God's Gifts - Teacher offers students chance to thank heroes

By Kenny Keane, Globe staff reporter
Posted November 21, 2002

Vikings' season-ticket holders Tim O'Neill and his brother traveled on Oct. 21 to New York to see their Minnesota team take on the New York Jets. Had that been their only reason for the trip, it would have been disappointing since the Vikings lost 20-7. Fortunately, there was a brighter side to this venture.

O'Neill teaches the eighth-grade health class at Sacred Heart School in Sioux City, and this year, on Sept. 11, the topic for the class related to what had taken place the year before. During that class, he proposed to his students the idea of writing letters to the firefighters from New York.

"I had told the kids that I was planning a visit out there," he said. "Knowing that I was going out there, I knew I could deliver them. We could find a ladder house where we could personally deliver them."

He said that he and his brother attended Mass in the morning at St. Patrick's Cathedral and then parked near "Ground Zero," where they took some time to visit the site before discovering Ladder 10 located in lower Manhattan.

"Outside there was a firefighter in their truck, and it was a great opportunity," O'Neill said. "I walked up and introduced myself, and I told him I represented the students. I just had a nice conversation with him."

O'Neill said his biggest concern was that maybe the firefighters had already received too much of these types of letters, but he said that wasn't the feeling he got from his conversation.

"I didn't know if they had ever felt overwhelmed by people supporting them," he said. "I didn't want it to be a generic thing where they would just say, 'Well, it's just another token of appreciation.' He was real sincere about it.

"He was just a typical blue-collar, down-to-earth hero. We talked a little football. He was a big Jets' fan, too. He opened up the pack and read two of the letters, and I think he was very glad. He was going to take them into the house and share them with his colleagues."

When this idea struck him, the health teacher said he thought it would be healthy, no pun intended, being the one-year anniversary, for the kids to discuss Sept. 11 and to bring out some of their thoughts and feelings about what happened a year ago.

After their discussion of the topic during class on Sept. 11, the students, on a voluntary basis, had one week to complete their letters. O'Neill said the neat thing he noticed in reading their letters is that they were all unique.

"The students didn't look at each other's paper or didn't collaborate with anyone else," he said. "They all spent time, and they were well thought out. For eighth-grade students, they just did an exceptional job writing them - putting a lot of thought into their letters."

One of his students, Christie Simon, said her seventh-grade class did a similar project last year the day after Sept. 11.

"We just wrote an essay about how we felt," she said. "When we got this one, I realized that I had some time to think about it. So I wrote down more than I did last time.

"I said that they had to be really brave to be able to go out there and risk their live for other people. I was kind of scared because my parents work at the guard, and I was afraid that they might have to go."

Chris Smith, another eighth-grader in O'Neill's class, said he thought it was a good idea because the firefighters did all that work, and then they have a school from another state writing to them.

"I thanked them for all the hard work that they did," Smith said. "They didn't have to do it, but they did it anyway."

Smith said he was also pleased that his teacher showed the class pictures from the trip showing him delivering the letters. From that, he said they really knew that the firefighters were going to see their letters and read what they had to share with them.

Showing gratitude for the acts of these firefighters was the most important reason to write the letters, according to Alexis Wright, who also volunteered to write a letter.

"Even though they probably get a lot of letters, I still thought it was important that they got a letter from me because it really meant a lot to me," she said. "They risked their lives every day just to save people that they don't even know. It really matters when people from halfway across the country show how much it meant to them with what they did for other people that they didn't know."

Just as the thoughts expressed by the students in their letters were unique, O'Neill said the events of Sept. 11 affected everyone in a different way. It struck close to home for O'Neill.

Another brother who is a pilot for American Airlines was in the air that day. O'Neill had just spoken the night before with his brother, who was in San Francisco preparing for an early morning flight across the country to St. Louis.

"He was in the air that morning, and at that time, it seemed like anything was possible. I know that there were a lot of planes that they had said could have possibly been targets," O'Neill said. "So for a few hours, I wasn't sure of my brother's safety and finally heard from him around noon. Just like everybody else, I remember that day."

In a small way, he thought writing the letters to these firefighters would be a way that his students could help.

"I think it had a lasting impact on everyone," O'Neill said. "I think the students should be recognized for the great thing they did."