15 She just looked up and said, we’re going to go
01:18:16 on a lot more walks, you know?
01:18:18 And I was so sad and I was so sad and I was so angry
01:18:22 because I lost my priesthood.
01:18:24 I loved helping people.
01:18:25 I really, like I would have done it for free.
01:18:28 I would never tell Mayor Bloomberg that, right?
01:18:30 He’s all about the buck, right?
01:18:32 But like, you know, honestly,
01:18:33 I would have been a New York City fireman.
01:18:35 I would have paid them to do it, you know?
01:18:37 And I wasn’t allowed anymore.
01:18:40 That’s it.
01:18:41 You have over 20 years and you have cancer.
01:18:43 You know, back when my dad got sick,
01:18:45 they’d let you hang around for 10, 12 years in an office,
01:18:47 but not now.
01:18:49 Now it’s all about the bottom line.
01:18:53 But I was more depressed about losing a job
01:18:55 than almost losing my life.
01:18:57 Like, as crazy as that sounds, you know?
01:18:59 And it just…
01:19:00 It was more than a job.
01:19:01 I mean, it’s a way of life.
01:19:04 Oh, man, yeah.
01:19:05 It also is your family, your father,
01:19:07 your carrying torture, your father’s…
01:19:10 Oh, my friend.
01:19:11 I love my friends.
01:19:12 I love, we worked 24 hour shifts together.
01:19:14 You cook, you clean, you break each other’s jobs
01:19:17 relentlessly.
01:19:18 I mean, I love those guys so much.
01:19:20 I mean, I hope that my kids
01:19:24 and anyone that I know and care about,
01:19:25 I hope they can experience the bond of that brotherhood
01:19:31 that I experienced in my life.
01:19:32 It was so…
01:19:33 God, I would give anything to have it back.
01:19:36 Just, yeah.
01:19:37 Can I ask you about New York?
01:19:39 So unfortunately, I’ve never lived in New York.
01:19:42 I visit.
01:19:43 I’ve always wanted to live there for a bit.
01:19:44 Obviously, it’s a very different experience
01:19:47 to have really lived in New York for many, many years.
01:19:50 But there’s a few friends of mine that are from…
01:19:54 They got similar accent as yours.
01:19:56 Yeah.
01:19:57 That are a little bit saddened.
01:20:00 Perhaps it’s temporary, but perhaps not.
01:20:03 They don’t seem to think so of what New York has become,
01:20:07 especially with COVID.
01:20:08 It’s losing some of the spirit of New York.
01:20:12 Do you have that sense?
01:20:13 Do you have a hope for the city
01:20:15 that has been so defining to what is America?
01:20:21 My heart’s broken.
01:20:22 I had moved to New Jersey many years ago,
01:20:25 but I still have a close attachment to New York.
01:20:27 My parents are still there, many, many family members.
01:20:32 And I’ve since now moved to Tennessee.
01:20:34 I needed to go somewhere quiet.
01:20:36 I wanted to heal my fractured soul.
01:20:38 And I’m in the middle of a beautiful farming rural area
01:20:43 in middle Tennessee.
01:20:45 And so they probably called me a sellout
01:20:48 back in New York for leaving,
01:20:50 but it’s not the same city and it’s sad.
01:20:54 I’ll refrain from the politics and the finger pointing,
01:20:59 but it’s a mess compared to what it was.
01:21:01 And I did Broadway theater security for many years,
01:21:06 and I started to see it slide
01:21:09 like with stuff that was happening,
01:21:11 like public urination and defecation
01:21:15 and just like tourists don’t wanna see that, right?
01:21:18 And I had an unfortunate incident two years ago.
01:21:24 I was jumped by four teenagers coming off the subway
01:21:28 and they were pissed off
01:21:29 because I was wearing an American flag hat.
01:21:31 And I don’t know, I’m not really sure why,
01:21:36 but it left me, I got out of it, okay.
01:21:40 But I was taken back.
01:21:43 They were literally videoing it
01:21:44 and the kid was just throwing shadow punches at my face
01:21:47 wanting to beat me up.
01:21:48 And I finally looked him in the eyes and I was like,
01:21:50 oh boy, I’m a little too old for this.
01:21:52 Body’s a little broken down for chemo.
01:21:54 And I finally just said, all right, all right.
01:21:56 I just had enough, I wanted to go home.
01:21:59 Just worked a 17 hour shift as a stage hand.
01:22:02 And I was so taken back, I was so insulted.
01:22:04 I’m saying, I spent my life protecting this city
01:22:07 and now I’m getting attacked like for nothing.
01:22:10 And I just, I gave up
01:22:12 and maybe I should have given it a little more time,
01:22:14 but it’s, I don’t know, it’s turned into an angry place.
01:22:19 It’s turned into, I think there’s a lot of people
01:22:22 that aren’t getting the resources they need in a sense.
01:22:26 There’s a lot of mental illness.
01:22:27 There’s a lot of homelessness.
01:22:29 There’s a lot of violent people
01:22:31 just roaming around the streets and it’s not good.
01:22:33 It’s not safe.
01:22:35 And tourists are not gonna come back.
01:22:38 Even just leading up to the COVID,
01:22:40 I had some tourists saying to me, I won’t be back.
01:22:43 And now I can only imagine
01:22:44 that it’s just gotten exponentially worse,
01:22:46 but I hope there’s a chance it’ll swing back.
01:22:49 Cause it is, it’s the gateway to the world.
01:22:50 I mean, my grandfather came from Denmark.
01:22:55 He landed in Ellis Island in the twenties.
01:22:59 American success story, 25 bucks in his pocket,
01:23:01 didn’t speak the language,
01:23:03 had a sponsor family in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
01:23:06 And he made it, you know, he ended up dying
01:23:09 owning a bakery at one point and then an apartment building.
01:23:13 And he did pretty well for himself
01:23:14 for an immigrant who was poor.
01:23:16 And my mom, my Irish mother landed in the same neighborhood,
01:23:20 Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 16 years old.
01:23:24 Worked as a cashier 50, 60 hours a week in the supermarket
01:23:27 and finished school at night.
01:23:29 Married my father, the fireman,
01:23:32 and, you know, lived the American dream.
01:23:36 And it was all, it was all from New York.
01:23:37 And my father’s mom was from Irish immigrants
01:23:41 and they all landed in Ellis Island.
01:23:43 Well, my mom didn’t cause it was closed at that point,
01:23:45 but it’s, there’s people breaking down the doors
01:23:49 to come to this country, right?
01:23:51 There’s no one breaking down the doors to leave.
01:23:55 And this is, this is a problem I have
01:23:56 with people that aren’t grateful for being here.
01:23:58 And this, again, it’s not political,
01:24:00 just straight down the middle fastball.
01:24:03 If you don’t like it here, I’ll show you the door.
01:24:06 I’ll get you the plane ticket.
01:24:08 I mean, would you want to live back in Russia
01:24:10 compared to here?
01:24:11 Would you, you might because of family ties,
01:24:13 but I mean, if you had no ties to Russia
01:24:16 or would you want to go to China right now
01:24:18 and possibly end up in a labor camp or, right?
01:24:21 There’s people busting down the doors to get to this place.
01:24:24 It’s not perfect.
01:24:25 It’s got its flaws, it’s got its blemishes, you know,
01:24:31 but it’s a damn great place.
01:24:32 It’s the best country in the world.
01:24:34 Yeah, and some of it, so first of all,
01:24:36 I have hope for New York.
01:24:37 I think that culture is very difficult to kill.
01:24:40 I think it will persevere.
01:24:42 And I think ultimately the same story with New York
01:24:45 as with the rest of the United States,
01:24:48 it has to do with leaders.
01:24:49 And I’m always hopeful that great leaders will emerge.
01:24:53 I agree.
01:24:54 And the kind of leadership we see now
01:24:58 and the kind of conversations we have now,
01:24:59 I think it has to do with the prosperity and comfort.
01:25:04 And in the face of hardship,
01:25:06 I think great leaders will emerge.
01:25:07 And yeah, I just think ultimately
01:25:11 in the long arc of history.
01:25:13 Well, leaders shouldn’t become rich.
01:25:15 They shouldn’t become rich in the process, right?
01:25:17 You shouldn’t go into political office
01:25:20 as an alleged lunchbox kind of guy
01:25:23 and then come out eating at the best steakhouse in the world.
01:25:26 I mean, that’s the problem with politics, right?
01:25:30 My Irish grandmother, God rest her, used to say,
01:25:33 oh, those politicians, they’re all like dirty diapers.
01:25:35 They’re full of shit and they stink.
01:25:37 And it’s true.
01:25:38 I don’t give a crap what party they’re in.
01:25:40 Yeah, greed and power.
01:25:41 We had to beg these guys,
01:25:42 beg them for federal legislation
01:25:45 to cover our medical bills, right?
01:25:47 There’s a gentleman, John Field
01:25:49 from the Feel Good Foundation.
01:25:51 This guy is a lion of a man, a general,
01:25:54 but with a soft, big, great heart.
01:25:57 And John is a former construction worker
01:26:00 who came to the 9.11 site the day after.
01:26:05 He was one of those guys cutting the steel with torches
01:26:08 and craning it out of the air.
01:26:09 One of those hard hats that just,
01:26:12 that never got the credit and the praise
01:26:16 that we did as responders.
01:26:18 And I don’t mean that as a knock to responders, right?
01:26:21 I mean, we lost 37 Port Authority police officers,
01:26:25 23 NYPD officers,
01:26:28 about a dozen emergency medical technicians and paramedics,
01:26:34 three court officers from New York State courts
01:26:36 and two federal agents,
01:26:38 and I hope, and 343 New York City firefighters.
01:26:41 We lost a ton of responders.
01:26:43 But the recovery workers,
01:26:46 thankfully weren’t killed in that process,
01:26:48 but there’s hundreds of them now who are dead from illnesses
01:26:53 because they came down to recover our people
01:26:55 and the civilians and the poor lost souls
01:26:58 that were killed at work that day.
01:27:01 And John literally almost lost his foot
01:27:05 in a construction accident at the site.
01:27:07 An 8,000 pound I beam tore off half of his foot,
01:27:12 ended up with massive sepsis, six months in the hospital,
01:27:16 hundreds of thousand dollars in medical bills,
01:27:19 and then no one wanted to pay him.
01:27:21 So here’s a guy, he’s gonna lose his house,
01:27:23 lose his life, lose everything.
01:27:25 And now the never forget, it started quick, right?
01:27:30 And he went on a mission,
01:27:33 formed his Feel Good Foundation.
01:27:35 His last name is Feel, F E A L, Feel Good Foundation.
01:27:38 And this man literally went to Washington, DC
01:27:43 with his army, as he called it.
01:27:45 And I was honored and blessed to be with him
01:27:47 a couple, only a couple times.
01:27:48 I wish I had dedicated some more time to it.
01:27:53 And what it was with John is he set out on a mission
01:27:56 to get, and initially what he did is he got funding
01:27:59 to take care of responders who were in that limbo,
01:28:02 who couldn’t get their medical bills paid,
01:28:04 who couldn’t make their mortgages,
01:28:05 who couldn’t make their car payments,
01:28:07 who couldn’t make their childcare payments.
01:28:09 And John just took it upon his own to get donations
01:28:12 and take care of you while you were suffering, right?
01:28:14 I got a call when I got out of hospital.
01:28:16 You okay?
01:28:17 You need anything?
01:28:18 I said, who is this?
01:28:19 It’s John Feel.
01:28:20 I said, aren’t you that constructor?
01:28:22 Yeah, you need anything?
01:28:23 I’m pretty good right now.
01:28:25 I said, I appreciate it.
01:28:26 Phone ring again a few weeks later.
01:28:27 Hey, John Feel, you need anything?
01:28:29 I’m like, this guy’s incredible.
01:28:31 But there’s people who needed stuff
01:28:33 and he was getting it done.
01:28:35 And he, with his army, had to chase these politicians
01:28:38 through the halls of Congress
01:28:41 to get funding to cover the medical bills.
01:28:44 I was getting sued for $125,000
01:28:46 for my month stay in the cancer ward.
01:28:49 And I couldn’t believe it.
