MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's turn now to someone who helped shape the narrative in New York on the day of the 9/11 attacks and then the days that followed. John Avlon was chief speechwriter to then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, and he's with us now. John Avlon. Good morning.
JOHN AVLON: Good morning.
MARTIN: I just want to start with a question we all seem to ask each other about, you know, after events like this. Where were you on 9/11? Is there something about that day that really sticks to you?
AVLON: Oh, everything about that day sticks with me. I saw the plane fly over my apartment window at the time. It was low and loud, but no one had any conception of what was being planned. And after it struck, I walked down Sixth Avenue, and I was on the steps of City Hall when the towers fell, which was three blocks away.
MARTIN: What do you remember about your time with Mayor Giuliani in those moments? Many people have such vivid memories of him kind of taking charge and kind of walking the streets and...
AVLON: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Sort of comforting people and encouraging people. What do you remember?
AVLON: He did. And it's hard for folks to remember today because for many people, he's been defined by his last act. But I think history will remember him for his actions on 9/11. It brought out the best in Rudy. He was crisp and decisive and on the frontlines. He was able to express sorrow when asked - you know, at the Police Academy, where we re-established city government, the afternoon of the attack - how many had died.
And he just simply said, more than any of us can bear, which will eternally be true. And remember, the president of the United States was flying around to safe locations across the United States most of that day. And so Rudy really was the voice that people turned to for information, even in that fog of war in Lower Manhattan.
MARTIN: What do you remember about working with others at City Hall to help the city kind of grieve and understand, or at least try to get through, what was happening in the days after the attacks?
AVLON: Well, there was no way, certainly, to comprehend what had occurred because nothing like it had occurred in our history. You know, there was - and many of us in City Hall were personally deeply affected. The mayor's right-hand, Beth Hatton, lost her husband, Captain Terry Hatton, who was the captain of Rescue 1. And she found out she was pregnant on the day of his funeral.
But there was an enormous amount of solidarity and a sense of mission, obviously. And it fell to us in the speechwriting team to try to help make sense of the moment, primarily in writing eulogies, providing some measure of comfort for the 343 firefighters' families who lost their loved ones, the police officers and Port Authority police officers.
But also to try to sum up the meaning of what we had seen, which was that I believe, and I believe then, and I believe now, that we met the worst of humanity with the best of humanity. We responded as a civil society does to a massive attack. And for me, the key images will always be not the towers coming down, but the people who ran into the fire and up the towers to save their fellow citizens.
And the fact that even though the massive destruction on the site of the former World Trade Center, across the street was St. Paul's Chapel, where George Washington had prayed after being inaugurated. And that somehow miraculously survived without even losing a broken window and was used as a center for first responders in the rescue and recovery effort in the months afterward. And we were united as a nation.
MARTIN: For a time. Can you put...
AVLON: For a time. For a time, for sure.
MARTIN: Can you put into words - 'cause words are your business - what you think the lesson of 9/11 is now?
AVLON: Well, part of the lesson of 9/11 was our instinctive response that reminded us that physical and moral courage matter, that you don't have to be perfect to be a hero. What matters is that you do what's right when it matters most, and you run into the fire to help people in need, and all our differences fade away in moment of crisis. The longer lesson is, I think, how we squandered that moment of national unity and what we need to do to win it back. And we can't depend on terrorist attacks or national disasters to do it. We need to find it within ourselves and within our fellow citizens, remembering that what unites us is always stronger than what divides us.
MARTIN: That's John Avlon. He was chief speechwriter to New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He went on to work as a journalist and an author, and in fact, his latest book, coming out in March, is "Theodore Roosevelt's Guide To Life." John Avlon, thank you so much.
AVLON: Thank you, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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