They called them the PTA ladies.
They weren't actually in the PTA. There wasn't, actually, a PTA to belong to. It was a PTC or something like that in their kids' school. But, they were 40-ish and had deadlines to meet to pick up kids, so to the firemen to whom they brought baked good and lunches for a year after 9-11, they were PTA ladies.
The firehouse on Duane Street in Tribeca was the closest to the site still open. Engine 7, the Magnificent 7, Lucky 7.
Its big bays lead into a spacious kitchen and behind that are two rooms with tattered couches, a big table and a television near one wall. Up metal stairs, the firefighters sleep between shifts.
Proximity and size of the old Engine House made Engine 7 a gathering place in the sad days after.
Two female cops selling t-shirts for a fundraiser stand near one of the dusty memorials that appeared sporadically on the gritty sidewalks. Fire marshals walked over at lunchtime from the impromptu morgue set up at City Hall. Out-of-town firemen would stop in looking for a meal and a shower and some sleep after driving all night to see if they could help. Or to attend a funeral.
A Japanese TV crew, led by a slender girl carrying a mic asked awkward questions through a nervous interpreter.
And, the "PTA ladies" brought lasagna and good bread and homemade brownies and motherly smiles.
The leader of the group was Dawn Nordstrom who jumped in her Ford truck a few days after the planes hit with her daughter Kim and drove to Lower Manhattan because there had to be something they could do. They found their mission on Duane Street.
Country people bring food when someone dies.
Dawn made phone calls and her friends made phone calls and announcements in church and soccer coaches and costume designers and hair dressers jumped in their station wagons and vans and compact cars with someone riding shotgun to make sure nothing spilled and often with babies in the car seat in back.
Fueled by Dunkin Donuts's coffee -- these were not Starbucks suburbanites -- they drove down Route 80 and cut over to whichever tunnel was moving less slowly on the particular day, entertaining toddlers with Sesame Street tapes as state troopers pulled boxes our of panel trucks and German Shepherds smiffed the shoes of unhappy drivers.
Once in The City, it wasn't ever clear which avenue to take into the gridless labyrinth that is un-numbered Manhattan. Streets were closed haphazardly to accommodate the search, and , later, the clean-up. Cops from precincts in The Bronx or Queens pointed randomly down one-way streets and shrugged, accepting brownies and smiling sheepishly.
Squeezing around delivery vans and edging past bicycle messengers, the PTA ladies navigated the blocks below Canal, still smoking and choked with a smell of charred sheetrock and concrete. The smell of death. A smell they would never forget.
The firemen sneaked them into semi-legal parking psaces and greeted their new favorite aunts with hugs and smiles. With not much to smile about, they cheered as Dawn's 1-year-old, Tucker, climbed onto the engines. Tucker would celebrate his 2nd birthday, Sept. 10, 2002, at the firehouse.
In the kitchen, the "ladies" turned the big ovens to warm, spread out plates and tossed salads. One day, a serious fire marshal remembered he and his colleagues were supposed to be at the heliport to greet the Vice President. But, there were two Italian ladies in the kitchen with vegetarian lasagna. Dick Cheney or veggie lasagna? No contest.
Leaving in the afternoon, the PTA ladies noticed an eerie streak of sunlight streaming unfettered up Chambers Street.
Finally, as things moved back to something resembling normal, the trips to the city waned and the firemen began working out harder to burn off the pounds provided by pasta and baked goods.
But they wouldn't forget their benefactors who would never forget their boys at the firehouse on Duane Street.
