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By Times staff and wire reports
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 17, 2001
New York fire department acts to fill depleted ranks
NEW YORK -- New York promoted 168 firefighters on Sunday. No one laughed. No one beamed with pride.
There was only heartache.
These were the replacements for a command structure that was wiped out in a few moments on Tuesday morning.
The promotions were a necessity, not a joy.
"No one really wants to be here. No one really wanted to be promoted," said Jerry Horton, who became a captain during the ceremony.
With nearly 300 firefighters still lost beneath the jumbled remains of the twin towers, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani compared the promotions to battlefield commissions in wartime.
"We are shaken, but we are not defeated," said Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen. "We stare adversity in the eye, and we move on."
Von Essen delivered his remarks in a strong, unwavering voice, but his face twisted in pain the moment he finished. He collapsed into a chair on the stage and hung his head as Giuliani stepped to the podium.
Giuliani hailed the firefighters as heroes, then helped swear the promoted into their new positions.
Some were not there. Some of them were still under the wreckage of the Trade Center -- their promotions a gesture of faith.
The promotions reached all the way to the top. Chief of Operations Daniel A. Nigro was named Chief of Department, the highest uniformed position in the organization. He replaces Peter Ganci, the former department chief, who died in Tuesday's attacks and was buried Saturday.
With 11,400 firefighters on the force, one out of every 38 is either dead or missing.
NEW YORK -- When Americans flew Old Glory last week, Joanne Sheehan reached for her dove-of-peace banner.
Given U.S. resolve to retaliate militarily against Tuesday's terrorist attacks, the anti-war activist saw the banner as a purer symbol of peace.
Sheehan, who leads the London-based War Resisters International, said the United States cannot wipe out terrorism by bombing it away.
"Our response should not be to kill more innocent people," she said. "Calls from the Bush administration would do just that."
It is a minority view: Recent polls show most Americans think the United States should retaliate, even if innocent people die.
Those in the U.S. who are against retaliation are even urging national introspection into why the country was targeted for terrorism.
"It's not good and evil, us and them, it's more complex than that," said Larry Leaman-Miller, Colorado director of the Quaker group, American Friends Service Committee.
In an essay in the New Yorker magazine, writer Susan Sontag criticizes U.S. public officials and media commentators for trying to "infantilize" the public in the wake of the attacks.
"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" Sontag wrote in the Sept. 24 issue of the magazine, due out today.
MESA, Ariz. -- An Indian-immigrant gas station owner was shot to death and a Lebanese-American clerk was targeted, but not injured, by gunfire at another gas station, police said Sunday.
Shots also were fired at a home where a family of Afghani descent live.
Frank Roque, 42, was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in the shooting incidents Saturday. Police were investigating the possibility that the crimes were motivated by Tuesday's terror attacks in New York and Washington.
Around the country, several apparent backlash attacks and threats have been reported against people of Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian descent.
The East Valley Tribune reported that Roque shouted, "I stand for America all the way," as he was handcuffed Saturday night.
The first shooting killed Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, who was Sikh. Male Sikhs often have long facial hair and wear turbans.
NEW YORK -- New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani kept a promise Sunday. After the death last month of Michael Gorumba, a young firefighter who died on the job, Giuliani told Gorumba's widowed mother that he would walk her daughter down the aisle of her Sept. 17 wedding.
Sunday, the mayor kept his promise.
Giuliani poignantly recalled the request of Diane Gorumba, whose son Michael Gorumba, 27, died of a heart attack while on duty Aug. 28. He said that in the last year Gorumba had lost not only her son, but her husband and her father as well.
"I asked her how she could bear it, and she said she feels the pain of it, she allows the pain to happen, but then she focuses on the good things that are left in life, you have to participate in the good things -- like her daughter's wedding," Giuliani said. "I've thought about that quite a bit this week."
The first team of mental health care professionals from Florida has traveled to New York to offer its services.
Local members of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation flew out of Tampa International Airport aboard a charter plane Sunday.
Carol Madura, a social worker from Seminole, said the eight-member team from Florida likely would train others in New York to deal with the trauma of the injured and dying.
"Even in the light of what happened, I think we can help people," Madura said.
A second team of firefighters and police officers trained in stress management is standing by.
-- Times Staff Writer Amy Herdy contributed to this report.