01:28:52 I said, well, wait a minute, I have insurance.
01:28:53 They’re like, oh, no, no, this is terrorism related.
01:28:56 We don’t cover that.
01:28:57 So usually then workers comp will cover
01:29:00 your on duty injury or illness.
01:29:01 Oh, no, no, no, leukemia is not covered under that.
01:29:04 We don’t cover that.
01:29:05 So then the ping pong game starts
01:29:08 and I’m literally have people showing up,
01:29:10 taking pictures of my kids in front of the house.
01:29:13 And I went and grabbed the guy one day by the collar.
01:29:15 So who the hell are you?
01:29:16 Sir, I’m a private investigator.
01:29:18 We’re putting a lien on this property
01:29:20 due to a nonpayment of a bill.
01:29:21 I said, okay, I understand.
01:29:23 Do your job.
01:29:24 Let me bring my kids inside.
01:29:25 Take all the pictures you want.
01:29:27 Don’t step on my front lawn.
01:29:29 And I went in the house.
01:29:32 I closed my room, my door, my door, my room, and I cried.
01:29:36 I said, I can’t believe this.
01:29:38 I spent my entire adult life trying to help people,
01:29:42 give of myself, and I can’t even get my medical bill paid.
01:29:45 Well, John Field got my medical bill paid.
01:29:48 He finally got these politicians with his team,
01:29:51 firefighter Ray Pfeiffer, who has since died,
01:29:54 fought with terminal cancer for nine years in a wheelchair.
01:30:00 Literally at the end, came out of hospice
01:30:01 to go finalize getting us this coverage.
01:30:06 Detective Luis Alvarez, who testified days before he died
01:30:11 in front of Congress, and a bunch of other guys
01:30:15 that were really, really sick,
01:30:17 and we had to shame these people into signing on.
01:30:19 And luckily we had John Stewart come on
01:30:22 and literally just hound these guys
01:30:25 and shame them and embarrass them.
01:30:28 And what it all stemmed from was in 2006,
01:30:31 the first death that was determined to be linked to 9 11,
01:30:35 there was others,
01:30:36 but the first one that was officially linked
01:30:39 was a New York City police detective who initially,
01:30:42 the city said he died of advanced lung disease.
01:30:44 His lungs were protruding out of his body.
01:30:47 And he was on painkillers and it was so bad at the end
01:30:49 that the doctor said, just grind them up, snort them,
01:30:52 drink it, whatever you need to do to get instant relief.
01:30:56 So when they found the talcum
01:30:57 from the pill lining in his lungs,
01:31:00 they said, oh no, this is opiate abuse.
01:31:02 He didn’t die of lung disease.
01:31:04 So they said, and the mayor was quoted as saying,
01:31:07 he is not a hero.
01:31:08 Well, shame on you, Mr. Mayor.
01:31:10 He was a hero.
01:31:12 And his father, who was a retired police chief,
01:31:15 married up with the Feel Good Foundation
01:31:18 and John Stewart and Ray Pfeiffer, Detective Alvarez.
01:31:23 And they got us all covered.
01:31:25 But it took so long.
01:31:26 Like it was so heartbreaking.
01:31:28 These people who were lining up three deep politicians,
01:31:32 three deep to catch a picture with a responder
01:31:34 so they can tweet, hashtag never forget
01:31:37 and hashtag look at me and hey, how am I doing?
01:31:40 All that bull crap.
01:31:41 They were nowhere to be freaking found.
01:31:43 I literally witnessed them hiding in cloak rooms,
01:31:48 running down hallways away from us, those freaking cowards.
01:31:51 That’s cowardice.
01:31:52 Can I just linger on the John Stewart thing,
01:31:54 the comedian, actor, John Stewart,
01:31:57 his testimony before Congress over the benefits
01:32:00 for 9 11 first responders.
01:32:02 I mean, there’s a lot of important human beings
01:32:05 in the story, but he has a big voice.
01:32:08 And he spoke from the heart.
01:32:10 What do you make of that testimony?
01:32:12 Oh, it was heartfelt.
01:32:13 I mean, he spoke.
01:32:16 Look, I mean, John was a polarizing guy, right?
01:32:20 There’s certain things like over the years,
01:32:22 he was cutting edge and I might not have agreed
01:32:24 with all of his, you know, some stuff, some not, right?
01:32:28 You know, like we all, but I tell you,
01:32:30 I found him as funny.
01:32:31 I enjoyed his humor.
01:32:33 I would love the two of you to have a conversation.
01:32:35 No, but again, I love a guy where you can have,
01:32:37 you can have a difference in opinions.
01:32:39 That’s the beautiful thing about the firehouse kitchen.
01:32:41 I mean, it could get raucous and now, I don’t know,
01:32:44 it’s a little different situation,
01:32:45 but I mean, back in the day, some funny stuff.
01:32:48 But yeah, John, John literally just took his talents.
01:32:52 You would think he was speaking from the heart
01:32:54 of a fireman or a cop or a soldier or a Marine,
01:32:57 you know, someone who was there.
01:33:00 But I think he especially got to know Ray so well
01:33:04 and Ray had this stack of mask cards from, you know,
01:33:09 the funeral cards they give out.
01:33:11 It looks like, you know, a larger business card
01:33:13 that’s laminated.
01:33:15 And Ray had a stack of them he would carry around.
01:33:18 I think it was close to a hundred cards
01:33:21 and John saw it and he said, what’s that?
01:33:23 He says, these are my cards.
01:33:25 He said, for what?
01:33:26 He says, for my brother’s funerals.
01:33:28 He was like, oh my God, you’ve been to that many funerals?
01:33:32 He goes, yeah, this is just the ones I made.
01:33:35 Like, you know, and John, I think was just stunned.
01:33:41 And John actually had that stack of cards
01:33:44 after Ray passed and like said, look, look at these.
01:33:48 There’s gonna be more of these cards.
01:33:50 We have one guy a week or girl,
01:33:52 one responder or a recovery worker
01:33:55 or someone who actually resided down there.
01:33:58 There’s more than one a week dying.
01:34:00 It’s one a day dying on average.
01:34:04 And on average, two people are diagnosed
01:34:06 with a 9 11 cancer or disease.
01:34:09 Right now, the worst part is
01:34:11 there’s autoimmune diseases flying off the graph
01:34:14 and they’re not covered under the legislation.
01:34:17 By the grace of God, my cancer is covered.
01:34:19 If my cancer comes back, I mean, I’m in remission.
01:34:22 It’s technically incurable, but I’ve been blessed
01:34:25 I’m staying ahead of this stuff going on 10 years.
01:34:28 But if it comes back with a vengeance tomorrow and takes me,
01:34:31 at least my wife will get my pension
01:34:33 and be able to live her life without fear.
01:34:36 But my friends who are suffering
01:34:38 from these advanced autoimmunes, their wives get nothing.
01:34:41 Their pension dies with them.
01:34:43 And we’re hoping that John and his army
01:34:47 can shame these politicians once again
01:34:51 to have the kindness and decency to cover these autoimmunes.
01:34:55 You know, they’re throwing a lot of money around
01:34:58 at a lot of things lately.
01:34:59 And this is one that they won’t.
01:35:03 And these are lives in the balance who really need it.
01:35:05 And John had this strong line.
01:35:08 They did their jobs, do yours, talking to the politicians.
01:35:12 Yeah.
01:35:13 And it’s a strong wake up call
01:35:17 that it’s not about the Twitter or the social media
01:35:21 or all that kind of stuff.
01:35:23 You have a job to do and you have to,
01:35:26 it’s that compassion implemented in the form of money
01:35:30 of helping people that were there for you
01:35:33 when you needed help.
01:35:35 Well, we had a guy, I mean,
01:35:36 I might get audited out of this one, I hope not,
01:35:38 but we had a Congressman from out West,
01:35:41 I won’t say where, but he prided himself on saying
01:35:44 he was a retired cop, a busy cop, 22 years.
01:35:49 He said no on the legislation.
01:35:52 I witnessed a cop who was dying get out of his wheelchair
01:35:56 and said, hey brother, I got a half a million dollars
01:36:00 in medical bills and I’m a short timer.
01:36:02 I got a few months to live.
01:36:03 Who the F is gonna pay him?
01:36:06 Do the right thing.
01:36:07 You say you’re a cop, you show me you’re a cop
01:36:09 and you sign that paper.
01:36:11 And the guy started tearing up the Congressman
01:36:13 and he signed it, but he had to be freaking shamed.
01:36:16 And you know what he said?
01:36:17 Well, this doesn’t really confront me.
01:36:18 This is pork as far as my district is concerned.
01:36:21 He goes, oh yeah, do you know there’s 10 guys
01:36:23 from your district who came across the country
01:36:25 to help us that are also dying?
01:36:27 He had no idea.
01:36:28 He had no idea.
01:36:30 And that’s the sad part about Alex.
01:36:33 It’s a failure in leadership.
01:36:37 I think some people would vote for Mickey Mouse
01:36:39 just because if he ran.
01:36:40 I mean, I have no offense against Mickey Mouse.
01:36:42 I like him, he’s a good guy, right?
01:36:43 I mean, but like, I mean.
01:36:44 Allegedly.
01:36:45 Allegedly, supposedly.
01:36:46 We don’t know.
01:36:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:36:47 But seriously, I look at some of the leaderships sometimes
01:36:53 and go, we’re in trouble.
01:36:54 And also you lose, I think the way government
01:36:57 is structured is people who are senators
01:37:00 or people who are in Congress,
01:37:04 they start playing a game between each other
01:37:07 and they lose track of the connection to the people,
01:37:10 to the basic humanity.
01:37:12 So you forget, even when you think of yourself as a cop,
01:37:15 you forget what are like the cops and the other people
01:37:21 servicing the community actually experiencing
01:37:23 all the troubles they’re going through
01:37:25 and how they can actually be helped
01:37:26 because you lose touch to that
01:37:27 because you’re not actually living,
01:37:28 you’re not talking to them, you’re not living among them.
01:37:31 And I mean, that’s a natural part of the system,
01:37:33 but I think that’s why character and great leadership
01:37:36 is important is you say you leave the game of Congress
01:37:41 and you go back to the people.
01:37:43 I mean, that’s what the country,
01:37:46 it’s like the George Washington ideal
01:37:48 is you’re not playing a game of power.
01:37:51 You’re ultimately see yourself as somebody who’s servicing
01:37:54 this country’s service in the community
01:37:55 and that requires talking to the people
01:37:58 in their time of hardship.
01:37:59 Well, you have some people serving
01:38:01 in congressional districts don’t even live in that district.
01:38:05 I mean, so how are they gonna empathize?
01:38:06 They’re not even driving through there on a daily basis.
01:38:09 And again, when anything becomes lucrative
01:38:16 from a financial standpoint, it blurs people’s vision.
01:38:20 You have to take the potential
01:38:22 of becoming rich out of politics.
01:38:26 Politics is public service.
01:38:28 Police and fire and EMS are public service,
01:38:32 but cops and firemen and medics don’t walk out
01:38:37 of their career with gazillion dollar contracts
01:38:41 with this company and that company
01:38:43 on that board of directors and this board of directors.
01:38:46 They walk out with a pension and that’s it.
01:38:49 And you have to wonder the intentions
01:38:51 of people getting into politics.
01:38:52 Are they truly going into to help the human condition
01:38:57 or are they trying to help their own damn condition
01:38:59 with their wallet and their pocketbook?
01:39:01 And I try to lean toward the latter lately
01:39:04 with what I’m seeing out there.
01:39:05 Well, some of them are the good ones
01:39:07 and that’s our job as a society is to elevate the good ones.
01:39:10 That’s it and that has to do with the ideals that we elevate.
01:39:15 There are a number of conspiracy theories
01:39:19 around the events of 9 11.
01:39:22 Do any of these hold true to you
01:39:24 or do they just frustrate you, even anger you?
01:39:30 I’ve been asked this by a few different people in my life.
01:39:36 This is my take on it, right?
01:39:38 You’re a man of science and a man of education.
01:39:41 So you…
01:39:42 Allegedly.
01:39:43 Allegedly, but yes, but you’re a very, very intelligent man.
01:39:47 And what I believe took place is this.
