Rick Rescorla: Led thousands to safety on 9/11



Studying and emulating the lives of great men is a useful practice with a long history. Our culture, however, tends to promote celebrities, self-improvement gurus, and politicians.

Although no such luminaries proved of much use during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many “ordinary” people found it within themselves to act with stunning courage and determination.

The story of Rick Rescorla offers an especially poignant lesson for these times, involving as it does the triumph of individual know-how, experience, and common sense over bureaucratic “expertise.”

While serving as a platoon leader in the Vietnam War, the British-born Rescorla calmed his troops by singing to them. Years later, he employed the same tactic while helping evacuate the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Twenty-three years on, it’s clear just how woefully unprepared our leaders were for 9/11. Rescorla, on the other hand, was ready.

Even before he became head of corporate security for Morgan Stanley, he had long warned anyone who would listen of the Twin Towers’ vulnerability to attack. When American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower, the Port Authority ordered Rescorla to keep everyone at their desks.

His response, given his somewhat more intimate view of the unfolding crisis, was appropriately blunt: “Piss off.” The evacuation plan he’d insisted all employees rehearse through countless surprise drills went smoothly. His defiance saved some 2,700 lives.

Having led his charges at Morgan Stanley to safety, Rescorla went back into the building in search of more people to help. He was last seen on the 10th floor. He had never been comfortable calling attention to his wartime deeds, for which he was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. "The real heroes are dead," he would say. When the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., Rescorla joined their ranks.

Jerry Lewis: curious, risk-taking craftsman



Very few people have seen Jerry Lewis' “The Day the Clown Cried."

This hasn't kept the never-released 1972 film — in which Lewis directs himself as an alcoholic circus clown in Auschwitz who finds redemption entertaining children on their way to the gas chambers — from becoming an inside joke among cineastes and comedy nerds. The sheer, misguided hubris of such an undertaking fits perfectly with our image of late-period Lewis: the maudlin telethon host; the obnoxious, out-of-touch elder statesman; the egocentric self-mythologizer.

And yet as critic Richard Brody points out, the Holocaust as we now know it was rarely discussed in the early 1970s. The term itself had yet to come into widespread use. Long before Claude Lanzmann or Steven Spielberg or Roberto Benigni (whose “Life Is Beautiful” won two Academy Awards with a similar premise), Lewis “went where other directors didn't dare to go, taking on the horrific core of modern history and confronting its horrors.”

Lewis was always one to take big swings. In 1960 he launched his career as a director by producing, writing, directing, and starring in “The Bellboy,” a plotless tribute to comedies of the silent era that Paramount was nervous would be a flop. Audiences loved it.

Lewis continued to push himself as a filmmaker, not only with his unforgettable performances and stunning set pieces, but also with his technical mastery. Insatiably curious, Lewis prided himself on knowing every member of his crew and understanding just what they did. This led to innovation: Lewis developed and was the first to use the now-ubiquitous video assist.

Long before he became a legend, Lewis thought of himself as “the total filmmaker.” In his 1971 book of the same name, he is frank that his intense, all-in approach comes at a cost.

It is often torture when you have complete personal control. … Eventually, you may beg not to have autonomy so that the morons can pass judgment. You can lie back and bleed, whimpering safely, "Look what they did to me."

Whatever his artistic failures and personal foibles, it is to Lewis' credit that he never succumbed to this temptation.

Bill W.: Alcoholic who helped himself by helping others



The man known as Bill W. took a liking to drinking as a young artillery officer in the Vermont National Guard. Finally, a cure for his crippling shyness. “I had found the elixir of life,” he later wrote.

His initial delight soon became an ungovernable obsession, even as he married, served in World War I, and attended law school (too drunk to pick up his diploma, he failed to graduate). Modest success as a stockbroker followed, interrupted by regular hospitalizations for alcohol addiction. Eventually, the threat of professional ruin and imminent death motivated him to become sober for short periods of time, always ending in relapse.

During one such period in 1935, a failed business trip to Akron left Bill with the overwhelming urge to head directly to the hotel bar. Desperate to keep his sobriety, Bill decided his only hope was to speak to another alcoholic. He called a local church and was eventually put in touch with a surgeon and fellow drunk today remembered as Dr. Bob. The two met, and soon formed a friendship that led them both to lasting sobriety.

This simple process of helping oneself by helping another became the template for Alcoholics Anonymous, a grassroots, free-of-charge, decentralized fellowship that declined to demonize alcohol and maintained only one requirement for membership: the sincere desire to stop drinking.

Almost 90 years later, millions of alcoholics around the world have found in AA's clear, unyielding principles the key to recovery and the source of deep, unwavering serenity. As Bill W. himself put it:

"Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity, or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine."

