Content area
Patrick Brown was a year older than [Michael Brown]. Like older brothers will, Patrick was out in front, always pushing. He not only volunteered for Vietnam, but joined the Marines at 17 and lobbied for a combat assignment.
"He always wanted to be a fireman since I could remember," Michael says. More than 20 years ago, Patrick began a career that would see him become among the most decorated firefighters in the history of the city. His exploits splashed across news pages and TV screens. When Time magazine searched for a firefighter to illustrate the most dangerous jobs in America, Patrick Brown was selected.
Patrick's brothers at 3 Truck took Michael to the front line, where he dug all night through the rubble, acrid smoke and stench of death. He searched for voids, pockets of space capable of maintaining human life. The collapse was so ferocious that the mountain of concrete and steel was compressed.
"I'm at the site right now," Michael Brown says, pausing. He's tired, a little dazed. "I'm at the World Trade Center.
"It's my brother."
They were just two Irish kids growing up in Queens. Fighting one minute, laughing the next, always covering each other's back. Brothers are like that, you know.
Patrick Brown was a year older than Michael. Like older brothers will, Patrick was out in front, always pushing. He not only volunteered for Vietnam, but joined the Marines at 17 and lobbied for a combat assignment.
That's where Patrick Brown, 48, always wanted to be -- right in the middle of the action. After Vietnam, the job with the Fire Department of New York was a perfect fit.
"He always wanted to be a fireman since I could remember," Michael says. More than 20 years ago, Patrick began a career that would see him become among the most decorated firefighters in the history of the city. His exploits splashed across news pages and TV screens. When Time magazine searched for a firefighter to illustrate the most dangerous jobs in America, Patrick Brown was selected.
If he wasn't saving a woman from a burning building, he was executing a dangerous rope rescue as a captain with 13th Street's legendary "3 Truck," formally known in Manhattan as Ladder Company 3.
Michael was proud of his big brother, and himself worked four years for the FDNY, but no one could follow in Patrick's footsteps. Michael became a doctor.
On the morning of Sept. 11, Dr. Michael Brown was preparing to start his shift as a Sunrise Medical Center emergency room physician when he learned that a commercial jet had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. Minutes later, a second jet slammed into the south tower.
Amid the chaos, Michael was sure of one thing: Capt. Patrick Brown was on the scene Brothers can sense these things.
"I knew my brother was on his way, or in the first tower to get hit," Michael says near the site of the most devastating terrorist attack on American soil. "He would be no place else in the world."
Then the towers collapsed.
Seeing that on television in Las Vegas, Michael Brown knew he must go to New York and save his brother. Air traffic was grounded, so he drove 48 hours and arrived in time to stare into the enormous, smoking maw of devastation. The two 110-story towers had collapsed with such force that the likelihood of survival was infinitesimal.
Patrick's brothers at 3 Truck took Michael to the front line, where he dug all night through the rubble, acrid smoke and stench of death. He searched for voids, pockets of space capable of maintaining human life. The collapse was so ferocious that the mountain of concrete and steel was compressed.
The timing on Sept. 11 couldn't have been worse. The first hijacked jet flown by terrorists roared into the trade center at 8:45 a.m., about the time New York's firefighters were changing shifts.
The 3 Truck lost nine firefighters at the World Trade Center. As of Saturday morning, Patrick Brown was among the 311 FDNY members still missing.
"All these guys, you can't keep them off the firetruck," Michael says. "They're going in." It was with that zeal that Patrick led his men up, up into the crippled building, perhaps as high as the 35th floor, when it collapsed.
"Mayday!" a few shouted into their radios.
Then they were gone, swallowed by an ocean of concrete and steel, of choking smoke and white-hot fire.
Michael came to dig, but now the talk has turned from rescue to recovery. The optimists have been replaced by cranes and earthmovers.
Dr. Brown, who deals daily with death, knows the score. But brother Michael refuses to quit. "I still have a little bit of hope," he says via cellphone, the hollow fatigue in his voice betraying his words. "We take it day by day. I'm doing what I can. I'm here to take care of my brother."
And so each morning he goes down to the edge of this man-made hell.
He has scratched and clawed. Now he will wait and weep and do what must be done. In a quiet moment, he will remember when they were just two Irish kids growing up in Queens.
Brothers are like that, you know.
John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at [email protected] or call him at 383-0295.
Copyright Donrey Media Group Sep 23, 2001