01:39:52 Structural steel will fail
01:39:56 at a sustained temperature of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:40:01 And I don’t know exactly how long
01:40:03 that would have to be sustained, but that’s the temp, right?
01:40:07 Diesel fuel, kerosene fuel, kerosene based jet fuel,
01:40:12 which was the ignition there burns
01:40:16 at 2200 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:40:19 So that continued burning of that diesel, that jet fuel,
01:40:24 but kerosene based, it’s all kind of similar
01:40:28 exceeded the temperature needed for that steel
01:40:32 in the structural members of the trade center to fail.
01:40:36 In my heart of hearts, I would hate to ever think
01:40:40 that somebody affiliated with our government
01:40:44 with some sort of agenda would perpetrate that crime
01:40:49 and that tragic just destruction of humanity and property
01:40:56 for some other form of gain.
01:40:59 Those planes rammed into those buildings
01:41:01 at 450 miles an hour.
01:41:03 They were loaded with thousands and thousands
01:41:05 of gallons of jet fuel.
01:41:06 Number seven trade center had the backup
01:41:10 for the emergency management system for the city.
01:41:15 And it was an emergency generator in that complex
01:41:18 which had a 25,000 gallon tank of diesel fuel
01:41:23 to continually run for weeks to keep the 911 system,
01:41:28 the backup system going in the case of a catastrophic event.
01:41:32 Well, that tank in seven heated up from the fire
01:41:37 that was already going on from the aircraft debris
01:41:39 coming into the building.
01:41:41 So once that diesel became ignited in seven,
01:41:45 now you had enough temperature to fail that steel
01:41:50 in that building.
01:41:51 So I would like to truly believe what I’ve learned
01:41:54 from the minimal fire science knowledge I have
01:41:57 from my career, that it was just a matter of,
01:42:02 it burned too long, it burned too hot and it failed.
01:42:06 I mean, if you look at the way it came down,
01:42:09 it came down as it was designed to
01:42:12 in the God forbid event that it was to collapse.
01:42:14 It came down pancaking upon itself.
01:42:17 If it had failed horizontally
01:42:20 and just sprayed out side to side,
01:42:24 those buildings would have dropped for a quarter,
01:42:26 half a mile up to Canal Street.
01:42:29 But you know, Lex, I can’t.
01:42:30 The fire and the destruction that could have resulted.
01:42:32 Yeah, oh my gosh, it could have been so much worse.
01:42:35 I mean, you would have taken out every building
01:42:38 from that point all the way up.
01:42:41 But in my heart, I’d like to just believe
01:42:43 that it was just a fire that burned too long and too hot.
01:42:46 These planes cause structural damage upon impact
01:42:49 in both buildings and it was just a matter of time.
01:42:53 And then you think about it, you add all the plastics,
01:42:56 all the carpeting, all of the stuff
01:42:58 that was burning on those floors.
01:43:00 You add that to that fire load.
01:43:03 I think it just had enough to collapse it.
01:43:05 And you were in building seven for part of that day.
01:43:09 I was just after it came down as well.
01:43:12 We were aside it and we weren’t in it or next to it
01:43:15 when it actually did come down.
01:43:17 But moments after we were there.
01:43:20 And again, I would like to believe that it just,
01:43:25 it was just that that fuel was going
01:43:28 and it just took its physics, took its course and it failed.
01:43:34 So physics and science aside, it’s hard.
01:43:38 It’s both I would like to believe
01:43:40 and it’s hard to imagine that anybody would be so evil
01:43:43 as to orchestrate parts of this
01:43:45 from within the United States government.
01:43:47 That’s very difficult for me to imagine.
01:43:50 You know what though, Lex, there’s people
01:43:52 and I won’t elaborate, I won’t get into it.
01:43:55 Any controversial subjects or what have you.
01:44:00 There’s some people that don’t have any problem at all
01:44:02 perpetrating any level of evil.
01:44:05 People like you and I who have hearts
01:44:07 and we have depth of soul.
01:44:09 We couldn’t imagine it, but there’s other people
01:44:11 wouldn’t even be a second thought.
01:44:13 I mean, I’ve seen some horrific incidents in my career
01:44:17 that I go home shaking my head at night going,
01:44:20 human beings are just, they’re not wired right.
01:44:23 You know, I mean, I look at animals, I love animals,
01:44:26 I love dogs especially, right.
01:44:28 And I see this dog park when I train to fly airplanes now
01:44:33 and something I wanted to do.
01:44:35 And there’s a dog park across from the airport
01:44:37 and there’s 60 dogs and there’s bones flying up in the air
01:44:40 and chew toys and sticks and they’re running around
01:44:43 having the time of their life, right.
01:44:46 And they’re all getting along
01:44:47 and they’re not hurting each other.
01:44:48 They’re not violating each other.
01:44:50 They’re not canceling each other.
01:44:53 And I’m going, we really need to learn from these dogs.
01:44:56 Like, right.
01:44:57 And like, I just, yeah.
01:44:59 I mean, sometimes it sounds crazy,
01:45:01 but I think they’re a better species than people.
01:45:04 Unless they’re rabid, they don’t hurt on purpose.
01:45:07 They don’t, you know, they don’t cut you off in traffic
01:45:09 and throw you the middle finger.
01:45:10 And you know, they just don’t do these acts of humanity
01:45:16 that sometimes are so vicious.
01:45:18 Why do you think these conspiracy theories
01:45:20 of which there’s a lot take hold?
01:45:24 Why do you think so many people believe
01:45:27 some version of different conspiracy theories around 9 11?
01:45:31 Well, you know, like many things in life,
01:45:34 it leaves me a little conflicted.
01:45:35 I have to say this, I am at the point now,
01:45:38 I don’t know who to believe anymore.
01:45:40 So I could see that lending a hand to someone
01:45:44 who’s already a doubter going, oh yeah, look,
01:45:47 exactly, that’s what they’re doing, right.
01:45:49 I mean, you know, look at this whole virus.
01:45:52 Like, who do you believe?
01:45:54 Like, where’d it come from?
01:45:56 You know, like, and you know, if you plant that seed,
01:46:01 it’s like that little campfire
01:46:02 we were talking about earlier, right?
01:46:04 You just toss a little gas into those embers.
01:46:06 You got a fire now.
01:46:08 I also think there’s a lot of people
01:46:09 with a hell of a lot of extra time on their hands, right?
01:46:12 And they’re really bored.
01:46:14 You know?
01:46:14 And the two are combined.
01:46:15 Alex, yeah, man, you know, like, look,
01:46:17 I was a three job Charlie, right?
01:46:19 You know, one guy used to say to me, anything but home.
01:46:21 I go, no, I got deadlines, responsibilities.
01:46:24 You know, like, that’s what it comes down to is like,
01:46:28 I mean, look, we all have our hobbies and things we like
01:46:33 and, you know, little nuances.
01:46:34 And that’s what makes us special.
01:46:36 We’re unique.
01:46:37 Every person is a unique being.
01:46:40 But I also think some people just,
01:46:43 they want to cling to something.
01:46:46 Like, we all want to feel accepted and belong to something.
01:46:48 So all of a sudden you group up with these people
01:46:52 and you all believe this fervently.
01:46:53 Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, they did it.
01:46:55 They took it down.
01:46:56 They took it down.
01:46:57 And now you start going, yeah.
01:46:59 And I think what happens is when you’re in company of people
01:47:02 and you start telling each other the same thing often,
01:47:05 you freaking believe it.
01:47:06 I mean, if you keep telling me I got a gray head of hair,
01:47:08 I’m going to go, you know what?
01:47:09 I do.
01:47:10 But no, I don’t.
01:47:11 I mean, right?
01:47:12 I got that waving bye bye do.
01:47:13 But like, but you know,
01:47:14 I think when you start hearing something often,
01:47:17 you start believing it.
01:47:18 But I’m not going to,
01:47:19 I’m not going to doubt their intelligence.
01:47:21 I’m not going to doubt their intentions,
01:47:22 but I just don’t see it as being plausible.
01:47:25 I just, I, it would be too,
01:47:29 too big of an operation to successfully happen.
01:47:33 I, you know, I mean, look, there’s other things that,
01:47:37 you know, I won’t say it on the interview there,
01:47:40 but like I have my doubts with certain things,
01:47:43 you know, that, that.
01:47:45 I mean, conspiracy theories take hold for a reason.
01:47:49 Cause some of them are true.
01:47:50 No, yeah.
01:47:52 The hard thing is just to know which ones is the problem.
01:47:55 When you don’t have facts, right?
01:47:57 Or you don’t know who to trust.
01:47:58 Sometimes when you don’t have facts,
01:47:59 when you don’t have figures and you don’t have science,
01:48:03 it’s hard to take someone’s word on it.
01:48:05 You know, I had a conversation
01:48:06 with someone a while back, right?
01:48:08 And the guy’s like, just, just dedicated atheist.
01:48:13 And he thinks I’m an idiot for believing in God.
01:48:16 And he’s like, yo, you’re one of those jerks
01:48:18 who believes in creation.
01:48:19 And I said, well, I do.
01:48:20 Well, what about the big bang theory?
01:48:23 He’s going on his diatribe about the science
01:48:25 and the gases and the chemistry.
01:48:26 And I’m going, dude,
01:48:27 I barely got through high school chemistry, slow down.
01:48:30 And he went on a tangent and all of a sudden I stopped.
01:48:33 I went, who, who created the gas and the molecules
01:48:39 and the stuff you’re talking about and the collisions?
01:48:41 And he was furious and stoned off.
01:48:44 And I got him.
01:48:45 And again, I had no facts.
01:48:47 I had no figure.
01:48:48 He didn’t either, but I stumped him.
01:48:51 But sometimes when you can’t show something,
01:48:54 people need to see something tangible.
01:48:56 They need to see it in their hand to believe it.
01:48:59 And that’s the real hard thing about faith.
01:49:02 I see it in action.
01:49:04 People restore my faith.
01:49:06 And then I say to myself, well,
01:49:07 there can’t be that many dummies in this world
01:49:09 if there’s so many billions of us believing
01:49:11 in this higher power, this higher, right?
01:49:13 I mean, and you said, you said earlier,
01:49:16 like you believe most people are good and I do too.
01:49:20 The bad outshine the good because the bad get the press.
01:49:24 Right?
01:49:25 If it bleeds, it leads.
01:49:26 That’s just, you know, like, think about it.
01:49:28 How many more damn zombie apocalypse movies can we make?
01:49:32 Right?
01:49:33 I didn’t even know there was that many zombies.
01:49:34 Yeah.
01:49:35 And it just seems like every other show
01:49:36 is just guys like, you know,
01:49:38 bashing each other’s heads in with bats with nails in it.
01:49:40 And it’s like, after a while, it’s like,
01:49:41 all right, gosh, you gotta get a new boogeyman here.
01:49:44 You know, right?
01:49:45 Like, but seriously, like.
01:49:47 But meanwhile, human civilization
01:49:49 is getting better and better.
01:49:50 We’re just like making Hollywood movies.
01:49:52 They just.
01:49:53 No, we’re getting better and better,
01:49:54 but we’re treating each other worse and worse.
01:49:55 You would think with all this technology
01:49:57 and all the knowledge and all the,
01:49:59 it’s like, what the hell is going on sometimes?
01:50:01 Like, I really want to see the good.
01:50:04 And I think maybe, maybe the level of bad
01:50:06 that we’re seeing was always existent.
01:50:08 It’s just now everything is instantaneous news
01:50:11 and flashes and tweets and this and this.
01:50:13 Like, like, you know.
01:50:15 Well, with the technology we have,
01:50:17 it’s also come to the light.
01:50:18 So you get to see all these fights.
01:50:20 It almost, I think that’s step one
01:50:22 of dealing with the problem is revealing it
01:50:25 in its full beautiful light.
01:50:27 Oh yeah.
01:50:28 How much of a bickering species we are.
01:50:29 50 years ago, a guy like me who loves to talk,
01:50:32 how the hell would I have gotten an opportunity
01:50:33 to have someone listen to me and have, right?
01:50:36 I love this.
01:50:37 This is amazing.
01:50:37 It’s cool.
