This is part of the tribute they have up on my MSN Homepage...
Link: 9/11 - Six Years Later - Where are they now?
Link: Complete Coverage at MSNBC.com
Thomas E. Franklin / The Bergen Record file
Three firemen with flag
at Ground Zero
THEN
It is one of the most enduring images from 9/11: Three New York firefighters -- Daniel McWilliams, George Johnson and William Billy Eisengrein -- hoisting an American flag in the midst of chaos and ruins of the destroyed World Trade Center late on the afternoon of Sept. 11.
The photo, captured by Thomas E. Franklin, a staff photographer for The Record in Bergen County, N.J., was quickly picked up by newspapers, magazines and television networks. Reminiscent of Joe Rosenthals iconic image of U.S. troops raising a flag on Iwo Jima during World War II it struck a chord with editors and readers everywhere.
The photo, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won numerous national photojournalism awards, was used for a special U.S. Postal Service stamp released in March 2002 to raise funds for families of emergency workers killed or permanently disabled as a result of the 9/11 attacks.
NOW
All three of the firefighters featured in the iconic image are still working for the New York Fire Department, according to an NYFD spokesperson.
McWilliams, 41, a 15-year veteran is now a lieutenant with Battalion 37 in Brooklyn. He lives in Massapequa Park, Long Island.
Johnson, 42, is a captain with the NYFD and works out of Division 13 in Queens, where he also lives.
Eisengrein, 43, is a firefighter at the Rescue 2 unit in Brooklyn. He has been with the NYFD for more than 20 years.
-- Petra Cahill
Stan Honda / AFP - Getty Images file
Ed Fine
(World Trade Center
dust man)
THEN
A businessman who worked at New York-based Intercapital Planning Corp., Ed Fine became widely known on 9/11 from a photograph that depicted him covered in dust, napkin held to his nose and mouth while still clutching his briefcase. Head bowed and his dark suit turned a light gray, Fine shuffled through ankle-deep debris from the tower that had just collapsed. A clock behind him displayed the time: 10:14 a.m.
Fine was waiting for an elevator on the 78th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. Thinking a bomb had gone off, Fine and others made their way down the emergency stairs. Fine reached the street and began to walk away from the World Trade Center when the South Tower collapsed at 10:05 a.m., engulfing everything in the area in a cloud of smoke and debris.
There, photographer Stan Honda of Agence France-Presse took his picture, an image used by Web sites, newspapers and magazines around the world. Days later, a friend told Fine his photo was on the cover of Fortune magazine.
I was focused in on: I must get uptown, I must keep surviving, I must walk, Fine told the Today show. And I wasnt looking or thinking about anything other than surviving.
NOW
Fine, who is married and has two grown children, lives in suburban New Jersey. He operates two businesses with his son Stuart, EIF Capital Services and direct-marketing consulting firm Carpe DM, a play on carpe diem, Latin for seize the day.
I believe I was saved for a reason, but I don't know what that reason is, Fine told the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper in 2002. I believe that everything is in some way interconnected all the inches and seconds of our lives. You dont know how, but they are.
Fine says he was no kind of hero. "My picture got taken, he told USA Today in 2006. It was a perfect picture, but all I was trying to do was get uptown."
Before 9/11 he was a workaholic, he added. On vacations, he used to spend "half a day on the phone and the other half on the computer." Now, "if I make one business call a day, that's a lot."
The battered black briefcase from 9/11 sits in his closet, the newpaper reported. He used for several more years until his wife insisted he get a new one.
He agreed, USA Today quoted him as saying, "but I felt a little disloyal."
As for his suit, a grey, Joseph A. Banks single-breasted model he bought in the late 1990s for about $300, he took it to a dry cleaner, reported the Globe and Mail, and $10 later it looked nearly new.
--
Bruno Navarro
