Dreher remembers:
I remember going to a fire station in Brooklyn Heights…not far from where we lived at the time, to pay our respects to the surviving firefighters and the widows of those eight from the station who died. This was a day or two after 9/11. There we saw a young couple from the Heights walk up with a dish of baked ziti to give to the firefighters and the widows. The man's eyes were bandaged. He explained to me that when the first tower collapsed, he was nearby, and the pulverized glass abraded his eyes. He was functionally blind. A perfect stranger took him by the arm and led him, step by step, across the Brooklyn Bridge, through the streets of the Heights, up the stairs to his apartment, and into his bed. And he never got the stranger's name. He said that bringing food to the fire station was his way of paying back that good deed. That kind of thing happened a lot.
More throughts from Dreher here.
The Dish 