01:50:38 But like, but you didn’t have that arena.
01:50:41 You didn’t have all these things.
01:50:42 My grandfather, Nels, God rest him, he died in 1979.
01:50:45 I mean, that dude didn’t even want to have
01:50:47 a checking account.
01:50:48 He would walk to each store, each, the phone company,
01:50:51 the gas company, this company, and pay the bill in person.
01:50:54 He didn’t trust the bank.
01:50:57 And it was like, now, ATMs, this, that,
01:51:00 he would be overwhelmed.
01:51:01 He’d be just like, I mean, I love my dad,
01:51:04 but to watch him on his iPad is comical, right?
01:51:07 He calls my niece’s boyfriend, who’s a tech guy,
01:51:09 Matt, Matt, if you listen, he’s the greatest.
01:51:12 He’ll have this poor guy on the phone for like hours.
01:51:14 Like the second you’ll walk in to see my father, my kids,
01:51:17 hey, do me a favor, you fucking straighten out this pad.
01:51:20 And it’s comical because I’m looking at my dad
01:51:23 and I’m going, he was born when Hitler started World War II.
01:51:28 Yeah, wow.
01:51:29 And I’m going, he’s seen all of that.
01:51:30 Oh, my wife’s grandmother was born in 1900 in Czechoslovakia
01:51:34 and she died in 1998.
01:51:35 I’m going, holy, the stuff she saw in the span of her life,
01:51:40 just, it’s just incredible.
01:51:42 But what troubles me sometimes is with all of these advances
01:51:45 and all these devices, this is what I say to my kids,
01:51:49 look up from the phone and look up, right?
01:51:54 Because we don’t talk anymore.
01:51:56 I saw a girl literally, and I shouldn’t say girl, guy,
01:52:01 whatever, I saw a person literally just about walking
01:52:04 to an open manhole cover texting.
01:52:07 And I’m going, that’s scary
01:52:08 because your awareness is gone.
01:52:11 And it’s, I’ve been at restaurants, groups of people
01:52:16 and they’re texting, they’re texting each other
01:52:18 just sitting on the other side of the table.
01:52:20 I’m like, put the freaking thing down
01:52:22 and have a conversation.
01:52:23 And that’s the thing, we’ve lost the art of conversation.
01:52:26 You know, like, my wife runs, she has this running joke.
01:52:30 She goes, there’s a lot going on up there.
01:52:31 And I’m like, yeah, because I really, I’m inquisitive.
01:52:34 I’m excited about life.
01:52:35 I love to meet people.
01:52:36 I love to learn.
01:52:37 I love, and the only way you can do that
01:52:38 is to have a conversation.
01:52:40 The hilarious thing about this,
01:52:41 so you’re obviously very charismatic.
01:52:43 You got great stories.
01:52:44 You’re a great human being.
01:52:45 Thank you.
01:52:46 And you’re talking to a guy who spent most of his life
01:52:48 behind a computer hiding from people.
01:52:50 No, no, and I don’t.
01:52:50 But we’re like trying to bridge this.
01:52:52 Right, but I don’t mean that as a rip,
01:52:53 but you, I would never know that.
01:52:55 I would never know that because you’re very engaging.
01:52:57 You’re very, like, I would not know,
01:52:59 like you don’t have any impediments
01:53:02 to your social skills, your personal, and that’s,
01:53:06 and again, I don’t mean it as a knock to you
01:53:08 and these young people.
01:53:08 Well, no, but this is me trying to look up
01:53:10 from a smartphone is having these conversations,
01:53:12 talking to people.
01:53:13 I think it’s important.
01:53:15 I mean, some of it could be, it’s always hard to know.
01:53:18 Some of it could be just you and I being old school,
01:53:22 because you grew up before the internet.
01:53:25 Maybe there is joy and deep human connection
01:53:27 to be discovered inside the smartphone.
01:53:29 We don’t, it doesn’t seem that way,
01:53:31 because the smartphone’s so new,
01:53:33 maybe we just haven’t figured out those things,
01:53:37 because there’s a globalizing aspect.
01:53:39 There’s a opportunity for you to connect with people
01:53:42 from across the world in ways that.
01:53:44 I have cousins in Ireland and England.
01:53:46 I love it.
01:53:47 I get a FaceTime or a WhatsApp and it’s like, holy crap,
01:53:50 they’re, you know, three, 4,000 miles away
01:53:53 and I’m having a conversation now.
01:53:54 I used to send my grandma in Ireland a letter.
01:53:58 I adored her.
01:53:58 She passed when I was 10.
01:54:01 And, no, I’m sorry, I was 11.
01:54:03 And I sent her a letter, airmailed,
01:54:07 and I’d wait and I’d wait, and about two weeks later,
01:54:11 this airmail letter would come back
01:54:13 and she’d call me Master Nils William Jorgensen.
01:54:16 I would be so excited, open that bad letter.
01:54:18 Handwritten, just like. Yeah, and like,
01:54:21 and then I’d write her another one
01:54:22 and I just couldn’t wait for letters from granny.
01:54:25 And now it’s like, you know, that’s kind of faded away.
01:54:30 Yeah, I still write letters, by the way, handwritten.
01:54:32 I do too.
01:54:33 The way this all came about was I wrote a letter
01:54:38 to someone to say thank you for cancer research.
01:54:42 I’m blessed to be alive.
01:54:44 My cancer, right?
01:54:45 That’s a good starting point for any story.
01:54:47 I’m blessed to be alive.
01:54:47 And my cancer was one that if I got it 15 years prior
01:54:51 to 19, excuse me, 2011, I was a dead man, right?
01:54:55 15, 20 years before there was no drug to treat.
01:54:58 I was gone, going home to see him.
01:55:01 So there’s this wonderful gentleman
01:55:03 that donated hundreds of millions of dollars
01:55:06 to cancer research, Mr. David Koch.
01:55:09 He’s since, God rest his soul, passed away.
01:55:12 And he’s a controversial guy, big time business titan.
01:55:15 And, you know, there was,
01:55:17 the press was just brutalizing him one day
01:55:20 over something to do with his politics.
01:55:22 Now, I’m a union guy, proudly served in unions,
01:55:26 still in a union, you know?
01:55:27 And he was not, you know,
01:55:29 most business guys don’t like unions, right?
01:55:32 But, you know, most guys like me don’t like working
01:55:34 for $3 an hour, so we like our unions, right?
01:55:38 And I reached out across the table, so to speak,
01:55:40 and I sent him a handwritten letter to thank him,
01:55:43 to say, we may not agree on everything,
01:55:46 but I can’t thank you enough.
01:55:47 There’s just this regular dude out there
01:55:49 who is now living his life, watching his kids grow.
01:55:52 Thanks to generous people like you
01:55:54 who believe enough in cancer research, you’ve saved my life.
01:55:57 Maybe, I can’t say his exact dollars, but people like him.
01:56:01 And he reached back out and his secretary said,
01:56:04 oh, he’d like to talk to you on the phone.
01:56:05 I go, well, he’s kind of a busy guy,
01:56:07 he wants to talk to me, he’s a billionaire.
01:56:08 And he got on the phone,
01:56:09 he was like the greatest guy in the world.
01:56:11 Invited me up to Sloan Kettering
01:56:12 to dedicate a new cancer wing.
01:56:14 It was like I was hanging out with my dad.
01:56:17 And the sweetest man, just so kind, so empathy,
01:56:22 because he was a cancer survivor.
01:56:23 But now he’s got the means to help people
01:56:28 who’ve suffered his fate to a better place.
01:56:32 And he was so real and it was so beautiful
01:56:35 just to get to know, say, hey, you know what?
01:56:37 This guy is a big time guy,
01:56:39 but yeah, he’s just a regular human like you and I.
01:56:42 I’m a guy who went to night college and I went to the army
01:56:45 and I’m a blue collar kind of dude.
01:56:47 And here’s this guy who went to MIT, like you,
01:56:49 and he’s a wildly successful billionaire, a genius.
01:56:53 But yet he can sit down and mix it up with me
01:56:58 and know that I was truly grateful.
01:56:59 And that to me was just like one of the coolest
01:57:03 little relationships I’ve ever had.
01:57:05 It wasn’t like we were hanging out,
01:57:06 having barbecues together, but like, you know,
01:57:08 it was just, I was so touched by his decency.
01:57:11 Well, the basics of the, like cancer reveals, you know,
01:57:16 it’s like fundamental to the human experience.
01:57:18 It’s trauma, it’s tragedy.
01:57:20 It’s like money, who gives a shit about money?
01:57:22 Education, all of that is like weird new inventions.
01:57:27 You know, life is short.
01:57:29 You suffer with the various diseases.
01:57:31 And that is a reminder that life is short
01:57:34 and a reminder of the basic human connection.
01:57:36 And that’s why you can bridge that gap.
01:57:38 Oh yeah.
01:57:39 All sparked by a handwritten letter,
01:57:40 which just makes for a hell of a story.
01:57:42 And you know what, Lex?
01:57:43 This is the commonality between us.
01:57:45 A guy with three jobs to a billionaire.
01:57:48 We both had that sense of a sledgehammer to the chest.
01:57:51 Boom, you have cancer and you can’t breathe
01:57:55 for like 30 seconds.
01:57:58 And then when your heart’s just about to kick off
01:58:00 and you take a breath and you go, I’m sorry,
01:58:02 what’d you say, doc?
01:58:04 You have cancer.
01:58:06 And it don’t matter what kind.
01:58:08 One of my best buddies, Bobby’s going through right now,
01:58:11 a prostate, and I got way too many of my buddies
01:58:14 with cancer, right?
01:58:15 My buddy, Hugh, who became a vet since his first cancer,
01:58:18 he was a fireman, he’s now a veterinarian, right?
01:58:20 He diagnosed me actually over the phone, by the way.
01:58:24 When they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.
01:58:25 Well, Dr. Hugh, he nailed it to the T.
01:58:30 And we talk.
01:58:32 And the same thing that the dozen of my close friends
01:58:34 that have cancer, the same thing we say is the fear.
01:58:39 So Mr. Koch and I, we shared that same sledgehammer
01:58:43 to the chest and that same fear.
01:58:46 And it didn’t matter how much money he had
01:58:47 and how much I didn’t.
01:58:49 And you know, it’s just like the morning of the trade center.
01:58:52 There was big time brokers who went to their demise, right?
01:58:57 Working in these firms, God rest them.
01:58:59 And there was dishwashers, excuse me,
01:59:01 dishwashers up on the windows on the world restaurant
01:59:04 on the 107th floor, making five bucks an hour.
01:59:08 And they died together, it didn’t matter.
01:59:10 It didn’t matter if you had an armored car
01:59:12 loaded with bills, you were done that day.
01:59:15 And that’s, I think where people need
01:59:17 to humanize each other.
01:59:19 Just because you drive around in a nice car
01:59:21 and you got your own jet and you got this and you got that,
01:59:25 don’t mean nothing.
01:59:26 When you’re going, when you’re in that vulnerable spot,
01:59:29 you could have more money than the US reserves.
01:59:34 Federal reserve, or you could have a welfare check.
01:59:38 You’re going.
01:59:40 I learned that in a cancer ward.
01:59:41 I had people in my ward that died on me.
01:59:45 I was going around as a little bit of an ambassador
01:59:47 because I was trying to, I was putting on a fake,
01:59:50 I was putting on a fake like I got this, I got this.
01:59:53 I was so scared.
01:59:54 But when I got past that seven days of torture
02:00:00 and the days leading up to it,
02:00:01 I’d go around and try to comfort the other cancer patients.
02:00:05 I had this one older African American gentleman,
02:00:07 he couldn’t talk because he had
02:00:08 such advanced throat cancer.
02:00:10 He was my roommate for a little while,
02:00:12 but then he got worse so they had to put him by himself.
02:00:16 And you couldn’t understand what he was saying
02:00:18 because his throat was just so radiated from the radiation.
02:00:22 But if you put your ear down to him,
02:00:25 you could make out what he was saying.
02:00:28 And I’m not faulting the nurses
02:00:30 for maybe not wanting to do that, right?
02:00:31 They’re busy, they got a ton going on,
02:00:34 they can’t spend, you know.
