FIREFIGHTERS MEMORIAL SPARKS A DIVERSE DEBATE
January 18, 2002
Lynne Duke
NEW YORK, Jan. 17 -- When firefighters George Johnson, Dan McWilliams and Bill Eisengrein hoisted the Stars and Stripes atop the monstrous rubble of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, it was one of the most moving and enduring images of the national crisis. Terrorists could hit us but not defeat us. They could kill us, deeply wound us, but not take away a nation's will. As the nation watched the firefighters -- who lost 343 comrades in the attack -- struggle to raise the flag over the smoldering disaster site, did it matter at that moment that they were three white men?
Apparently it does. In the week since the fire department revealed it would memorialize the flag-raising with a bronze statue depicting one black, one white and one Latino firefighter raising that flag together, the fire department has been inundated with the outcry of its angry and predominantly white force. The debate has been over race and remembering, over historical accuracy and symbolic rendering.
The debate has raised questions about whether this particular memorial -- touching as deep and raw a nerve as it does -- ought to be the backdrop for handling an issue that still remains a hot potato for the nation's largest municipal fire department. That would, of course, be the issue of race.
Critics of the statue called it "political correctness" run amok. They reject the notion that the specific identities of Johnson, McWilliams and Eisengrein should be submerged for the sake of diversity. The statue should reflect the historic fact of that Trade Center moment, the critics say.
The rhetoric has been so intense that an Internet petition argues that the diverse statue distorts the historic facts and thus "desecrates hallowed ground."
"You wouldn't change Iwo Jima, so why would you change that?" Thomas Manley, sergeant at arms of the United Firefighters Association, said in an interview today.
The three men -- Johnson, McWilliams and Eisengrein -- are themselves opposed to any rendering of the flag-raising that does not depict them. Their lawyer warned the fire department to "cease and desist" from using the photographic image of the three men that was to be the model for the statue.
Late this afternoon, the fire department bowed to that pressure. After a day of meetings with Bruce Ratner, the statue's benefactor, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta announced he "will consider new options" for a memorial. Ratner, whose real estate company manages the fire department's headquarters building in Brooklyn and who commissioned the statue, has agreed to allow the department to take the lead in finding a new design.
"I will support the fire department's decision on what constitutes a fitting and inspiring memorial that pays tribute to these heroes," Ratner said in a statement today.
In the midst of the harangue about the color of the memorialized heroes are the city's black firefighters. New York City is 44.7 percent white, 27 percent Latino, 26.6 percent black, but those minority groups each represent about 2.7 percent of the city's 11,000 firefighters.
The fire department's Latino fraternal group could not be reached for comment today. But the fraternal group of black firefighters says it's more concerned with real-life diversity as opposed to the symbolic kind. Known as the Vulcan Society (named for the ancient Roman god of fire), it said it has taken no official position on the controversy and hasn't even had internal discussions about it, said Paul Washington, the society's president.
Speaking personally, Washington, a fire lieutenant who is a 13-year veteran of the department, said a memorialized depiction of the three white men was fine with him, so long as some way is found to express the contribution and suffering of the breadth of people in the department -- "even though that breadth isn't exactly very wide."
Despite a court order in the 1970s mandating hiring goals for minorities in the fire department, the level of black and Latino representation is so low as to place New York far out of step with other large cities, Washington said.
"Our big issue is getting blacks onto this job. That gets us excited, not so much a statue."
Washington said the statue debate had not created any new friction between blacks and whites in the department, which is united in its grief. There is, he said, a culture of brotherhood that prevails.
"I must have known three or four dozen guys fairly well who died that day. There were 12 black firefighters who died; I knew all of them," he said. "It's starting to get easier, because we're not going to memorial services anymore. Every day for a while, we were going to four and five memorial services."
Though the statue issue has been highly charged, Washington said he feels no particular resentment toward those who oppose the multiracial proposal. He does not know Johnson, McWilliams or Eisengrein.
The three men are not speaking to the news media, said Bill Kelly, the lawyer representing them and the Record of Bergen County, N.J., the newspaper that owns the rights to the flag-raising image.
"They're disappointed that this historic moment has become something that's more political than historical," said Kelly, a Manhattan attorney. "History should be told as it happened, rather than someone's interpretation of history. History should be recorded according to the facts."
He said his clients have no problem with diversity and inclusiveness.
"We would absolutely support the creation of a statue that was commemorative and racially inclusive of all the people who suffered as a result of that attack," he said. But the moment when the flag was raised was, for his clients, sacrosanct and should not be compromised.
Copyright 2002 The Washington Post Company