James Stockdale: POW who knew the power of facing 'brutal facts'



Eight presidential contests ago, when another upstart businessman was making a run at the White House, America was briefly introduced to James Stockdale. He did not make a good impression.

Stockdale was an old friend of independent candidate Ross Perot, who asked him to be his running mate. Stockdale obliged and then was more or less left on his own. He didn't know he was going to be at the vice presidential debate until a week beforehand; he and Perot never had a conversation to talk about their political positions.

Stockdale began the debate with a pair of rhetorical questions: "Who am I? Why am I here?" Unfortunately, he never got the chance to answer them to anyone's satisfaction. The proto-viral moment became a joke about a befuddled old man thrust onto the national stage. At one point, Stockdale missed a question because his hearing aid wasn't turned up.

Who was Stockdale? It's a sad irony that he had a background far more compelling than that of his opponents, Dan Quayle and Al Gore. A Navy vice admiral and fighter pilot, Stockdale was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965; he subsequently spent more than seven years in the notorious Hoa Lo Prison, otherwise known as the "Hanoi Hilton."

As the highest-ranking naval POW, Stockdale created a code of conduct for his fellow prisoners, summarized by the acronym BACK US: don't Bow, stay off the Air, admit no Crimes, never Kiss them goodbye, and Unity over Self. By helping the prisoners summon the will to resist aiding the enemy under torture, it also had the effect of boosting their morale by giving them a sense of dignity and purpose.

Perhaps nobody was more scrupulous about adhering to the code than Stockdale himself, who spent extended periods of time in solitary confinement and in leg irons, while enduring beatings, malnourishment, and the denial of medical care. When his captors informed him that he was to make an appearance on television as an example of how well the POWs were being treated, Stockdale beat himself in the face with a stool and slashed his scalp with a razor.

We all know the importance of keeping a positive attitude in a crisis. But optimism can destroy you as well. In an interview with writer Jim Collins, Stockdale noted that the first of his fellow prisoners to break were the optimists — those who persisted in believing their rescue was imminent, until they suffered one disappointment too many. Nor did those who succumbed to total despair survive.

The key, according to Stockdale, was to find a middle way: "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Some brutal facts we might confront, based on the last few years: Our leaders don't have our best interests at heart; our media seeks to inflame rather than inform; and our national institutions are increasingly dysfunctional.

In other words, help is not on the way. This would seem vital to remember, especially during this presidential election season. A Trump victory is indeed the best outcome we can hope for, but we should also be prepared for defeat. We should do what we can to support a victory without dissipating our energy on what's beyond our control.

That energy is better spent strengthening ourselves, our families, and our communities. Ultimately, the truest answers to the two questions Stockdale posed so long ago will always be found closest to home.

Frederick Douglass: American patriot



In 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to give a 4th of July speech in his hometown of Rochester, New York. After praising the framers of the Constitution and the nation they established, Douglass turned to the cruel hypocrisy of commemorating American independence while millions remained in the bondage he had only recently escaped, pointedly addressing white Americans in the second person:

"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? ... To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; ... There is not a nation on the Earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."

If anyone had reason to condemn America as irredeemably lost, it would be a man like Douglass, legally reduced to chattel for the first 20 years of his life. And yet Douglass ended his speech with a stirring affirmation of faith in “the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions.”

He had the wisdom to distinguish the lasting ideals of the founders from the human wickedness that had perverted them. For Douglass, these ideals remained worth protecting; indeed, they are what allowed him to hope that his abolitionist cause would soon triumph.

Ten years later, as the American Civil War raged, Douglass gave another 4th of July speech. This time, he used the third person plural, aligning himself with both his countrymen and the Founding Fathers and describing the Union effort as “continuing the tremendous struggle, which your fathers and my fathers began eighty six years ago.”

Douglass had urged President Lincoln to let black soldiers fight for the Union since the war began. When the 1863 signing of the Emancipation Proclamation permitted this, two of Douglass' sons were among the 200,000 black Americans who enlisted.

In a little less than two years, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding. As we contemplate that milestone from this particularly volatile moment in our history, may we ponder what divides us and, like Douglass, strive to discern the unity it conceals.

Jim Rice: Press-shy Hall of Famer who helped out a fan



Jim Rice never did like talking to the press. During his 15-year career (all of it spent with the Boston Red Sox) the power-hitting left fielder preferred to keep his head down and do his job. It wasn't so much that reporters asked questions as it was the kind of questions they asked.

"This was a very private guy from a small town in South Carolina who just wanted to play ball," retired Boston Herald sportswriter Joe Giuliotti told the New York Times in 2003. "At a time when he was the only black player on the team, he made it known that he was not getting into the black-white issues, but when he said he didn't want to talk about it, writers just kept coming after him.''