02:00:36 So if he was in need, I’d put my ear down
02:00:39 and I’d find out and I’d go get it for him.
02:00:42 So when they moved me down the hall,
02:00:47 they asked me to come down with my IV tower.
02:00:50 He needed me.
02:00:52 And I knew it was bad because he just, his look was gone.
02:00:57 And I said, sir, what do you need?
02:01:01 And he whispered, call my sister, I’m going.
02:01:06 He had only one survivor in his whole life.
02:01:09 And she was in North Carolina and he wanted her to know
02:01:11 she couldn’t get up, she was elderly.
02:01:14 And I got the nurse and I got on the phone
02:01:18 and I called his sister and I said, ma’m,
02:01:20 I explained who I was.
02:01:23 And I said, he can’t really talk.
02:01:26 He can’t really verbalize too well right now,
02:01:29 but he wants to say he loves you.
02:01:38 And I put the phone down and he told her he loved her
02:01:42 and he said, I’m going home.
02:01:46 And that was it.
02:01:47 And I hung the phone up and I said, ma’m, I’m so sorry.
02:01:50 I said, you know, they’ll notify you.
02:01:53 And I stayed with him for a while holding his hand
02:01:55 and then, you know, they wanted him to rest.
02:01:57 And then I left and then I got the tap an hour later
02:02:01 and they said, I’m sorry, he’s gone.
02:02:05 And then there was another girl and she was a young girl
02:02:09 from one of the areas I work, young African American girl
02:02:13 where I used to respond and I didn’t know her,
02:02:14 but I knew her neighborhood.
02:02:15 And she had what I had, but they weren’t sure which one.
02:02:20 You know, leukemias, they’re an elusive beast.
02:02:22 There’s 49 of them, right?
02:02:24 And each one of them is like,
02:02:26 they got their own little nuances,
02:02:28 own specific treatments.
02:02:30 So if they don’t know what you have,
02:02:31 they don’t know what to do for you.
02:02:34 And she refused to let him drill into her hip
02:02:35 to take the marrow because it’s vicious.
02:02:37 It hurts so much.
02:02:38 It’s like someone born into your hip with a wood drill
02:02:41 and it’s no joke.
02:02:45 And they asked me to try to convince her
02:02:48 to let them do that or she was gonna die.
02:02:52 Cause if they couldn’t figure it out, it was advancing quickly.
02:02:54 She was, so I talked to her and she said,
02:02:59 I can’t, I can’t, I’m too scared.
02:03:02 I said, but are you more scared to die?
02:03:03 And she said, I am.
02:03:04 I said, okay, I’ll stay with you.
02:03:07 I’ll hold your hand.
02:03:08 You squeeze it as hard as you want.
02:03:10 I said, if you want, they’ll give you like a towel
02:03:13 or something to bite on, whatever.
02:03:14 I said, but you get that pain out,
02:03:16 but you need to do this so you can get saved.
02:03:19 And she said, okay.
02:03:22 And they came in and they, this huge thick needle,
02:03:25 they just bore it into you.
02:03:27 And she’s screaming for her life
02:03:29 and she’s squeezing my fingers so hard and so hard.
02:03:32 And I said, that’s okay, hon.
02:03:33 You keep going, you keep going.
02:03:34 We got it.
02:03:35 It’s just 10 more seconds, 10 more seconds.
02:03:38 They got it.
02:03:39 They figured out her treatment
02:03:42 and they got her onto her road to recovery.
02:03:44 And then I spent a long time asking God, why do I have cancer?
02:03:55 Then I stopped and I went, wait a minute.
02:03:57 I didn’t die that day with my friends.
02:04:02 Shame on me for asking them why I have cancer.
02:04:04 I had 10 years after 9 11 with such great ears.
02:04:08 And I got to watch my little girl being born
02:04:14 when John never got to see his son.
02:04:16 So it was all gravy after that.
02:04:20 And I said, but now I know why I have my cancer
02:04:23 because I can empathize with people who have it.
02:04:27 And I can try to be their voice when they can’t talk,
02:04:32 be their shield to try to take that pain
02:04:35 because I can understand, I can walk their walk.
02:04:41 And now I thank God for my cancer
02:04:44 because it’s made me a better human being.
02:04:45 It’s made me, I’m not gonna lie,
02:04:47 it brought a lot of anger for a while
02:04:49 and my family suffered it,
02:04:52 but I really tried to go past that and heal
02:04:55 and part of living out in the country.
02:04:57 It’s very, very healing for the mind and the soul.
02:05:00 But I now thank God for the cancer
02:05:04 because it humbled me.
02:05:06 I didn’t really need humbling.
02:05:07 I wasn’t an arrogant puffed up type of person at all,
02:05:11 but maybe I was running away at myself a little bit
02:05:15 and working on a TV show, I’m fine, man.
02:05:17 30 at the time, well, I was 42, I got sick.
02:05:20 Life was cruising, man, it was great.
02:05:23 And then all of a sudden it was like a blow out
02:05:26 on the highway in the middle of the night
02:05:28 and you were just veering off towards the guardrail.
02:05:30 Yeah, you remembered, you’re reminded that you’re mortal
02:05:35 and that’s ultimately a connection to all the rest of us.
02:05:39 Oh yeah, it’s a good thing though,
02:05:41 because that’s the problem, I think.
02:05:42 There’s a lot of people running around
02:05:44 and thinking they’re immortal, right?
02:05:46 You know, when you look at it, Lex, right?
02:05:47 You look at the heartache in a lot of segments of people
02:05:51 and anytime like someone that’s got fame and wealth
02:05:54 and success and they die tragically,
02:05:58 a lot of times it’s from a substance abuse
02:06:01 or just some horrible death.
02:06:05 And I used to say to myself,
02:06:07 how the hell would someone with that much money
02:06:10 and that much fame and this freaking mansion
02:06:12 and I love cars, my son and I are just big car heads,
02:06:16 you know, I’m like, you know, this guy’s got a collection
02:06:19 of cars and he overdosed because he was sad.
02:06:23 And I’m going, how the frig are you sad?
02:06:25 But then I stop and I go, okay,
02:06:28 because maybe he doesn’t have any idea who loves him.
02:06:31 He’s got a lot of people clinging onto him
02:06:33 because of his success.
02:06:35 And he just, he can’t fill that void, you know?
02:06:40 And then they fill the void with something destructive.
02:06:42 And I’m not bashing people that have substance abuse
02:06:46 problems or alcohol problems, I don’t mean it that way.
02:06:49 But what I mean is it’s just sad that their level
02:06:54 of despair is so high, on the surface,
02:06:57 they look like they just got everything going on.
02:06:59 It’s all great, right?
02:07:00 They’re still human, still got to deal with the same.
02:07:02 Yeah, exactly, because they want love, right?
02:07:05 They want love and they can’t really find it.
02:07:11 Well, first of all, that’s true for all of us.
02:07:12 I think we’re deeply lonely and looking for love
02:07:14 and when we find it, that’s what friendship is.
02:07:16 Absolutely.
02:07:17 And then that’s true for whether you’re super rich
02:07:21 or super poor, it’s all the same journey.
02:07:23 My dad said all the time, kid, you’re gonna end up
02:07:26 working with hundreds of guys and you’ll love a lot of them
02:07:30 but he says when it’s all said and done
02:07:32 and you’re all like me and if you’ve still got
02:07:33 two or three of them that you talk to and you’ll love.
02:07:36 And I tell you what, I mean, I have thanked the Lord
02:07:40 more than two or three of them and I have my six,
02:07:43 I call it my six, it’s the six guys that are gonna
02:07:45 carry my coffin when I’m gone, right?
02:07:47 Because I know this cancer’s gonna come back, I know it.
02:07:50 Like we get multiples, right?
02:07:51 My friend Yvette just got his second.
02:07:54 My friend Mike’s had five of them.
02:07:56 My other Mike has two of them, yeah.
02:07:58 But I wasn’t ready to accept it in 2011.
02:08:03 There was so much more to do and it was so much,
02:08:06 I was so scared, I’m like wow, who’s gonna take care
02:08:08 of my kids and who, you know, they were little.
02:08:11 Nine, 11 and 14, right?
02:08:13 It’s like what the hell, I have two girls and a boy
02:08:15 in between and they’re beautiful kids.
02:08:17 They’re such good, good children, adults now.
02:08:20 I mean, but you know, my wife’s a drill sergeant,
02:08:23 she’s tough, she don’t mess, you know, she’s this big.
02:08:26 So you’re the softy in the family, I’m just kidding.
02:08:28 Well, you know, it’s funny because my son said to me,
02:08:32 my son’s 21 now, he’s a good kid, you know.
02:08:35 And he says to me, back when he was like 12,
02:08:38 he goes, dad, I don’t want you to be offended
02:08:41 but I’m really scared of mom,
02:08:42 I’m not really that scared of you.
02:08:44 And you know, like I cracked up because it’s true,
02:08:46 she’s gotta stand on like a milk crate to reach him
02:08:49 because you know, she’s tiny and he’s tall,
02:08:51 but it’s true, but you know, but she was hard but fair,
02:08:54 but loved, that’s, see, this is the thing,
02:08:56 you take any child anywhere from any background,
02:09:03 if you love them, you nurture them,
02:09:05 you teach them and you guide them,
02:09:07 you have a successful adult.
02:09:09 And see, that’s the problem in our society,
02:09:12 it’s not judgmental, I’m not judging anyone,
02:09:15 but we need to try harder as parents
02:09:19 as siblings, as friends,
02:09:22 but especially when we’re blessed with a child,
02:09:26 it’s like, you gotta put that child first,
02:09:29 it’s like being a military personal responder,
02:09:32 it’s not about you anymore, now it’s the team.
02:09:35 So that little child is now the team
02:09:39 and you know, your wife or your significant other,
02:09:42 you know, like it’s not about you anymore.
02:09:44 And see, that’s the problem is people have a hard time
02:09:48 not making it about them, you know,
02:09:51 like now it’s really weird, my kids are 19, 21 and 24
02:09:55 and they hardly wanna hang with me
02:09:56 because they’re busy in their life, we love each other,
02:09:59 they’re probably tired of hearing me go on
02:10:01 and you know, preach and whatever,
02:10:03 but like, but they’re adults,
02:10:04 we did pretty much the crux of what we had to do
02:10:08 to put them into adulthood.
02:10:11 And I look back and I go, wow,
02:10:13 I wish I didn’t work so much and I wish,
02:10:15 but then I say, no, but it was okay,
02:10:17 my wife stayed home, good lessons, good, you know,
02:10:21 just like.
02:10:22 But ultimately, like you said, it’s love.
02:10:24 It is, it’s the common,
02:10:27 love is the most important ingredient on this earth
02:10:31 and that’s the problem what’s going on right now,
02:10:34 like take politics out of it, right?
02:10:37 Take polarizing each other against each other,
02:10:40 take all that crap out of it
02:10:41 and just airdrop a bunch of love, right?
02:10:45 Like when I worked on Rescuing Me, right?
02:10:49 I love those people so much, they were such great,
02:10:51 we had such a great crew and they worked so hard.
02:10:53 You’re a celebrity.
02:10:54 No, no, no, not at all.
02:10:55 If I was, it didn’t really work out so good.
02:10:58 I went on to be in the stagehand,
02:11:01 no, I’m not pretty, but they don’t want old guys
02:11:04 waving bye bye hairdos, but it was funny,
02:11:08 the crew, we became really tight,
02:11:10 we had like, shoot, like 80, 90 people on a set, right?
02:11:14 And you know, the first few episodes,
02:11:17 everybody’s trying to feel each other out
02:11:19 because you know, you work with different crews,
02:11:20 different people and this is going back,
02:11:24 starting in 2004, so it was a different time
02:11:27 and I love to hug people
02:11:30 because to me, a hug is a true expression
02:11:33 of love and caring.
02:11:35 You may not know a person a long time,
02:11:37 but you say, I care about you with a hug.
02:11:38 Can I add just a tiny tangent?
02:11:41 This was in the midst of COVID when I was in Boston
02:11:44 and it was, you know, masks, like triple masks, nobody.
