Heart of a Soldier

The focus those early days was on the devastating losses at places like Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm located on the floors of One World Trade Center just above where the hijacked jetliner struck. But during my interviews I learned that the largest employer at the World Trade Center was Morgan Stanley, and the firm had suffered only a handful of casualties. This stuck in my mind: how had Morgan Stanley fared so well? Did someone deserve credit for this? In the midst of tragedy and sadness, was this a glimmer of something positive?

I raised this question from time to time, and at a dinner for my birthday on October 3, James Cramer, now host of Mad Money and an old friend, said he’d heard there was indeed such a person, the firm’s head of security. The next week I called Morgan Stanley, and was referred to a press person. Somewhat to my surprise, she seemed cool to my inquiry. She said Morgan Stanley would have no comment and had no interest in participating in any story related to September 11. I got the impression that someone had advised Morgan Stanley that for marketing purposes, it was best for the words “Morgan Stanley” and “September 11” never to appear in the same sentence. But then she added, “His widow might be interested in talking to you.” She gave me Susan Rescorla’s unlisted phone number.

I called Susan, and she agreed to meet me at the Morristown apartment she’d shared with Rick. When I came through the front door I spotted Rick’s large shoes by the door mat. Their beloved dog Buddy, who Susan had been walking when she met Rick, came up to me wagging his tail. Susan had touched nothing in the apartment since Rick’s death. We sat down and I took out my notebook. Susan started talking, but her voice soon faltered, and within moments we were both grasping for tissues as the tears flowed. Hours later, on the train back to Manhattan, I looked at my notes. I’d written only a few words.

That was the first of many interviews with Susan, who gradually shared more and more of her own memories, photos, and Rick’s letters and diaries. She introduced me to Dan Hill, Rick’s lifelong friend, who lived in Florida, and we spoke on the phone. The result was a New Yorker article, “The Real Heroes Are Dead,” which appeared in February 2002. It focused on Rick and Susan’s extraordinary love affair and Rick’s remarkable life.

Some weeks later, Dan Hill called to say he would be in New York and suggested we meet. I readily agreed, although I don’t often meet with sources after a story is finished. Dan and I had dinner at keen’s Chop House, where, over Scotch and a steak, Dan dropped whatever reserve I’d sensed on the phone and spoke expansively about his love for Rick and the amazing exploits they’d shared. Dan is a natural narrator, and I was spellbound by his tales. When I left him on the sidewalk I called Alice Mayhew, my editor at Simon & Schuster, and said that I had to expand the story into a book.

In March 2002, no publisher was looking for more books on the subject of the 2001 terrorist attacks, too many of which were already in the publishing pipeline. I was already under contract for another book. I offered to write it with no advance. I’ll always be grateful that Alice allowed me to pursue my growing obsession with the story. But I’m not sure anything could have stopped me.

I set to work, visiting Dan and his wife at their home in Florida, where Dan showed me the lion’s tooth that Rick had given him to protect him in Afghanistan, but that Rick had been without on Sept. 11. One afternoon in Morristown Susan shared with me the notes that Rick had been scribbling during the nights he couldn’t sleep in the weeks leading up to September 11. On one page he’d written the title of the autobiography he’d planned to write: Heart of a Soldier.

One hot summer afternoon I was working on the manuscript when I realized that Dan and Rick had last seen each other at Ft. Benning, when Rick was being inducted into the Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame. I interrupted my writing to call Dan to ask about the details of their final parting. Dan froze when I asked the question. Then he said he’d rather not say. I gently pressed him, sensing this was significant, and finally he said that Rick had grabbed him by the ears, pulled him close, and kissed him on the forehead. “Don’t die before we see each other again, Danny,” Rick had said. Given the hyper masculine, stoic cult of the Army that Dan and Rick had embodied, this was an extraordinarily difficult admission. Dan had never shed a tear in the hours we’d spent talking about Rick. But now I could hear Dan sobbing, and I, too, started to cry.

I could also sense there was something Susan was holding back when she described her feelings about losing Rick. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Rick was hailed as a hero, and Susan was repeatedly called upon to stand in for him and to express her gratitude. But there was something else Susan finally told me she felt and couldn’t express: her anger that Rick had chosen duty over his love for her. Rick had been out of the tower. He didn’t have to go back. He’d left her behind to face life without him. The moment she told me this I finally understood. Of course she felt this way. Rick’s choice of duty over love was the defining, heart-wrenching climax of the story.

It never occurred to me that Heart of a Soldier might be an opera until Francesca Zambello suggested the possibility. I did feel that the story had timeless, even epic qualities. Susan’s plight and her feelings reminded me of Dido in Les Troyens, whose beloved Aeneas left her behind to fulfill his destiny to found Rome. I had never had the opportunity to write a story against the backdrop of such momentous events; indeed, I hoped I never would again. But I tried not to think of such weighty themes. I thought the power of the story was best revealed through the simplest rendering of the facts.

I cried many times while writing Heart of a Soldier, and I cried in December 2010, the first time I heard Donna Di Novelli’s libretto set to Chris Theofanidis’s music. These were never tears of sadness. Rather, they were tears that something so beautiful and inspirational could have emerged from so devastating a tragedy.

Like most New Yorkers, I was at home in a state of stunned inactivity the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001 as the magnitude of the morning’s devastating attack sank in. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, called and asked if I might go to Wall Street and contribute something to that week’s issue. I was grateful to be reminded that I was a journalist, this was the biggest news of my lifetime, and maybe I had a small role to play.