Editorials by Bob

With all due respect and concern for those in New Orleans and its environs (and please, everyone, keep up whatever contributions you can make to helping them), I'd like to turn my attention for this Friday post to New York City.

This weekend marks the fourth anniversary of the now-infamous 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (and, lest we forget, the heroically foiled attack that went down in rural Pennsylvania).

I could take this opportunity to talk about such things as social responsibility, the Patriot Act, civil rights, the war on terror, or a variety of similar things, and I actually considered doing so. But then it occurred to me that any such discussion at this particular time would only cheapen the great loss and horror we're supposed to be remembering. (If you have a blog and want to talk about such things this weekend, go right ahead; I won't belittle it. I just won't do it, myself.)

Instead, I'll talk about just one man. His name was Angel Luis Juarbe, Jr. He was a New York City firefighter (and just in my saying that you probably know how this ends, but stick with me here).

I never met him face to face. I doubt he'd ever heard my name, and if he had he probably forgot it within minutes.

I only knew about him because he was a contestant on a reality-competition show aired on Fox, called Murder in Small Town X. This Tuesday-night summer series was actually a hybrid of reality and fiction: ten contestants were put into a small town with a group of actors, and those actors played out parts of suspects, victims, witnesses, and others in a large-scale murder mystery.

As in any other reality-competition show, there was a method for eliminating the contestants one at a time. At the end of every "round" (each week in our time, every three days in theirs) the group would select a member, other than that round's "Lifeguard," to go out and collect a special clue from the killer. Then the Lifeguard would select another one of the group to go as well. The killer would present two locations, which would be given at random between the two contestants going out. One of the two would return with the clue, and the other wouldn't return at all.

This was called "The Killer's Game."

Angel won the competition. He survived until the end, and between the last two contestants was the one to go to the correct location out of two possibilities (there's a tale of irony behind that as well, which I may go into in the Comments section if someone asks).

There's a story about the final scene that really shows the kind of stuff Angel was made of. The producers had a nice scene all worked out where a character was in danger from the killer, and the police chief would lead the character up the stairs where the killer would be shot and killed. Angel refused to go upstairs, insisting instead on rescuing the endangered character (it probably didn't hurt his decision that she was an attractive woman, and that the character was a basket case full of anxieties not much unlike Yours Truly). The producers really had to think fast and wing a good staging, though what developed was far better than what they'd had planned, and Angel came out looking like the real hero that, in the end, he truly was.

He went home, the winner of $250,000 and a brand new Subaru SUV.

The finale of the show aired as a two-parter on Tuesday, September 4, 2001. That Friday, September 7, Angel went to the Fox studio offices in New York to get his check and his car. He immediately gave the car to his father, and used the money to create college trust funds for his nieces and nephews. Then he went back to work.

We all know (or darn well should know) what happened the next Tuesday. Angel, working from his home station in Chelsea, was with his crew in the Marriott to get people out. He was trying to rescue two of his comrades who were trapped on an upper floor, when Tower Two collapsed. Most of the group survived, but he, the two trapped firefighters, and his lieutenant were all killed.

It's ironic that the show had originally scheduled the final episode to be aired on September 11, but decided at the last minute to air it in a two-hour special with the penultimate installment. It's ironic that the winner of the game should die just days after collecting his winnings. It's most ironic of all that he should be the only member of the MiSTX group to die in the attack, when he was also the only contestant to never play "The Killer's Game."

The whole event prompted me to write a song in his memory. I'd post the lyrics here if I'd written any; it's just an instrumental piece called "America's Angel," illustrating in musical form his Latino background, his laid-back personality, his warm heart, and just his character in general.

Was Angel in any way more significant, more important, or better than any other New York firefighter? Of course not. Everything I've seen on those men and women has only supported my assumption that all of them, or at least an overwelming majority, are pretty much like that. And not just in New York, either; in every city and every town there are people whose character and training is to run directly into a dangerous situation, so others can get out.

That day, it could truly be said that America spells "hero": F-D-N-Y.