02:11:49 And when I went to see Joe here
02:11:51 when he was trying to convince me to move to Austin,
02:11:53 Joe Rogan, and then the first time I see him,
02:11:55 he’s like, ah, you motherfucking big ass hug.
02:11:59 And it felt so good.
02:12:00 But people probably looked horrified.
02:12:02 They’re hugging.
02:12:02 It was just him.
02:12:04 Oh, okay, I know what I’m saying,
02:12:05 but if you do it in public now,
02:12:06 it’s like you committed.
02:12:07 But that expression, because I was so,
02:12:10 you forget how powerful that is.
02:12:14 Oh, I got some of my buddies.
02:12:15 I give them a huge hug and a big sloppy kiss on their cheek
02:12:19 and I, cause I love them.
02:12:21 They, these are my brothers, you know?
02:12:23 But on this set, I swear to God, it got to the point
02:12:27 and I’m not trying to whatever,
02:12:28 but there was people that would come up to me
02:12:30 for the daily hug.
02:12:31 And I said, what are you doing?
02:12:33 And they said, come on, bring it in.
02:12:35 And I give them the hug and they said, you don’t understand.
02:12:37 It just makes me feel so good.
02:12:39 It makes me feel like you give a crap about me.
02:12:41 I said, I really do.
02:12:42 I said, but it touched my heart
02:12:44 that people were seeking me out
02:12:46 to get that hug to start the day.
02:12:48 And I remember there was a guy in Manhattan,
02:12:50 he was selling hugs for like 50 cents
02:12:51 and I think he got arrested, right?
02:12:53 It was just before COVID.
02:12:54 But like, I wouldn’t sell them if, but now.
02:12:56 You’ve given them away for free.
02:12:57 Well, now I got leukemia.
02:12:58 I’d be kind of concerned to get into COVID.
02:13:00 I mean, but like, I really think we need that.
02:13:03 We need hugging booths, like in each city or each town.
02:13:06 Like, because there’s so many people
02:13:08 that just want to know someone gives a shit about them.
02:13:11 And that’s the problem.
02:13:12 It’s like, like, you know,
02:13:14 that’s what I love about small little towns
02:13:17 like where I am now in Tennessee.
02:13:19 And I’m not knocking New York.
02:13:20 I’m not knocking big towns,
02:13:21 but I guess it’s easier to do in a smaller area
02:13:23 because it’s just not this mass of humanity.
02:13:26 But they’ll stop and check on you.
02:13:29 Like you’re out in the road and you know,
02:13:30 like I’m cutting and cleaning or whatever.
02:13:32 Occasionally I’ll roll a lawnmower or a tractor
02:13:34 into a ditch cause I’m not a farmer, too good.
02:13:37 But it’s easier to drive a fire truck in New York.
02:13:40 But they literally, oh, I was worried.
02:13:42 I haven’t seen you.
02:13:43 And I’m like, no, no, I’m okay.
02:13:45 But they literally like check on you.
02:13:46 They’re worried about you.
02:13:47 And I’m going, these people hardly know me,
02:13:50 but yet they’re so caring.
02:13:52 And that’s the problem.
02:13:54 Like this is what I love about my life.
02:13:57 I spent a lot of time as, especially as a young boy
02:14:00 and a lot of time in Ireland at my grandma’s farm.
02:14:04 And my mom comes from this tiny, tiny little village.
02:14:08 She’s out in the middle of nowhere.
02:14:09 And the childhood home she grew up in still,
02:14:12 my aunt and uncle live in it still.
02:14:15 I just love it there so much.
02:14:16 Cause everyone waves.
02:14:17 Tennessee’s similar.
02:14:19 They wave, driving by and you’re like,
02:14:21 who the hell’s that?
02:14:21 I just wave, you know.
02:14:23 But my cousin will point it out.
02:14:24 Actually third cousin, second removed by, you know, Johnny.
02:14:27 Like, holy shoot, I’m related to everyone here, right?
02:14:29 But like everyone stops to say hello and how are you?
02:14:34 And I have a problem doing that because my wife goes,
02:14:36 people think you’re crazy.
02:14:37 Why are you talking to everybody?
02:14:38 I said, like, I’ll literally stop someone and say,
02:14:42 how’s your day going?
02:14:43 Like, I mean, I’ll randomly on the sidewalk.
02:14:45 Then it looks a little nuts.
02:14:45 But like, if I’m buying a cup of coffee.
02:14:48 Oh, that happens here in Austin all the time.
02:14:50 That’s why I love it here on the sidewalk randomly.
02:14:53 Yeah, no, it’s just so nice.
02:14:54 They’ll say hi to me.
02:14:55 I thought they recognized me or something.
02:14:57 I don’t give a shit who you are.
02:14:58 They’re just being nice.
02:14:59 I was on the road coming back,
02:15:03 driving from my family up north down to Tennessee last week.
02:15:08 I stopped in a bathroom and it was closed.
02:15:13 The girl was cleaning it, whatever.
02:15:15 She’s working so hard, whatever.
02:15:16 And she goes, sir, she goes,
02:15:17 if you go down the hall, there’s a family restroom.
02:15:19 Feel free to use it.
02:15:20 You know, she didn’t have to do that.
02:15:22 And I went down and I’m old.
02:15:24 You need a bathroom, you need a bathroom, right?
02:15:27 And I walked back out and I said, ma’m,
02:15:30 I said, I want to thank you for being here today.
02:15:32 I says, the bathroom was immaculate.
02:15:33 It was, it was like my army bathroom in the barracks.
02:15:37 It was spotless, right?
02:15:39 And I gave her $10.
02:15:41 I said, I’d really like you to buy lunch with me today.
02:15:43 I said, you really didn’t have to do me that favor.
02:15:45 And she goes, no, sir.
02:15:46 I said, no, no.
02:15:47 I said, I want.
02:15:48 And it was like I gave her a million bucks.
02:15:50 And I say to my wife now,
02:15:52 I’ve been praying to be a billionaire.
02:15:54 She goes, that’s a sin.
02:15:55 I said, no, no, you don’t understand, right?
02:15:57 She goes, oh, you’re Mr., you know, Mr. God.
02:16:00 I said, no, no, no.
02:16:00 I said, you’re getting it wrong.
02:16:01 I said, I’m praying to be like a multi gazillionaire
02:16:04 because I want to give it all away.
02:16:07 We used to have a sign in ladder 114
02:16:09 until some other rival truck company stole it, right?
02:16:11 Cause that’s what we do.
02:16:12 You know, they get sent to cover your district
02:16:14 when you’re at a fire and now your stuff’s missing.
02:16:17 And the old timers had a sign that says, I am content.
02:16:20 Because if you got to ladder 114,
02:16:23 that was considered such a great place,
02:16:25 such a great assignment, such great guys.
02:16:28 You had to be vetted to get there.
02:16:30 You couldn’t just randomly go.
02:16:31 And it was a little exclusionary, but they wanted good guys.
02:16:36 And I said to myself, that’s who I am in life right now.
02:16:38 I am content, but I’m restless
02:16:42 because I want to really do a lot more good.
02:16:44 It’s like this podcast.
02:16:46 I want to make sure that it’s not forgotten.
02:16:50 And I want to make sure that these charities
02:16:52 that are really, really helping people get recognized.
02:16:55 But I’d like to take it a step further, right?
02:16:57 A friend of mine runs this foundation
02:17:00 for young folks suffering mental illness and in crisis.
02:17:06 It’s for someone that we love dearly.
02:17:08 And he’s on a mission now to get therapy dogs
02:17:14 for really, really mentally wounded warriors, right?
02:17:18 A lot of these young soldiers are having a really hard time.
02:17:23 And now they could be out a while.
02:17:25 They may have come back in country two, three years ago.
02:17:28 Now it’s just starting to set in.
02:17:31 And there’s a waiting list for thousands of therapy dogs.
02:17:34 And he said that they can’t get enough of them quick enough.
02:17:39 But he said, when you see the response,
02:17:42 the way these veterans just light up
02:17:45 when they get these dogs,
02:17:46 it just changes their life radically, immediately.
02:17:50 And I said, that’s it.
02:17:51 God, I don’t know how I’m going to do it,
02:17:54 but I want to be a gazillionaire.
02:17:57 And I don’t want any picture, photo ops, this, that.
02:18:00 I just want to go, there’s a dog, there’s a dog,
02:18:02 there’s a dog, there’s a dog.
02:18:03 And then I want to build veterans land
02:18:05 for these vets who just need a nice clean place to live.
02:18:10 So why don’t we take these old army bases
02:18:12 and Marine bases and Navy bases that have been shut down.
02:18:15 They’re just sitting there rotting away.
02:18:17 I was in the army in Alabama.
02:18:19 My old Fort McClellan is three quarters vacant.
02:18:23 It’s sitting there.
02:18:24 They just did a documentary on it.
02:18:25 It just looks like zombie land going back to zombies.
02:18:27 So why don’t we take that and renovate it
02:18:30 and say to vets who are struggling,
02:18:33 hey guys, you’re going to live here.
02:18:35 And they take the old army,
02:18:39 the places where they had all the supplies,
02:18:41 there’s massive buildings where you could just retrofit it
02:18:44 and make light manufacturing within two weeks.
02:18:48 Give these guys jobs.
02:18:49 There they live, there they work.
02:18:51 They’ll take care of it.
02:18:52 Military guys, they teach you how to take care of stuff.
02:18:55 How the hell in this country should any vet
02:18:58 come back home and be homeless?
02:19:00 Because now they have to dedicate their lives
02:19:03 for six, seven, 10, 12 years,
02:19:05 five, six deployments making $7.50 an hour.
02:19:09 And then they spend seven years
02:19:10 or they get a whopping $16 an hour.
02:19:13 They walk out making 35 grand.
02:19:16 And now no one gives them a job.
02:19:18 No one gives them a chance.
02:19:20 So very quickly they end up homeless
02:19:23 by no fault of their own.
02:19:25 And I don’t know how that’s even possible.
02:19:28 The people in this country who’ve given the very most
02:19:32 and they’re struggling, they’re hurting.
02:19:35 That’s not fair.
02:19:36 And my whole thing is if I can have this dream
02:19:39 of succeeding, so to speak, I want to try to change it.
02:19:45 So that’s why I’m praying to be a billionaire.
02:19:48 My Irish mother probably wouldn’t agree either
02:19:52 because you’re not supposed to, right?
02:19:53 Well, I’m the same with you.
02:19:56 The more money you have, the more you’re able to help.
02:19:59 Yeah, you can put smiles on people’s faces.
02:20:02 I have to ask you, the US invaded Afghanistan
02:20:07 in October, 2001 in response to terror attacks.
02:20:11 Now 20 years later, we still had a presence
02:20:14 and abruptly withdrew all troops.
02:20:17 What do you think about this war across the world
02:20:20 that was sparked by this tragedy?
02:20:23 Whenever you do something quickly without thinking it out,
02:20:26 thinking it through and planning, it doesn’t succeed.
02:20:31 I understand that we needed to exit.
02:20:34 I mean, how long were you gonna stay over there?
02:20:36 And we’ve lost over 7,000 of our young souls over there.
02:20:43 For sometimes people, I don’t know if they’re grateful
02:20:45 for it or not, right?
02:20:46 I mean, I don’t know.
02:20:48 So there’s the other element, and sorry to interrupt.
02:20:51 One is the financial of $6 trillion
02:20:55 and that money is not just money, it’s education,
02:20:59 it’s everything, it’s money that could have gone towards,
02:21:03 first of all, the first responders,
02:21:05 but all the servicemen and women of all kinds
02:21:08 throughout this country.
02:21:10 And then there’s the other side,
02:21:12 which is the over 800,000 people who died
02:21:15 in direct result of this conflict.
02:21:18 So not just the American side of the troops,
02:21:21 but just people who died, those humans.
02:21:24 And those humans, many of them civilians,
02:21:30 that’s spreading hate, especially if you have leaders
02:21:34 on the other side who frame the death of those civilians
02:21:38 in certain ways that just spreads hate throughout the world.
02:21:41 And so you think about this kind of 20 year saga
02:21:46 and think, what are the ways that money could be spent better
02:21:51 and what was the way that we could have spread more love
02:21:55 in the world versus hate?
