The weekend following September 11th, syndicated columnist and
former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan drove to Lower
Manhattan to witness the relief effort taking place at Ground
Zero. She found herself focusing on the convoy of trucks
filled with rescue workers coming off their 12-hour shifts.
The men in the trucks were construction and electrical
workers, police, emergency medical workers, and firemen. It
was a procession of the not-so-rich and famous.
Nonetheless, these New Yorkers were celebrities in a human
drama more significant than any Broadway act. Noonan joined
the growing crowd of onlookers cheering the workers with
shouts of "God bless you!" and "We love you!" They clapped and
blew kisses.
Noonan writes:
I looked around me at all of us who were cheering. And saw
who we were. Investment bankers! Orthodontists! Magazine
editors! In my group, a lawyer, a columnist, and a writer.
We had been the kings and queens of the city, respected
professionals in a city that respects its professional
class.
And this night we were nobody. We were so useless, all we
could do was applaud the somebodies, the workers who,
unlike us, had not been applauded much in their lives.… I
was so moved and, oddly I guess, grateful. Because they’d
always been the people who ran the place, who kept it
going, they’d just never been given their due.
This reversal Peggy Noonan witnessed is nothing less than a
foreshadowing of what Jesus talked about. A day is coming when
the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Citation:
Greg Asimakoupoulos, Naperville, Illinois; Source: Peggy
Noonan, "Welcome Back, Duke," Wall Street Journal, (10-12-01)