BALDWIN HERALD, December 13 - 19, 2001

A Sad First

By JONANN BRADY

Last Friday was a first for me. I attended the memorial service for Brian McAleese. It was my first firefighter's funeral.

I didn't know Brian personally, but after reading and writing about him and his family over the past three months, I felt like I had some sense of who he was. Still, nothing prepared me for what I felt on Friday.

I'm not typically a weepy girl. I don't well up during Terms of Endearment or Steel Magnolias. But at McAleese's memorial, I counted at least six times that I cried.

Perhaps this memorial was particularly sad. Watching McAleese's wife and their four small children, all in tiny black suits and dresses, as they were saluted by a sea of blue was incredibly moving.

Listening to Brian's brother, John, recite a poem he wrote and clearly labored over made me run for the tissues that were strategically placed around the church.

Hearing Dawn McAleese, her voice choked with emotion, profess her love for Brian and all he meant to her in a 30-minute eulogy was absolutely heartbreaking.

Reporters and editors working at the other Herald newspapers have attended several services. Rockville Centre alone lost 20 people.

I've often wondered if other reporters have become just a little jaded over time. It seems the same phrases tend to get recycled - everyone is a "great guy" or a "real family man" or an "everyday hero."

But our photo editor, Elizabeth Sagarin, who was also at the service on Friday, assured me it never gets easier. Later in the day, we passed each other, both carrying giant cups of Starbucks coffee, and compared notes. We talked about how the tears left a burning sensation behind our eyes. We laughed sheepishly about how emotionally drained we were.

Watching the firefighters in attendance and knowing how many funerals they've been to, I can only imagine how exhausted they are and how their eyes must burn.

I use Brian McAleese as an example. Just because he was a firefighter does not make his death any more poignant than any of the other people who lost their lives on Sept. 11.

A widow of a Baldwin man who worked in the financial industry and who also lost his life once said to me that she was tired of the line the public seems to have drawn between the "heroes" (firefighter, police, etc.) and the "victims" (everybody else.)

Everyone who dies that day was a hero, she said. Everyone who died that day represented America.

She's right. Even so, I've tried to turn myself off to it outside work. When people start parsing the attacks and analyzing how their lives are irrevocably changed, I'm out the door. When a television show comes on featuring yet another exclusive interview with another widow or another firefighter or another person who just escaped fiery death, I turn the channel.

But on Friday, I was there to do a job and I couldn't leave the room or turn the channel. For some reason, I felt more sad about Sept. 11 last Friday, nearly three months later, than I have at any other time.

But it felt real and it felt all right.