Finally, justice for heroes

By JOE DOWD

LONG ISLAND – As a little boy I used to watch for him early in the morning from my bedroom window.

If my father was late from the night shift at the firehouse, I’d flip on the transistor to 1010 WINS for news of any bad fires. I’d go back to the window, listen and stand watch.

When he pulled in the driveway in his beat-up red Ford, the relief would wash over me. Battalion Chief Joseph D. Dowd Jr., FDNY, was home in one piece.

I’d meet him at the door and he’d toss an arm around me and kiss my head. His hair bore the scent of the South Bronx. His work clothes were often smudged with soot and smelled of the previous night’s battles in the smoke.

I’d ask him about his shift. And he’d always dismiss it as “routine,” or “a couple of workers, nothing big.”

Even as a child, I knew there was nothing routine about leading men through burning tenements to help the helpless. I lived with this unspoken fear – you don’t talk about it in firefighting families – until the day he retired.

I can’t imagine what the sons and daughters of first responders are feeling now as they wonder whether their fathers and mothers will fall sick from the toxic air of Ground Zero.

Congressional leaders actually achieved bipartisan consensus, effectively renewing the Zadroga Act as permanent. That it took so long to adopt permanently is nothing short of a national disgrace. Finally, our first responders, the men and women who are ill and dying by the thousands, will be protected by a 75-year renewal of the law.

The fact that extending this bill was even a matter of debate is the surest indictment of the legislative sinkhole that is modern Washington.

Stricken first responders, at least one in a wheelchair, were forced to go door-to-door through the halls of the Capitol, trying to be heard by members of Congress. If comedian Jon Stewart was not with them, I wonder how much press these humble lobbyists would have gotten.

Were these elected officials watching television that day 14 years ago? Did some of them forget the images so burned in our memories?

It’s hard to forget the scenes from The Pile when a body was recovered and carried out shrouded in an American flag. The firefighters and cops formed a makeshift honor guard and saluted as each body passed.

They dug for months for the fallen, all the while breathing air their government told them was safe. It wasn’t.

Little boys and little girls should never have to wait for their government to protect their heroes. May they all come home safe.

This column originally ran in Long Island Business News, a sister publication of The Daily Record.