02:21:56 And you wonder, but then the other side, what is it?
02:22:01 I’m not sure who says this line,
02:22:04 but it’s something like we sleep at night
02:22:08 because there’s a rough men out there
02:22:11 ready to fight for you.
02:22:15 There is some sense in which we have to make sure
02:22:18 that there’s strength coupled with the love, right?
02:22:21 Otherwise evil men will do evil onto the world.
02:22:27 So it’s a very difficult decision,
02:22:29 but then you look at the final picture
02:22:31 and it’s like, what have we gotten for this $6 trillion?
02:22:35 What have we gotten for this 20 years?
02:22:37 The thousands of American soldiers who died,
02:22:41 the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died.
02:22:49 You know, it’s a troubling subject for me.
02:22:53 I’m a patriot, I love this country.
02:22:55 I love it with my soul.
02:22:58 And I was just about to head over to the first Iraqi war
02:23:02 and we went out for desert warfare training
02:23:04 and then it ended.
02:23:06 I was at that time a combat medic assigned
02:23:08 to an armored cav unit.
02:23:09 So basically tanks driving around
02:23:11 an armored personnel carrier and when it gets hit,
02:23:14 then you tend to that guy, try to save his life.
02:23:18 I didn’t wanna go.
02:23:19 I may sound like a coward, I did not wanna go to war.
02:23:23 I would have went willingly if I was sent
02:23:26 to defend my country, I took my oath.
02:23:30 I didn’t join the military to kill,
02:23:32 but if necessary, I would.
02:23:36 I’ll use the analogy of cancer.
02:23:38 If you have a cancer and you’re aware of its presence
02:23:42 and you don’t annihilate those cells
02:23:45 and take them out quickly, it’s gonna spread
02:23:48 and it’s gonna kill you.
02:23:51 Those evil bastards that flew those airplanes,
02:23:55 one of those airplanes had a little three year old child
02:23:57 in it from Ireland where my mom’s hometown.
02:24:01 A friend of mine who since died of a heart attack
02:24:03 from 9 11 toxins, he found her shoe
02:24:05 with human remains in it.
02:24:08 And he thought someone was messing with us
02:24:09 because we didn’t know there was any kids in the building.
02:24:12 He says, boss, there’s a baby shoe
02:24:15 and it looks like there’s something in it,
02:24:16 but there’s no kids in the trade center.
02:24:18 I went, the plane, it’s a little girl shoe.
02:24:21 I can never get that shoe out of my mind.
02:24:26 The evil bastards who perpetrated that
02:24:28 needed to have missiles strike and rain down upon them
02:24:32 and annihilate them like a cancer that they are.
02:24:35 What just fascinates me is they’ll show videos
02:24:38 of these guys flying around and pick up trucks
02:24:40 with 50 cows on the back.
02:24:41 It’s like, well, wait a minute.
02:24:43 If a camera crew can get this footage,
02:24:45 you think all these freaking drones and planes
02:24:48 and radar assisted systems can’t just go
02:24:52 whist, whist, whist, goodnight, you’re gone.
02:24:56 So kill the cancer, kill the cells, get rid of it,
02:25:00 get rid of it quickly and go into remission.
02:25:03 Like an undeniable show of force that sends a message
02:25:08 that gets rid of most of the obvious centers of terrorism.
02:25:15 And that note, that’s though,
02:25:17 because we offline mentioned a discussion with Jaco
02:25:20 and maybe romanticize view and mentioning brothers in arms
02:25:25 by dire straits and saying we’re all brothers in arms
02:25:29 even when it’s on the opposite side of fighting,
02:25:32 which is more of a vision and growing up in the Soviet Union
02:25:35 you saw about World War II, that it’s all just kids
02:25:39 thrown into the kids sent to die in all sides.
02:25:43 But then presenting that to Jaco who was in Iraq,
02:25:51 he did not see as brothers in arms,
02:25:55 which is his basic statement is there’s evil people
02:26:00 and some people don’t deserve the compassion.
02:26:03 You give them a few chances,
02:26:05 they don’t take the chances they have to go
02:26:07 because they’re spreading evil onto the world.
02:26:09 And so it’s not, we’re not, all of us deserve a chance.
02:26:14 Oh no, absolutely, but the difference though,
02:26:16 and believe me, I, Jaco, I am from a way, way minor league
02:26:21 compared to him, right?
02:26:22 I mean, this man was right there in the firing line,
02:26:25 but I can understand his analogy
02:26:28 because when you think about it, right,
02:26:29 those young conscripts back in Germany and Russia
02:26:31 and all the countries where they were being drafted,
02:26:34 even our guys were being drafted and thrown into this.
02:26:37 They were gallantly and bravely defending their country.
02:26:43 Now, I’m sure the young Germans felt,
02:26:47 well, hey, Hitler must be right, right?
02:26:49 And young Russians felt, hey, Stalin must be right.
02:26:51 And the young Americans figured,
02:26:54 hey, President Roosevelt must be right.
02:26:57 So they were romantically in a sense
02:27:00 defending the honor of their country, of their motherland.
02:27:04 The difference between those,
02:27:06 so they did have that commonality.
02:27:08 If you and I were firing across each other
02:27:10 from France to Germany or, you know,
02:27:12 from Germany to Russia or whatever,
02:27:14 we’re just these two kids who got thrown into this.
02:27:17 We didn’t freaking ask for this, right?
02:27:19 But the difference with Jaco’s enemy is
02:27:22 no one was attacking their country over there, right?
02:27:26 No one was taking their country over.
02:27:28 Maybe in their mind, they didn’t want people
02:27:31 trying to build their government, this and that.
02:27:33 I don’t know, I don’t know enough about the history there
02:27:35 to really elaborate.
02:27:38 We didn’t attack them.
02:27:41 And if a soldier attacks a soldier,
02:27:44 that’s an understood concept amongst warriors.
02:27:47 But when a soldier attacks a civilian,
02:27:49 now you’re after a different beast,
02:27:51 and you’ve written that beast off, if that makes any sense.
02:27:54 Yeah, and the enemy, I mean, as Jaco explains,
02:27:59 the enemy in Iraq and just certain parts of the Middle East
02:28:03 is essentially terrorists who don’t value the lives
02:28:10 of the civilians of their own country.
02:28:11 They don’t.
02:28:12 And so it becomes like this weird guerrilla warfare
02:28:15 slash game of violence that ultimately allows them
02:28:20 to gain more power within their country,
02:28:22 but they don’t care if they’re playing
02:28:24 with civilian lives as pawns.
02:28:26 If you have a child who dies
02:28:31 that’s a civilian in their country,
02:28:33 that could be seen as a positive for them
02:28:35 because they can use that to leverage
02:28:37 for more and more power within that country.
02:28:40 So when you’re fighting an enemy like that,
02:28:44 that’s a vicious, that’s an evil enemy.
02:28:46 Absolutely.
02:28:47 It’s like snakes are beautiful,
02:28:48 but if you go pet a rattler,
02:28:50 you’re getting bit and you’re getting dead, right?
02:28:52 And that’s with terrorists,
02:28:53 you’ve got to cut the head of the snake off.
02:28:55 And I feel, no, don’t commit our guys to be there anymore.
02:28:59 But what we need to do is go with tech warfare.
02:29:01 If we have intel from drones or planes or whatever it is
02:29:05 that so and so and so and so and so and so
02:29:07 are driving down in that pickup or whatever,
02:29:09 take it out and do it again tomorrow
02:29:11 and tomorrow and tomorrow.
02:29:12 And maybe they’ll get the message after a while,
02:29:15 oh shit, these guys aren’t messing around.
02:29:17 Instead of throwing wave after wave of our brave warriors,
02:29:21 brave SEALs, brave special ops guys,
02:29:24 and God bless them for what they do, I couldn’t do it.
02:29:27 I could not have done it.
02:29:29 But they have to be now sitting home going,
02:29:34 what the hell?
02:29:36 My friends, my body, myself,
02:29:38 like they must feel so betrayed
02:29:41 because they passionately went over there
02:29:43 to cure a cancer, the cancer of terrorism.
02:29:48 And now the cancer is back.
02:29:50 And I hate to say it,
02:29:51 but I think the cancer might start running wild.
02:29:54 We need to change our tactics up.
02:29:55 This is just my opinion.
02:29:57 I can’t see committing all of our guys
02:30:00 to a continuous eternal war.
02:30:04 But I think what we need to do is hit surgically
02:30:07 and hit hard at that cancer that is over there.
02:30:11 We are never gonna rebuild that region.
02:30:14 It’s just, it’s thousands of years of traditions
02:30:17 that you’re not going to change.
02:30:18 It’s just some people are unchangeable
02:30:22 because they don’t want to.
02:30:23 And we have so many social problems here in our country,
02:30:27 I think that we need to fix first.
02:30:31 I heard this spoken in the past by many people.
02:30:33 It’s like the garden theory.
02:30:35 You have your garden with a fence around it.
02:30:37 You tend to your garden.
02:30:39 There may be weeds on the outside of the fence,
02:30:41 but as long as they’re not inside your garden,
02:30:43 your garden will prosper.
02:30:45 And I know some people don’t agree to that America first
02:30:49 and the whole take care of our own,
02:30:52 but it’s like, how are we gonna take in more people now?
02:30:56 And I have a human feeling for them,
02:31:01 but it’s almost like the lifeboat theory.
02:31:03 How many people can we take into the lifeboat
02:31:05 before the lifeboat itself sinks as the ship is going down?
02:31:10 So if we can’t take care of our own homeless vets
02:31:13 and our own homeless people,
02:31:15 and it’s just gonna become worse.
02:31:20 And it doesn’t make any sense.
02:31:21 It’s just like, we need to just take a timeout
02:31:25 and I think switch our tactics a little bit.
02:31:29 And invest into helping people here at home.
02:31:33 Absolutely, absolutely.
02:31:35 There’s very few as obvious of cases
02:31:38 as the first responders in 9 11.
02:31:42 That one of the things that I really wanna kind of talk about
02:31:47 at least a little bit,
02:31:48 we’ve already talked about the amazing project
02:31:51 that you’re doing the 20 for 20 podcast that you host.
02:31:56 We mentioned one story, Steven Siller,
02:31:59 is there other stories
02:32:00 or maybe you can speak out at a high level,
02:32:02 what are you hoping to tell?
02:32:04 And all these different stories that are weaved
02:32:07 about that connect the tragedies and the triumphs,
02:32:14 the heroism of that day
02:32:16 and the days and the years that followed.
02:32:19 You know, Lex, it seems like the common few themes,
02:32:22 the common threads are being selfless,
02:32:26 helping out others even though they might be a stranger,
02:32:31 in acts of kindness, acts of love,
02:32:34 and it seems to all be weaved together with faith.
02:32:37 They all seem to have some sort of faith.
02:32:39 I mean, we have one gentleman, Mark Hanna,
02:32:44 and he’s a Coptic Egyptian priest,
02:32:47 and he’s an immigrant to the United States.
02:32:49 He was a port authority building engineer.
02:32:51 And with his crew who subsequently passed away,
02:32:56 the crew did, he was effectively rescuing dozens of people
02:33:00 on the upper floors,
02:33:01 and his boss ordered him to assist an elderly gentleman
02:33:04 who was 89 down 78 flights of stairs to get him out.
02:33:09 And in stopping on the 21st floor,
02:33:12 he figured they would just wait there for medics.
02:33:14 He came across Captain Patty Brown of Ladder Company 3,
02:33:18 who told him, no, sir, you need to evacuate.
02:33:21 And Captain Brown picked his brain a little bit
02:33:23 about the structure because he figured,
02:33:25 found out he was an engineer.
02:33:27 And Captain Patty Brown continued on to effect rescues,
02:33:30 and he and his crew were killed.
02:33:32 But father, he’s now,
02:33:34 Mark was able to effectively evacuate this gentleman.
02:33:38 They were the two known last survivors
02:33:40 to come out of the tower.
02:33:42 He now has dedicated his life to becoming a Coptic priest
02:33:45 in St. Mary’s Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey.
02:33:49 He did this for a total stranger.
02:33:51 And he said he was inspired by his bosses who died
02:33:55 and his friends.
