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On the day before Halloween 2001, only six weeks after September 11th, I was in New York City to present a workshop to sixty business leaders.
These New Yorkers, still with their ashen and startled spirits, sat before me. I tried hard not to be trite.
After I was done I went down to the street to hail a cab. I asked the cabbie to take me to ground zero and so he did.
About a block away a police officer flagged us down. The cabbie rolled down his window.
"Where are you going?" asked the officer. He was assertive and suspicious.
"This gentleman wants to visit ground zero," said the cabbie pointing over his shoulder at me.
The officer peered back at me sternly, studying me. He wasn't suspicious that I was a danger, but of my motives.
I could see that he was protective of what he considered a sacred ground. His brothers had died there and there was no way he was going to let it be defiled by the trivial. He was defending his brothers' honor, standing guard over their memory. I'll never forget the unabashed, the brazen, the shameless loyalty he had for the lost.
The brotherhood of cops. I admire it even as I remember it still.
I rolled down my window.
"I simply want to pay my respects," I coughed out quickly and I hoped convincingly.
The officer waited for a moment, pondered for an instant. Without a word, as if he didn't want to, as if he realized he had no real reason to stop me, as if it pained him to do it, he waved us through.
Soon we reached ground zero. I paid the cabbie and turned. And there it was...the former buzzing monument to American capitalism turned crime scene and then wasteland.
I remember that some rubble remained. Mostly there was stone pulverized to a fine powder, the final burial ground of many a victim and hero.
I remember huge black plastic sheets, tarps I guess, hung as if in mourning, replacing the vanished walls of surrounding buildings to prevent injuries from falling debris.
I remember the eerie mystical pall that held the place.
I walked the perimeter. I couldn't bring myself to take any pictures, the protective cop's spirit seizing any desire in me to do so.
Later that night, I remember sitting with a couple of colleagues in a bar, eating a hamburger, sipping a beer. The World Series game three between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks was on TV.
I remember the hubbub in that bar. And I remember when it all went quiet.
On the television, President George W. Bush had been introduced to the crowd at Yankee Stadium to throw out the first pitch.
It was surreal. Every tongue in the bar stopped wagging. Food on forks hovered for the moment above plates. No one moved; it seemed like no one breathed, every eye locked on the nearest TV screen.
The president, a former owner of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers, strode to the mound...and threw a perfect strike. And the bar erupted into shouts, whoops and staggering applause. I thought I saw a few tears.
I remember all of this as if it were yesterday.
But I mostly remember that lone cop, a proud and determined soldier, holding a singular vigil at the grave of his brothers. He was a reverential filter, fighting for them even though they were gone.
And I thought we can learn from him.
Loyalty and brotherhood are good things. Not the phony stuff that covers for wrongs. But the real stuff-the kind that honors the truth and marches lockstep for the good.
There will be no Advisory next week because of the holiday. Have a great Labor Day weekend everyone and I'll see you in two weeks!
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