Remember 9/11Stories of Hope | Gia Đình Phật Tử Việt Nam Trên Thế Giới

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On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, off-duty fire Captain Dan Daly was getting ready to take a small airplane out for a leisure flight around New York.

The sky was crystal clear — a perfect day for flying a plane, Daly said.

But before he even got out of his driveway, Daly’s phone rang. The person on the other end told him to go back into the house and turn on the television.

“I saw the plane hitting the building and I knew instantly it was going to be a very bad day for New York and a very bad day for humanity,” Daly said.

Daly, a first responder to the scene, spent the next six months working extensively at Ground Zero. In November 2002, he retired from the NYFD to speak to groups around the world about positive stories of hope. He also volunteers, working with wounded war veterans and teaching public speaking in prisons.

On Monday, he spoke to members of the Palm Beach Round Table at The Colony.

Dick Pietrafesa introduced Daly as a 24-year veteran of the New York Fire Department before retiring. Because of his actions in the days and weeks following 9/11, Daly was one of 100 people awarded the New York State Senate Liberty Medal.

“He has that day seared in his memory because he was a first responder,” Pietrafesa said. “What he saw and did … changed his life forever … Capt. Daly, you are a true American hero and a great patriot.”

After watching the planes hit the World Trade Center that morning, Daly said he jumped into his car and sped to his fire house. Listening to the car radio, Daly heard that the buildings had collapsed.

When he and his firefighters got to Ground Zero, “it was like landing on another planet,” Daly said. “People were running around covered with blood … There was nothing there but devastation. You couldn’t see the sun anymore. We were all enveloped in this black haze.”

Within a few moments of arrival, Daly found out that his longtime friend and fire department chaplain, Father Mychal Judge, lost his life administering last rites to a fallen firefighter. He also heard of other friends and colleagues, who went into one tower or the other and never came out.

“The litany of bad news didn’t stop that day or for days to come,” Daly said. “Over six months, I saw the best of mankind and the worst of mankind. I saw the worst of mankind in the heinous destruction of those buildings, but I saw the best of mankind in how people came together and worked together and made it a very special spiritual place to work.”

Daly talked about what volunteers faced in the days and weeks that followed.

He described a “city of tents” where workers could go for respite. There was a cruise ship, The Spirit of New York, which docked nearby and served meals to workers for 40 days. There were many stories of people helping people, Daly said.

“It was such a strange dichotomy,” Daly said. “On one side … you had this pile 80 feet high with the smell of smoke and ashes and burning debris. When you walked across the street, you had this ‘city of angels’ because those volunteers were like angels to us. You walked over and got a cup of coffee, you said a prayer and you even got a hug. There’s an old saying, ‘there are no atheists in fox holes’ because when you’re faced with your own mortality certain things take light. That’s how it was at Ground Zero. We knew we couldn’t do that work without speaking to our maker or saying a prayer.”

The NYFD lost 343 firefighters on 9/11, including Daly’s close friend who went into the North Tower and never came out.

Daly said he was “pretty angry” and felt like joining the military and picking up a weapon.

Instead, he picked up a microphone and started speaking at schools. Daly’s program is titled “Five Keys to Successful Living.” His message is clear: Be kind to others and volunteer.

“Edmund Burke said, ‘All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing’ ” Daly said. “All of us need to do whatever we can in our lives from being kind to each other and serving each other in any way we can.”

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