Honoring the brave

When we were in New York we stayed a block from Ground Zero at the Embassy Suites downtown. (The picture above is taken looking at the WTC site. See the red arrow? That's where we stayed.)

It's also a block from the dock that our own fireman, big Dan Schreiner (left), worked when he went down after Sept. 11th to aid in the clean-up effort.

It's very humbling to be there. The site is huge. The hole is huge. It's sacred ground.

On September 24th we awoke to the sound of a live band warming up. Hundreds of people were there setting up booths, cooking hot dogs, decorating with balloons.

It turns out that our hotel was the finish line for the annual Tunnel to Towers Run, a 5K run in honor of firefighter Stephen Siller. A father of five, Siller was on his way home when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. He turned around, donned 75 pounds of gear and ran through the Battery Tunnel and went to work. He died in the tower. Every year they repeat his run and raise money to benefit disaster victims.

It was breathtaking. Some of the runners were firefighters and they ran with their gear on...just like Siller. There had to have been 10,000 firefighters at the finish line in an honor guard. Thousands more, including us, were there to cheer the runners on.



Siller's parents and Giuliani spoke. Iraq war veterans spoke. It was amazing. We all felt so proud and humbled by the bravery and the altruism being honored. The band belted out Bruce Springsteen's, Never Surrender. It still sends shivers down my spine thinking of that morning. It was that moving.

We took these pictures with tears in our eyes.

Barb said it best. We've seen a lot of things in New York. But this? This was the best.