A Newfound Patriotism

Looking into the new year, Margot Adler sees that she's been transformed by 9/11 in ways she never imagined.

Recently, I had one of those experiences that crystallizes inchoate feelings. I was asked to do a report on the people, who stand on the median strip of the West Side Highway in Manhattan and cheer the rescue workers, firefighters, metal workers, and others, who go back and forth from Ground Zero.

I had heard vague stories about some of these folks, and I had a picture in my head of some patriotic characters waving flags and such. At that point, there hadn't been too many stories about them and I wondered who they were. I knew that, personally, as a Cold War red diaper baby, I was not about to wear a flag lapel pin, even after all this, but I thought I would have a look. Then I got a call from a science reporter at National Public Radio, who said he knew one of the leaders of this disparate group that gathers at the highway intersection of West and Christopher Streets. His name was Barry McQuade. He was a gay man, who has been HIV positive for twenty years. What's more, he had been volunteering at a local fire department ever since 9/11, and the local fire dept had adopted him as an honorary member. I thought this was pretty unusual; you don't ordinarily think of firefighters as being sympathetic to gays. So at nine o'clock that night, I went off to meet Barry in front of a fire station on West 19th Street in Chelsea.

Barry was carrying a very large and worn American flag that he had picked up from somewhere and tacked to a pole. He says he is known as the "flag man" at Christopher and West Streets where the people gather to cheer. He says he is a good twirler, a skill he learned in the Gay Pride Parade.

He showed me around the firehouse, where the guys all knew him. For two and a half weeks after the events of 911, he cooked for them, answered phones, helped neighborhood organizations respond to needs. He had no expertise, he said, but the skills he learned caring for his dying brothers gave him the knowledge of how to help.

The fire station, like all the firehouses around the city, these days, looks like a Tibetan Shrine, or one of our Pagan altars, with candles burning, pots of flowers, poems etched in stone and written on paper, walls of children's artwork, responding to September 11th, and, of course, pictures of the five fireman that this company lost. Notices of dozens of memorial services are posted on a bulletin board.

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