Since the death of Peggy Neff’s partner in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon, Neff and other gay partners of victims have found themselves fighting for recognition and compensation.
A leader for the 25 women firefighters among 11,500 men, Lt. Brenda Berkman was one of the first on the scene on Sept. 11. In the 1980s, she was another kind of hero. She sued and won the right for her and other women to work as firefighters.
Amy Sancetta, a veteran AP sports photographer and Pulitzer Prize winner, captured not only the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack, but also the poignant fliers for missing persons and the generosity of small-town America.
A chaplain on ground “consecrated with the dead” touched, helped and comforted rescue workers and rescue dogs. Some workers feared that lack of physical remains, only ash, meant souls would not go to heaven. Some said God didn’t–couldn’t–exist.
An Emergency Medical Service paramedic promoted to paperwork dashed out with face mask and oxygen to help victims of Sept. 11. Now she remembers why she became an EMS worker, and she knows people are more important than paper.
Her easygoing trendy life in Manhattan forever transformed on Sept. 11, an unemployed dot-com writer places her e-mail list and her technological savvy in the service of the Red Cross and other agencies providing disaster relief.
In ancient Greece, doulas were women, often slaves, who helped at childbirth, and today the multiskilled doula is increasingly in demand. While midwives focus on delivery, doulas are coaches, listeners, hand-holders, teachers about motherhood.
Nearly overcome with her own anxiety and sadness, graphic artist Kathryn Carey pleaded to be permitted to help in the catastrophe. She found herself running a center for trauma victims, making sure they knew where to find the help they needed.
An ironworker was called on by her union to help clear the site of the collapsed twin towers. She brought her own respirator and gas mask and dug for three days. “It could have been me,” she says.
This is the first in a series on the women toiling at Ground Zero in the ashes of the World Trade Center. The women profiled are helping the city recover and rebuild–police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, construction workers. They are us.
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