Rice's chilly, taciturn nature didn't endear him to the journalists who covered him — would it kill him to chat a bit after the game?

These same journalists would have their revenge once Rice became eligible for the Hall of Fame in 1994. Baseball writers decide which players get this honor; Rice didn't make it in until his 15th and final year of eligibility.

"Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played," reads the Hall of Fame election rules. It's certainly feasible that sportswriters dinged Rice for not being an easy interview.

But if character counts, then an incident at Fenway Park 42 years ago this August 7 should've made Rice a shoo-in. The Red Sox were hosting the White Sox; Tom Keane was taking in the game two rows above the Red Sox dugout with his 4-year-old son Jonathan and his 2-year-old brother. Red Sox second baseman Dave Stapleton hit a foul that rocketed toward the family, hitting Jonathan square in the face.

As blood gushed from the screaming boy's forehead and people called for help, Rice jumped into the stands and grabbed Jonathan, cradling him in his arms as he rushed him to the dugout, where the Sox team doctor was waiting to rush him to the hospital.

Jonathan's skull was fractured, and he was unresponsive. But after emergency surgery and five days in Boston's Children's Hospital, he made a full recovery. To this day, both Jonathan and his father credit Rice with saving Jonathan's life.

As usual, Rice didn't want to make a big fuss about it. "If it was your kid, what would you do?” he said. “The baby was crying and there was a lot of blood. I think he was more in shock than anything.” Spoken like a true team player.

Ambroise Paré: Father of modern surgery



Like a surgeon, a barber must have steady hands, a light touch with sharp instruments, and the trust of his clients. The similarities are less surprising with the realization that, prior to the 18th century, these two professions were one and the same.

French barber-surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) found it impossible to master Latin, which ruled out the more prestigious and lucrative career of physician. While these practitioners seldom deigned to soil themselves with blood and other bodily fluids, barber-surgeons were expected to handle everything from beard trimming and boil lancing to amputations and delivering babies.

After an apprenticeship in a Paris hospital, Paré joined the military, where he practiced his craft with diligence and humility. Of one officer he treated, Paré wrote, “I bandaged him and God healed him.”

It was perhaps this humility that allowed Paré to find novel solutions that his more learned peers overlooked. The common treatment for bullet wounds at the time was to cauterize them with boiling oil, a procedure that caused inflammation and fever. When Paré ran out of medical supplies, including oil, during the Siege of Turin, he was forced to improvise with a mixture of egg yolk, rose oil, and turpentine. He was happily surprised to see that the men treated in this way recovered much more easily. “See how I learned to treat gunshot wounds,” Paré wrote, “not by books.”

Extensive battlefield experience also led Paré to desig the surgical clamp — to this day one of the greatest technological advancements in medical history. In his relentless pursuit of innovation, Pare also pioneered post-surgical care and pain relief, never losing sight of the dignity of the individual men and women he was committed to serve. In this respect, at least, the father of surgery remains far more advanced than many of our own modern medical professionals.

Jimmy Carter: A model of dignified retirement



"You know Jimmy Carter only served one term he could run again," posted one wag on X after Joe Biden's dismal debate performance Thursday night. It's a decent joke and also a good excuse to reconsider the legacy of our longest-lived president.

In "The Simpsons" fourth-season episode “Marge in Chains,” Mayor Quimby unveils a statue of Jimmy Carter in Springfield's town square. “He's history's greatest monster!" shouts an outraged onlooker, and a riot ensues.

Substitute any other recent U.S. president, and the joke wouldn't land nearly as well. Obama, Bush, Reagan, Clinton, the bad Orange Man: It's easy to imagine any of these men inspiring such passion. But Jimmy Carter?

One reason for this is that his one-term presidency is widely regarded — fairly or not — as ineffective. Another reason, however, is the dignity and integrity with which he has lived his post-White House life. In the more than 30 years since that episode first aired, it is this that has come to define his legacy.

Until February 2023, when he entered hospice, Carter lived with his wife, Rosalynn, in Plains, Georgia, in the modest, two-bedroom ranch house he built himself in 1961. Five months later, they celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary (another presidential record, beating George and Barbara Bush by four years); Rosalynn died in November. Well into his 90s, Carter still wielded a hammer when helping build houses for Habitat for Humanity, with which he has been a forceful yet self-effacing advocate for affordable housing for almost four decades. The rest of his time, he spent on diplomacy and writing books. He will turn 100 in October.

