BETTER ANGELS will be presented in New York City for FIVE days only Monday June 4 through Friday June 8, from 8AM to 8PM. The exhibit will be at 2 World Financial Center, 220 Liberty Street (@ West Street).
We are looking for volunteers to help. If you are willing to work one or more six hour shift (8AM- 2PM of 2PM – 8PM), please send me a message through the website. Volunteers are needed to help answer questions, etc. I promise, this is a rewarding thing to do!
The memorial ceremony this year was held in the blazing afternoon sun.
Then I rode in my first fire truck back to the base for the Bar-be-que.
Major General Norma Brown entered the Air Force in 1951 and worked her way up through the ranks to become Wing Commander at Goodfellow Air Force Base. At every step, she broke ground for women in the Air Force. This special training room is named after her. Mike Robertson saved it for last on our base tour.
There are two tables this size in the room, built to Matchbox scale. First I thought this was a giant train set. Secondly I was admiring the layout and detail as an artist.
While the tables are a thing of beauty, what they really are is a unique high-intensity training tool for fire response command. Those running the show can make it day or night. They can make fires and emergencies appear all over the table. Those taking the trainings need to keep their cool, keep their perspective, and direct the response to every incident that comes their way. It is much harder than it might seem.
They tell me that those being tested on their command response find this very demanding and stressful. Although these are just Matchbox-sized toys and models on the table, once the the test is underway, it’s just like the real thing. Fires break out, smoke appears, heart rates rise.
Many of the scenarios are based on real life situations. Here for instance is the Morrow building in Oklahoma City, after they have removed the wall and set it on fire. (They didn’t light the fires or set off the smoke for our tour.)
There are almost an infinite number of emergencies those running the training can throw at those being trained. Each picture here has some emergency hidden behind the peaceful setting, ready to engage and challenge those being trained. Totally fabulous!
Early Wednesday morning Billy Hinton from the NFFF and I received a tour of the training facility at Goodfellow Air Force Base from our host, Mike Robertson. This is where the military trains all its firefighters: Air Force, Army, Marine and Navy.
There is a multi-acre facility with buildings, airplanes, cars, tankers and other training sites.
Here the trainers are the ones in the red hats leaning out the windows. Note the gallon containers of water in the foreground. All trainees carry them and must drink a gallon per day.
Note the dummy in the cockpit, too.
Although I’m told it’s not used much anymore, I found this training plane interesting. Inside this wingless fuselage the passenger seats are strapped to the ceiling. This rescue training exercise is modeled on a famous crash in Sioux City, Iowa, (I think) from back in the early 90′s in which the much-experienced pilot managed to land the plane against almost all odds. 
Although many passengers died, many more were also saved and the fuselage that held the survivors was upside down like this on the runway. Many of the training exercises here are designed after real life examples.
The fires in the training are all propane-fueled and appear as instantly as they disappear.
Tomorrow I hope to post pictures of NORMA BROWN. That portion of the training was particularly interesting and surprising. Since Mike saved it for last on our tour, I will save it for last also.
I have a trove of pictures to post from our BETTER ANGELS exhibit in San Angelo Texas, and I’ll start with pictures taken this afternoon of a couple of the FIVE school classes who came by to see the paintings.
Air Force and Marine firefighters from the Goodfellow Air Force base greet all the classes, then turn them over to me. This is the first time we have had school kids at the exhibit (although children have come with their parents at every venue). Some of these kids today weren’t even born by 2001; the afternoon classes were 3 & 4 years old then.
As you can see from these pictures, they were engaged.
Two more classes tomorrow!
TEXAS! A couple hours ago I arrived on Goodfellow Air Force Base just outside San Angelo TX and tomorrow morning we set up Better Angels in an annex building of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art!
This base is where all the military firefighters are trained, and where they have their firefighter memorial. Their annual ceremonies to honor their fallen are this Friday and Saturday – which is why we’re here!
I promise pictures and more information tomorrow!
We are going to NEW YORK CITY.
The contract isn’t quite inked, so exact dates & venue are not yet for print, but THREE WEEKS, beginning mid-MAYish, in lower MANHATTAN.
NOW we need to find VOLUNTEERS to help us with the exhibit, committing to one or more 6-hour shift, answering questions, talking with people and generally helping out. We need eyes and ears and helping hands on the ground.
We plan to have at least three people at all times and one of those would be me and/or NFFF staff. Would you like to help us by committing to a shift? Send a message.
We will be reaching out to the NFFF’s survivor network, and to others within that community to see if there is interest there. I believe people will want to do this.
Having now stood with thousands of people at these paintings, I can plainly say it is a powerful thing to do.
Thank you in advance to the many volunteers I believe will step forward to help us share BETTER ANGELS: The Firefighters of 9/11 with New York City.
Some time soon I will share how very much this means to me.
Here are two more links:
Tim published an interview with Bill Butler, another FDNY Dad who lost a firefighter son on 9/11. Bill was too ill from his 9/11 exposure to join the other “Gang of Dads” in the video I posted yesterday.
And this is the link to Tim Sendelbach’s Letter from the Editor in that same issue.
In Las Vegas I had the pleasure of meeting Tim Sendelbach, editor-in-chief of FireRescue Magazine. Tim gave me a copy of the August 2011 issue of FireRescue and I read it cover-to-cover on the long flight home. Specifically Tim wanted to share two sets of conversations he had last fall, first with four retired FDNY fathers who lost their sons on 9/11, and then with three FDNY sons who lost their fathers. Here are these interviews on video:
The Fathers: http://www.firefighternation.com/videos/fdny-fathers-and-sons-interview-part-1
The Sons: http://www.firefighternation.com/videos/fdny-fathers-and-sons-interview-part-3
CPSE is over and done. It took us about two and a half hours to break down the exhibit and pack it back into its crates and into the trailer for the trip to San Angelo, Texas. It should arrive at Goodfellow Air Force Base sometime today. It will stay in storage until the first of May when it will go on display at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art. Thanks to Joe and his wife Jesse, our Air Force volunteers who are driving the exhibit south as I write. (Wish I’d been clever enough to take their pictures in Vegas.)
Here are two of the painting panels in their crates. These crates then go into one of two larger crates. The inner crates have held up very well and the paintings seem to travel happily. They are always packed and handled in a vertical position. The most fragile thing about the paintings and the aspect that needs to be most protected is the delicate charcoal edges on the burned blocks of wood.
343 is divisible only by seven. 343 = 7 x 7 x 7. So BETTER ANGELS is put together by seven different panels of 49 paintings. For travel, each goes into its own painting crate which are then fit into one of two larger crates along with the acrylic covers that protect the paintings when they are on display.
Once again we had help from the North Las Vegas Fire, Bill Hinton, Joe from the Air Force and – this time – Ron Siarnicki, the Executive Director of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
Thanks to the Center for Public Safety Excellence who brought BETTER ANGELS to Vegas and were as gracious and helpful as they could be. I met fire chiefs and firefighters from around the country this last week, all of whom were there to learn how to do their jobs better, more safely and more effectively.