NewsOne Remembers The Unsung Heroes Of 9/11

Eleven years ago on this fateful day of September 11, our confidence as a nation was ripped away, and every year since then, the horror of it all replays and our wounds are reopened. Here, NewsOne remembers some of the unsung heroes who stood on the front lines.





1) The stories of 12 African-American firefighters (top from L to R:  Leon W. Smith Jr., Shawn E. Powell, Vernon Cherry, Andre Fletcher, and Ronnie L Henderson; and bottom from L to R: Gerard Jean Baptiste, Keithroy Maynard, William L. Henry Jr., Karl Joseph, and Tarel Coleman. Not pictured are Keith Glascoe and Vernon Richard) who gave their lives at the World Trade site to save others on 9/11 have gone largely untold. Craig Kelly, a former firefighter and a grief counselor who worked with the fallen heroes’ families, felt compelled to chronicle the aftermath of their deaths and put his research in to a documentary, ”All Our Sons–Fallen Heroes of 9/11,” which was released in 2004.  The tribute memorializes the lives of the men and what they meant to their communities.



 
2) U.S. Marine Jason Thomas (pictured above), 32, appeared at the World Trade Center with a flashlight and a shovel and made the decision to help as many people as he could.

He ended up unearthing a pair of police officers who had been buried beneath 20 feet of debris, then disappeared.

No one knew of his identity until he was finally unmasked four years later.

Ironically, Thomas was portrayed in the 2006 film “World Trade” as a White man.

The filmmakers later apologized for their inaccuracy, but Thomas just laughed it off by saying that he didn’t want to “shed any negativity on what they were trying to show.”

Read more of this compelling article here