Book Review: Strong of Heart

Strong of Heart: Life and Death in the Fire Department of New York
by Thomas Von Essen with Matt Murray
288 pages

The gist:
The story of Thomas Von Essen could be the story of finding the American Dream. Von Essen grew up in Queens, the son of a city cop. Through his teenage years, Von Essen ran paper routes and cut grass for money. After struggling through his late teen years and dropping out of college, he found love and eventually married with a baby on the way. Military service followed before Von Essen joined the FDNY as a member of the South Bronx Ladder 42.

Years went by and Von Essen eventually landed the big-time job as president of the Uniformed Frefighters Association union. From there, Von Essen made the unusual leap to become the commisioner of the FDNY under mayor Rudy Guliani. That's enough to make an impressive autobiography.

But Von Essen was commissioner of the department during the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 when 343 of his men perished in the line of duty. Understandably, that's the focus of Strong of Heart.

As commissioner, Von Essen was basically the CEO of a 16,000-person company, operating a huge budget for equipment and salaries. And most of his employees faced danger everyday, many of them incurring injuries, ranging from minor to severe. Deaths were rare, although not unheard of. The department never lost more than 12 men at once until the 2001 attacks.

Von Essen worked with the mayor and police commissioner in the spotlight of the media in the early days after the attack, even meeting with President Bush early on. At the same time, he met with widows and attended funerals. His book starts with him in the spotlight of a press conference 12 hours after the towers collapsed. A reporter asks how he feels about the apparent losses, and Von Essen is enraged by the question and dumbfounded to give an answer.

The book closes with Von Essen at Ground Zero during the ceremony to signify the end of the recovery efforts at the end of May, 2002. Von Essen is still overwhelmed by the toll of the attack and he concludes that the only good that can come from the tragedy is a sense of purpose. Therefore, he realizes that we must all be strong of heart.

My take:
Most FDNY firefighters had little respect for Von Essen as a commissioner, and I think that's common with any FDNY commissioner. The firefighters feel that the commissioners play too many political games trying to cut budgets to please the mayor. That means the commissioners tangle with the union heads who stick up for firefighter interests.

Even though Von Essen had served multiple terms leading the UFA on behalf of firefighters, that service was not enough to assuage the common assumption that commissioners are stooges of anti-FDNY politicians.

With that background, a reader of Strong of Heart can see parts of the book where Von Essen tries to defend himself from such criticisms. Those passages taint the book's credibility, but readers should be aware of both sides of the story, so this book gives Von Essen his say.

One such example from the book was when Von Essen tells about trying to reform some of the department's operations. Firefighters created a satirical diagram of a new firetruck--the Von Yessen mobile. The diagram, which is in the book, shows a vehicle designed to save the city money by performing functions for multiple agencies. It had a snowplow and street sweeper to clear streets, a paint nozzle to paint street lines, a pen for "humans, truants, animals, and homeless," a mail slot, garbage bins, an aerial bucket "to fight fires and maintain light poles," and a tow hook in back for "derelict vehicles and to carry fat union leaders home after huge meals."

The fictitious truck handout carried the slogan "We'll take the call for nothing at all," with the phone number of 1-800-NO-RAISE.

After describing the truck, Von Essen writes:

I knew it reflected, in the best tradition of firefighter humor, some doubts about my reforming impulses. As I pushed for change in the fire department, the ripples often alienated people.

But I though their parody was great. In a department of 16,000 people, it's inevitable that someone who tries to bring change will meet resistance. But that's the job of leaders. I thought of myself as a reformer. As a leader, I believed it was better to try something and fail than to play it safe. That approach, I knew, was guaranteed to draw criticism. But that was okay with me.

On the other hand, the book does provide useful insights into the inner workings of the leaders ultimately responsible for how the city dealt with the disaster.

One of the most telling and historically useful portions of the book is a 30-page insert in the middle of the book which contains a diary that Von Essen wrote from September 12 to December 31 of 2001. The insert contains selected passages from the diary, which actually filled multiple notebooks, according to Von Essen. Each entry is organized by date and broken down into specific times with bullet entries of Von Essen's thoughts, reactions, to-do lists and so on. The notes include information on potential problems at the Ground Zero site, to weather concerns, responses from bigwigs and victims' families, to the size of Donald Trump's name on his plane that Von Essen took to Washington, D.C., to the considerations for other terrorist threats.

Caveat reader: (Let the reader beware.)
The topics that Von Essen covers deal with an incredibly stressful time in American history, and that stress brought out foul language from those suffering through the trials, and sometimes the relief from that stress was off-color. All of that can be found in this book. Readers might find it unpleasant, but it is a fact of life and an accurate representation of those troubled times.

Previous book reviews:
Wartime
Report from Engine Co. 82
Knowing God