A Reluctant Hero

The Hartford Courant reports about how retired fire fighter Bob Beckwith came to be standing beside President Bush when the president Delivered his immortal:

Well, I can hear you. The whole world can hear you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon.

Beckwith's was awakened by a phone call at 7 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001 and learned that his oldest grandson had been hit by a car. Beckwith went to the accident scene and found his grandson bruised with a broken leg, but otherwise fine. According to the Courant, "the accident was the reason the former firefighter, then retired for seven years after having worked 23 years in Queens firehouses, was awake to hear news of the first plane crash into the World Trade Center:"

After the attacks, Beckwith wanted to go to ground zero, but his family persuaded him that the search there was a young man's job.

A day passed, and then another, and then he heard that one of his closest friend's sons was missing. On Sept. 14, he grabbed his old helmet from Firehouse 164, ignored his family and "used street smarts" to talk his way through the barricades.

All day he worked like a young man, shoveling rubble to dig out a firetruck. He was convinced there would be firefighters who had ducked underneath and might still be alive. There weren't.

In the afternoon, word spread that President Bush was about to visit the site. Beckwith couldn't see much, so he climbed on top of an excavated firetruck to get a better view. A balding guy in a suit joined him - Beckwith thought it was a Secret Service agent - and asked if the truck was sturdy. The stranger told him that a VIP wanted to stand there.

The stranger was Bush's senior political aide, Karl Rove, and the VIP was Bush. Moments later, Bush joined Beckwith, threw his arm around him and raised a bullhorn to deliver some of the most memorable words of his presidency: "Well, I can hear you. The whole world can hear you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon."

Beckwth now one of the symbols of America's determination to overcome the evil doers.

Beckwith is a reluctant hero.:

He doesn't like to talk about politics and says that, like religion, it's something he avoids, even around his family.

Beckwith grew up a Democrat and was a member of the firefighters' union, an organization closely aligned with Democrats. But about a decade ago, he switched parties and began voting Republican.

He said he voted for Bush in 2000 and plans to do so again this year.

He is still star-struck at the memory of his February 2002 White House visit, when he and his family received a 45-minute Oval Office tour from the president. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand and the president wrote his two grandchildren notes to explain their absence from school.

"That's not the reason," he said of his intended vote this year. "The president is a man, you know," he said, emphasizing the word "man" with gusto. "I like the guy."

[. . .]

Beckwith said if invited to the convention, he'd like to attend. He said he'd even speak. He's not sure about what, but hopefully not something too political.

You just have to love guys like Beckwith. They are one of the reasons that America is such a great nation.