02:33:58 One of his best friends was an Italian man.
02:33:59 The other man was a retired Navy SEAL, Hispanic man.
02:34:03 And they were part of this melting pot.
02:34:05 And no one looked at each other that day,
02:34:07 what color, what race, what belief are you?
02:34:09 They just said, hey, you’re a human in need, let’s go.
02:34:12 And we have the story about John Field
02:34:16 on his mission to help the responders.
02:34:19 We have a young lady, Mariah,
02:34:21 whose birth father was on flight 93.
02:34:24 She had not even met him.
02:34:26 And she had this premonition that somebody in her family
02:34:28 was killed that day.
02:34:29 And her adopted mom said, no, everyone’s fine.
02:34:33 Three years later, when she was legally able
02:34:35 to find out who her dad was,
02:34:37 she found out that her dad, Tom, was actually on that plane
02:34:40 as part of the Let’s Roll team.
02:34:43 And we have a gentleman, Robert Burke,
02:34:46 who’s an actor, sweetheart of a man.
02:34:49 He’s a gentleman and he’s a very, very popular actor
02:34:52 in Hollywood.
02:34:53 He was on Rescue Me, Blue Bloods, Gossip Girls.
02:34:56 And Bobby, my friend, as I call him,
02:34:58 is a volunteer fireman now.
02:35:01 This man doesn’t need to get out of bed
02:35:02 at two oclock in the morning and help people with a stroke
02:35:05 or a burning garage or a burning house,
02:35:07 but he does because he wants to.
02:35:09 Because his best friend was Captain Patty Brown.
02:35:12 And his other best friend was Father Michael Judge,
02:35:14 who was our chaplain, who was killed,
02:35:16 literally blessing the victims at the site,
02:35:20 had just given last rites to the firefighter
02:35:22 I mentioned earlier, Danny, who was killed.
02:35:24 And Father Judge was in the lobby of the building,
02:35:26 giving a blessing, praying to God to please stop this.
02:35:30 And he was struck by debris and he was killed.
02:35:33 And Bobby goes on to elaborate about Father Judge’s story.
02:35:37 Father Judge used to walk the streets of New York City,
02:35:39 helping AIDS patients just with whatever they needed.
02:35:42 And he was a Franciscan friar.
02:35:45 They wear sandals and a robe.
02:35:46 They just live very humble lives.
02:35:50 And it’s just a common denominator is loving each other
02:35:56 and helping each other,
02:35:57 regardless of you know the person or not.
02:36:00 And really, when you think about it,
02:36:01 that’s how America was made.
02:36:03 We fought for independence.
02:36:06 Stranger fought next to stranger and fought tyranny
02:36:11 because they wanted freedom.
02:36:13 They wanted to be able to live, love, pray and prosper.
02:36:20 And they fought and died alongside of strangers.
02:36:22 And it’s sort of symbolic of what happened that day.
02:36:25 And then strangers from around this great country
02:36:27 just flocked in by the thousands to help.
02:36:31 They didn’t know who was in that pile, but they didn’t care.
02:36:34 That was another American.
02:36:36 And what I ultimately am trying to do
02:36:38 involved in this beautiful project
02:36:41 is spread the message of doing the right thing.
02:36:46 Look at these examples.
02:36:48 These brave people who didn’t have to,
02:36:51 especially the civilians,
02:36:53 they weren’t paid to run back in there
02:36:55 and help person after person.
02:36:56 And they had no obligation.
02:36:59 They could have just said,
02:36:59 hey man, I’m out of here and just bolted.
02:37:02 But they didn’t.
02:37:05 So we’re just trying to say to people,
02:37:07 let’s bring back that unity and that feeling of 912.
02:37:11 As strange as 912 of a day it was,
02:37:13 it was so sad because it was the first dawn of the sun
02:37:18 where we realized this wasn’t a dream.
02:37:21 This was real and it’s not going away.
02:37:24 But the beauty of it was there was thousands of people
02:37:27 lined up along the West Side Highway
02:37:28 with signs and American flags.
02:37:32 And they were from every country
02:37:34 and every race and every creed.
02:37:36 And it didn’t matter who they were,
02:37:38 but they all shared one bond, love.
02:37:42 And they were hugging and crying and thanking rescuers.
02:37:47 And it brought the morale so high
02:37:51 for a group of people that was so beaten down the day before.
02:37:55 It just started lifting the morale
02:37:57 and making us realize, you know what?
02:37:59 People really do give a crap.
02:38:01 They really do love each other.
02:38:04 And now I’m gonna be honest with you,
02:38:05 I’ve been doubting that a little bit lately.
02:38:08 I still have these examples of it.
02:38:09 You know, that lady who helped me last night with the phone
02:38:12 and just, you know, I know there’s these shining
02:38:15 little examples, but sometimes I think,
02:38:18 I don’t know, are we running out of them?
02:38:20 Well, I gotta give you some advice.
02:38:22 So there’s two words that were repeated often
02:38:27 in the days and the years after 911, which is never forget.
02:38:30 So might I remind you to never forget about 912.
02:38:36 I mean, those words, you talked about that, you know,
02:38:39 there’s people, what is it, college freshmen, maybe.
02:38:43 They weren’t even born.
02:38:44 They weren’t even born.
02:38:45 And there’s people in the 20s that were too young
02:38:47 to remember or to understand the events of that day.
02:38:51 But I think what that day, as you’re describing, means,
02:38:53 it’s not about a terrorist attack.
02:38:55 It’s about the unity that followed.
02:38:58 It was tremendous, Lex.
02:38:59 I never felt so proud.
02:39:01 I was always proud of this country.
02:39:03 You know, I remember my grandpa Nels used to walk by,
02:39:05 I’d see a flag, I’d hear the Star Spangled Banner
02:39:07 and he’d tear up and I’d say,
02:39:08 Grant, why are you crying?
02:39:10 He said, I’m not crying, it’s the tears of joy.
02:39:12 I love this country so much.
02:39:15 And I just remember like feeling that way.
02:39:17 I felt that way 910.
02:39:19 I felt that way on 911, but then on 912,
02:39:22 I was just so proud of just the people,
02:39:25 the way they stepped up.
02:39:27 And I just want to try to see if that can happen again.
02:39:29 And I hope it’s not necessary for us to have another tragedy
02:39:33 to bring that about.
02:39:34 Let’s do that without the tragedy.
02:39:37 Let’s just stop and say, hey, you know what?
02:39:40 Let me listen to what this guy has to say.
02:39:43 And maybe he’s, he probably won’t convince me,
02:39:45 but maybe I’ll go, well, you know,
02:39:47 I never thought of it that way.
02:39:49 Stop the finger pointing, the bickering,
02:39:52 the tantrums, the fighting.
02:39:54 It’s just not necessary.
02:39:55 It gets you nowhere, right?
02:39:56 It’s like, you know, I was two years old
02:39:58 and I’d stomp around because I wanted a cookie
02:40:00 or a piece of candy.
02:40:01 I still didn’t get it, right?
02:40:03 You know, turned blue in the face and whatever,
02:40:05 got a little swat in the rear end,
02:40:06 but it didn’t get the candy.
02:40:07 And that’s what we got going on right now.
02:40:09 Everybody’s just stomping around, being a baby.
02:40:12 Stop, just stop.
02:40:13 We’re really lucky.
02:40:14 Look, the country’s not perfect, right?
02:40:17 You know, but it’s damn good.
02:40:19 It gives us all these opportunities, you know?
02:40:22 Like I said, no one’s rushing out the gates
02:40:24 to get out of here.
02:40:25 They’re freaking, I got a cousin of mine.
02:40:27 I love him dearly.
02:40:28 My cousin Tony in Ireland.
02:40:30 And he said, he’s just a little older than me.
02:40:32 He’s in his fifties.
02:40:33 He said, man, I should have done it.
02:40:35 I should have went to America.
02:40:37 My dad said, go to America.
02:40:38 I went to England and he went back to Ireland.
02:40:41 And you know, but he’s happy in Ireland.
02:40:43 It’s his home.
02:40:44 But he said, wow, what a place of opportunity.
02:40:47 And I said, it’s never too late.
02:40:48 He goes, yeah, but you know what?
02:40:49 You get tied down.
02:40:50 And I understand that.
02:40:52 I thank God my mom came here at 16.
02:40:55 I thank God my grandpa got on that ship.
02:40:57 But in his 20s, 27, I think, you know,
02:41:00 with not a nickel to rub together.
02:41:02 I thank God they did it.
02:41:04 Cause I don’t know where else I would have ended up.
02:41:06 There’s no place else I want to be.
02:41:09 And I thank God that there’s people like you
02:41:12 who rushed towards ground zero to help other human beings.
02:41:16 And I believe that that human spirit
02:41:19 is ultimately represents the best of this country
02:41:21 and the best of this world.
02:41:23 Thank you for the stories you’re telling,
02:41:25 for your perseverance in that.
02:41:27 And thank you for welcoming me to the crew.
02:41:31 You’re very welcome.
02:41:31 I’m proud.
02:41:32 And we’ll take you any day.
02:41:33 You look like you could do the job just fine.
02:41:35 I love lifting heavy things and doing dangerous things.
02:41:38 So I’m proud to be part of this country
02:41:42 and part of the Tally Ho now.
02:41:43 Well, you are definitely an attribute to America
02:41:46 and we’re glad you chose to come here.
02:41:48 You know, Lex, it’s such a beautiful place.
02:41:51 It’s a beautiful melting pot.
02:41:52 You know, if we were all the same,
02:41:54 it would be kind of a boring place, right?
02:41:55 Kind of boring.
02:41:56 It really would.
02:41:57 But it’s just such a great place.
02:41:59 And I just want to say thanks.
02:42:00 It’s an honor.
02:42:02 It’s an honor to have someone to let me sound off
02:42:04 and it’ll be even bigger honor
02:42:06 if somebody will listen to me and just say,
02:42:08 hey, you know, let me just try to do something good today.
02:42:11 And you know, that’s the tunnel to towers mantra
02:42:13 is let us do good.
02:42:15 And I just, you know,
02:42:20 I got a really big credit card with God,
02:42:22 a big balance, right?
02:42:24 I need to pay him back a lot
02:42:26 and I need to pay him forward.
02:42:27 And I’m just going to spend the rest of my days
02:42:30 trying my best.
02:42:31 I don’t know where this is going to go,
02:42:33 what it’ll lead into,
02:42:34 but I really would like to get those dogs
02:42:37 or those vets and build them that village
02:42:39 and just keep going on from project to project
02:42:41 to just say, when my final day comes
02:42:45 and I’m laying there and I say, you know what?
02:42:48 I really made the most of that second chance
02:42:50 God gave me way back in 2011.
02:42:52 I mean, I hope it’s 30, 40 years from now,
02:42:55 but even if it’s 30 months from now,
02:42:57 I’m giving it the best shot.
02:42:59 So thank you, sir.
02:43:00 I appreciate it and wishing you blessings
02:43:02 and success in your career.
02:43:04 Keep up the good fight
02:43:05 and you’re always welcome back to Texas.
02:43:08 Oh, I love it.
02:43:08 It’s great food and a little hot,
02:43:11 a little hot, but I can deal with it.
02:43:14 We don’t do so good Irish in the sun, you know?
02:43:17 Well, the barbecue and the people are worth it.
02:43:19 No, they are, they’re awesome.
02:43:20 I was down here for some storm relief a few years ago
02:43:23 and I tell you what, I fell in love with it.
02:43:25 The people are great, it’s a great state
02:43:26 and yeah, I’ll definitely be back again for sure.
02:43:30 Thanks for talking to me, Neil.
02:43:31 Thank you, sir.
02:43:32 Appreciate it.
02:43:34 Thanks for listening to this conversation
02:43:35 with Niels Jorgensen.
02:43:37 To support this podcast,
02:43:38 please check out our sponsors in the description.
02:43:41 And now let me leave you with some words
02:43:43 from Franklin D. Roosevelt.
02:43:45 Human kindness has never weakened the stamina
02:43:48 or softened the fiber of a free people.
02:43:51 A nation does not have to be cruel, to be tough.
02:43:55 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.