INSIGHT
World Trade Center Clean-Up Comes to Close
Gary Suson, Official Ground Zero Photographer, Uniformed Firefighters Association (FDNY)
Feature Story (5 minutes) Colleen McEdwards, INSIGHT & PAULA ZAHN, American Morning
Aired May 30, 2002 - 17:00:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MCEDWARDS (voice-over): There were 343 New York firemen who lost their lives on September 11th, more than 10 percent of the victims that day. To say their surviving colleagues were protective of Ground Zero would be a major understatement.

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(on camera): Welcome back.

When the city tried to scale back their presence at the site, they literally came to blows with the police officers who tried to remove them.

So when a person with a camera came around, let's just say they didn't lay out the welcome mat.

Photographer Gary Marlon Suson gained their trust, though, little by little, after the attacks.

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GARY SUSON, OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPHER: I began chronicling the early days of Ground Zero in September, because artists can't go down in to the hole and dig; Artists do what they do best--They contribute through their emotional talents. (begin images)

And so like any artist, I wanted to contribute. I just wanted to tell the story of 9/11, but at the same time, I was extremely upset. I was really -- I was very distraught. So I kind of buried myself in the camera. And it was a nice place to hide for a while, you know, to try and disappear.

I've been shooting photography since age 13. Originally what I loved shooting were people. I loved capturing emotion in people. And I got down into that hole, it was like a hotbed of human emotion, pain, brotherhood, togetherness, and people working together with a common goal to bring people home. I respect the firemen more than they will ever know.

Imagine going down there every day and raking through the mud and the dirt, looking for any sign of your loved one?

It was a really cold night in January when I saw these two firemen digging. They were all alone, and I said to them aren't you going to go do dinner, and they said no, we're looking for our brother.

A New York City firemen showed up at Ground Zero, and it just so happened that his son-in-law is a New York City police officer, and he approached his son-in-law and he said, "Are they making any recoveries today?" His son-in-law said, "Actually, I think we have your son." And he marched his son out along with son-in-law. It was a very emotional moment.

What's great about these guys, the police and the firemen, is they never forget, they never forget where they are. And they are very gentle and sensitive to what they are doing.

This firemen could have sat in the comfortable mud, but he made like a little La-Z-Boy recliner out of the different wires, and it captures to me the humbleness of the firemen.

It was early morning, about 7:00 in the morning, and I saw Chief Riches standing on a ridge overlooking Ground Zero, and I knew that obviously he was looking for his son.

The irony to this photograph is that three weeks after this photograph, they found his son, and they found his son directly underneath where he's standing in the photograph.

A lot of the things that I saw down at Ground Zero took my breath away. They were symbolic things. A plug-in clock, which was stuck at 10:02 and 14 seconds, which is when the very first tower came down. It upset me. It was emotional to see it, because so much life stopped at 10:02 and 14 seconds.

I was walking in the path controllers room. The room was completely destroyed. But there was a calendar on the floor, and it said today is Tuesday, September 11th.

I saw a lot of things that I didn't --(pause) they bothered me, and I was considering packing it in. So it was right around then that I found this Bible page in the rubble. And I took a picture of it.

So the next day I got the proofs back and I just lost it, because the verse was Genesis 11, the tower of Babylon. I looked at the symbolism of the 11 and the tower, and I took that as a positive message and a positive sign that there's a higher power, God was watching down on both the people when they passed away (pause)---and then the recovery.

This is the honor guard. That's where the firemen is covered in a flag and marched out by their brothers from the fire department, and they allowed me to walk with them, so it was very special for me.

When I saw the things down there, I would go home at night and I'd cry. A lot of the things that made me cry are in these images, and so I tried to shoot them in the most tasteful, respectful way. But I shot them in a way that got to my heart. And if it got to my heart, odds are it will get to other people's heart.

If you can't connect you can't heal, so I am hoping that these images will serve that purpose.

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MCEDWARDS: And that's INSIGHT. I'm Colleen McEdwards.

END

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