As a Southerner, I have often made derogatory remarks about New Yorkers. I have always considered them to be abrasive in their manners and loud in their talk. This week I have seen a different side to those damned Yankees though. I like most other Americans and even most others around the world was shocked when the first pictures started coming in of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. I felt ill all day as I thought of all those people who had lost their lives and of all the people still living who would grieve for them.
Then I saw all those New York firefighters and police rushing to the buildings to help. I saw the pictures posted on the internet of these brave men and women heading up into the buildings as swarms of workers streamed down. When the buildings came down, I had no doubt that many of these brave men and women had just lost their lives. Every time I see those pictures of the firefighters and police, I think to myself that I am looking at a picture of someone who lost his life trying to save others. Surely as they were going up into the inferno, they knew they were going in harms way.
I have felt great sorrow for the loses of all those Damned Yankees but then they had the gall to go and make me proud to be an American. After the damage was done, I was sure there would be looting and rioting in the streets of New York yet I heard nothing of the sort. Instead masses lined up to give blood, donate whatever needed, or help in the rescue efforts. I saw the rescuers as the President came to visit them start shouting "USA, USA, USA!". These were not people who were bowed down and beaten, these were people willing to do whatever it takes to help others they didn't even know and stand up and be counted as citizens of the greatest country that ever existed. They make me wish (almost [:)]) that I too were a "Damned Yankee", a term they should wear with the pride I feel when I say it.
Thank you New York for giving us all something to strive for and something to look up at. The Twin Towers may have fallen but you tower far higher than they ever did.