Bob Beckwith, firefighter who stood tall with President Bush amid the wreckage of the twin towers – obituary
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Bob Beckwith, who has died aged 91, had retired from the New York fire service when, on September 11 2001 hijackers crashed aeroplanes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, killing 2,753 people; the next morning, after hearing that the son of a friend was missing, he donned his old uniform and inveigled his way past the security cordons to Ground Zero to help with the rescue operation.
A photograph of Beckwith taken on September 14, standing on a heap of rubble with President George W Bush, made headlines around the world, becoming a symbol of American defiance against terrorism.
On the morning of the attacks, Beckwith’s grandson had had an accident on his bike: “I drove to the hospital and everybody was watching television,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2011. “I looked up and saw the second tower come down. It felt like I was stuck in a bad dream. I told my wife: ‘I’m going down there.’ I was 69. I’d been retired seven years. My kids said, ‘Leave it to the young guys,’ but I heard on the radio that Michael Boyle, son of my friend Jimmy, was missing. I said: ‘I gotta go find this kid.’
“I went down the next morning, dressed in my old uniform. There was a ring of cops and a ring of National Guard. I had to persuade both to let me through.”
The sight that greeted him reminded him of the London Blitz. He joined a “bucket brigade” of workers, carrying buckets from the debris, including everything from paper to body parts. “As a fireman I’d come across them before, but there were 3,000 people dead here, so that’s a lot of body parts.”
On the morning of September 14 he heard that the president was coming, so he mounted a burnt-out fire truck to get a good view: “Then this guy comes over and says, ‘Is this safe?’ I thought he was a Secret Service guy. I said it was. He said: ‘Show me – jump up and down on it.’ So I did. Then the president comes by... He puts his arm up and I pull him up with me. I said, ‘You OK, Mr President?’, and he said he was fine and as I start to get down, he says, ‘Where are you going?’, and put his arm around me.”
Someone thrust a megaphone into Bush’s hand, and he embarked the speech he had been making since the attacks occurred: “America today is on bended knee in prayer...” But when someone in the crowd shouted “Can’t hear you!”, he abandoned his text. “Well, I can hear you !” he shouted: “The rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” The rest of his words were drowned out by chants of “USA! USA!”
“It was a terrific moment,” Beckwith recalled. “A few minutes later, the guy I thought was Secret Service gave me an American flag. It turned out he was Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s adviser. After that, I just went back to work.”
Beckwith did not realise there had been cameras present, but when he arrived home “people were coming out of their houses with candles, coming over to my driveway. The kid across the street said: ‘Beck, you were on television!’ I said: ‘Get out of here!’ ”
As his image was beamed around the world, “the phone started ringing but I didn’t want any part of it... Eventually a friend said: ‘If you don’t tell your story, somebody else is going to tell your story. And who knows it better than you?’ That rang a bell in my head.”
This exposure led to media attention and interviews. Beckwith later met President Bush several times, spoke extensively in public, and acted as a fundraiser for the New York Burns Center.
“It was the most important moment of my life,” he told the Telegraph, “But I still like to keep a low profile.”
Robert Beckwith was born on April 16 1932, in Queens, New York, to Thomas Beckwith, an electrician, and Cecilia, née McHugh, a telephone operator. After serving in the Navy in the 1950s he joined the New York Fire Department, serving for 30 years at fire stations in Queens.
After his encounter with President Bush, he and his wife were invited to dinner at the White House. “He is really a good guy, Beckwith told the Telegraph. “I won’t say if I voted for him, all I’ll say is in New York, you’re raised a Democrat.”
But in 2011, when Osama Bin Laden was killed by a team of US navy Seals, Beckwith welcomed the news, but added “ I would have liked it to be on George Bush’s watch.”
He remained haunted by the events of 9/11: “Each day I say a little prayer because of the kids that didn’t make it: 343 firemen, 227 cops. All gone.”
Beckwith is survived by his wife Barbara and by three sons and a daughter. Two other sons predeceased him.
Bob Beckwith, born September 21 1932, died February 4 2024