Compared to his successors, who have parlayed their Oval Office stints into influence-enhancing foundation work, lucrative board memberships, and lavish media deals (not to mention impressive real-estate portfolios), Carter has clearly left a lot of money on the table. Bad business, perhaps; but also a powerful testament to the vanishing idea that, even in 2024 America, some things just aren't for sale.

Louis Pasteur: Man of science who tamed rabies



A little over three years ago, Anthony Fauci went on MSNBC to address critics of his COVID policies. What made the attacks on him especially "dangerous," the doctor cautioned, was that they were actually "attacks on science."

These days, of course, Fauci is eager to distance himself from the dubious "science" he once championed, be it public mask mandates, school shutdowns, or confident statements that the virus did not originate from a lab leak. It should be clear by now — if it wasn't before — that "science" is just as susceptible to superstition and groupthink as any human endeavor. Contradicting conventional wisdom can entail real risk.

Had his rabies vaccine not worked on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, French microbiologist Louis Pasteur could very well have ended his career in disgrace and in prison. Not only did Pasteur have no proof that his vaccine would work on humans, he had no medical license allowing him to administer it.

By that point in his career, Pasteur was already quite successful and had no reason to rush development on his cure for rabies. In the 1860s, he had disproved the conventional wisdom that illness and pests who spread it arose spontaneously from nonliving matter by showing that invisible bacteria were to blame. Identifying the enemy allowed the development of effective ways to stop it: among them the well-known process of destroying microbes in beer and milk that takes Pasteur's name. He also pioneered the process of artificially weakening bacilli in order to use them in vaccines.

But the boy's mother was desperate for any chance at saving her son from a hideously painful death. For some idea of what he faced, we can turn to this contemporary case study:

On the 17th of June, 1981 an Englishwoman traveling in India was bitten on the leg by a dog. The wound was immediately cleansed by her husband using whisky as an antiseptic. She later attended a local clinic where the wound was again washed and packed with antiseptic powder. The woman returned to England in July and the wound was redressed in her local hospital. By the middle of August she became constantly tired and complained of aches and shooting pains in the back. She was anxious and depressed, and appeared to catch her breath when trying to drink. By the 19th of August she found it impossible to drink more than a few sips. She could not bear the touch of the wind or her hair on her face and had moments of apparent terror. The following day she was confused, hallucinating, incontinent of urine and quite unable to eat or drink. For the next two days she was intermittently hallucinating and screaming with terror until she collapsed and had a cardiac arrest. Although she was resuscitated in the ambulance whilst being carried to intensive care, she died two days later, on 24th of August 1981, without recovering consciousness.

So, Pasteur summoned some medical colleagues and proceeded to put his reputation on the line. As he wrote in his notebook: “The child’s death appeared inevitable. I decided not without acute and harrowing anxiety, as may be imagined, to apply to Joseph Meister the method which I had found consistently successful with dogs.”

Whatever mixture of charity and ambition prompted Pasteur to make this audacious bet, it paid off. Meister fully recovered and lived into his 60s, and rabies was no longer a death sentence.

Rob Konrad: Former Dolphin who swam for his family



In 2005, former Miami Dolphin Rob Konrad was fishing alone nine miles off the Florida coast when a wave knocked him overboard. He wasn't wearing a life preserver in 72-degree water — certainly cold enough to become a problem after a few hours. When he couldn't catch his boat (cruising east on autopilot at five mph), he decided to swim west until he reached land.

Sixteen hours later, he crawled on the sand at West Palm Beach, half-dead from hypothermia, dehydration, and rhabdomyolysis. He had swum 27 miles through the night, enduring jellyfish stings, a menacing shark, and two heartbreaking near-rescues.

Although relatively young at 38 and in excellent shape, Konrad was not an especially experienced swimmer. So, how did he manage this superhuman feat?

At the time, endurance swimmer Diana Nyad chalked it up to mindset:

"We're not really talking about a swimming story. We're talking about a survival story. I'm sure his background as an athlete — toughness, having resolve, knowing things are going to be painful — were the saving grace for him."

Konrad also had something else driving him:

“I have two beautiful daughters,” he said, his wife, Tammy, by his side as he spoke to reporters a few days later. “I was hitting that shore.”

We're all adrift, floating on the vast, unfathomable sea of existence, our only choice what to cling to. Becoming a family man might not save your life, as it seems to have saved Konrad's, but it could make it worth saving.

It also helps to have some solid swim training. Two-thirds of American adults cannot swim the length of a 25-yard pool.

The late Terry Laughlin's innovation was to understand this not as a lack of fitness, but as a lack of skill. His Total Immersion swimming program teaches swimmers of all levels to swim with efficiency and ease. Tim Ferriss offers a particularly detailed and grateful review here. Seventy-one percent of the Earth is covered by water; best to be prepared should you encounter some.