Four years after the towers fell and thousands of people lost
their lives in the 9/11 attacks, people continue to look for
answers, meaning and purpose in those events.
CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-Tribune
Marsh Engle, at a book signing in Escondido last week,
read excerpts from "Amazing Women: Amazing
Firefighters," her book about female members of
the New York Fire Department who served during 9/11.
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Marsh Engle has found her inspiration in the female firefighters
of New York City. Fewer than 30 women served on the city's force
of 12,000 at the time of the attacks, making them trailblazers
long before they risked their lives on Sept. 11, 2001.
But on that day, they surpassed even their own exceptional
expectations.
Engle's book, "Amazing Women: Amazing Firefighters"
(Jodere, 96 pages), profiles these women's stories, highlighting
their defining characteristics: integrity, perseverance, action,
intuition and, of course, courage.
"Every person I sat with in an interview has somehow
impacted my life," said Engle, 50, who visited San Diego
last week from Los Angeles for a book signing in North County.
"What I walked away with was a code of courage that these
women lived by, and that I think we could all live by. It's a
way of relating to life that's pretty significant. It's about
more than answering the fire alarm."
Regina Wilson rushed into the unbearable dust and darkness at
ground zero moments after the attacks and emerged alive –
unlike hundreds of her colleagues and seven of her tightknit
firehouse peers.
Celia Thompson, a rescue worker, developed a cough and later
suffered a heart attack induced by the debris.
One firefighter, unidentified in the book, cradled a severely
burned woman's body and breathed life back into it – after
pulling out three tiny children's bodies, limp, charred, already
lost.
After such experiences, life does not return to normal.
"There would always be a new normal," Marsh
reflected.
One purpose of her book, a slender and powerfully written
collection of vignettes based on interviews with these women, is
to document the contributions of a very small but valuable
segment of the New York Fire Department.
Beyond that, Engle's objective was to effect positive change
by encouraging her readers to "move outside what they may
have defined themselves as and find a new way of looking at
their lives."
Reading and storytelling, explained Engle, give people great
power. They are "absolutely transformative. How we tell the
story of our life . . . gives us the power to see our
life more completely, and relate to other people's experiences.
Find compassion."
But such strength and perspective come with time,
particularly in the case of tragedy.
"As we gain awareness, the way we define one experience
in one moment can shift the next moment," she noted.
Writing was such a shift for Engle.
After working in marketing in Hollywood and promoting other
peoples' ideas, in 1999 she unexpectedly lost both of her
parents in the space of several months and was diagnosed with a
potentially life-threatening condition.
She is healthy today, but the experience deeply changed her.
"Within 18 months I was hit with a wave of awakening, a
wake-up call that asked me to bring a lot more balance into my
life," she said. "It was time to retire my
stress-for-success way of being."
In writing the book, she asked herself a simple question:
What is an amazing woman? The answer, she discovered, is
immensely varied.
"I set out on my own journey. What I quickly began to
discover is that I could see the amazing in every single person
I met. I started collecting stories about these amazing women.
Before I knew it, I thought I really had a book here."
Several years after she interviewed the firefighters, they
are still vivid in her mind. She especially appreciates the
message of Adrian Walsh, whom Engle describes as very perceptive
and sensitive.
"Every experience is going to bring some wisdom with it,
and if you're going to go through the bad, you might as well
find the good," she recalls Walsh saying.
To this, Engle added her own perspective: "The impact of
9/11 touched all of our lives, but if we can each look at what
the experience did bring, from a space of wisdom, then that
would be the goal."
