It has been 23 years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Yet, even after 23 years, I continue to be amazed at the heroism contained in the largely untold stories of people who did what had to be done on that day.
I recently learned about the Great Boatlift of 9/11. It had never occurred to me before that after the airplanes hit the Twin Towers, Manhattan was shut down. As the title implies, Manhattan is an island, and with the bridges shut down by police, there was no way for people to get off the island. More than 500,000 people were stranded, and their only hope of escaping Manhattan was to leave by boat. Over the course of nine hours, both public and private boats carried people off the island in what became an even larger rescue mission than Operation Dynamo, the British operation that rescued nearly 350,000 stranded British and French soldiers trapped at Dunkirk during World War II.
It’s an amazing story that was told in the documentary Boatlift: An Untold Tale of 9/11 Resilience, narrated by Tom Hanks. It’s only 12 minutes long, but it’s a powerful reminder of how everyday people, when called upon, can do heroic things.
