Remembering a Quiet Hero

Dennis Duggan

September 22, 2001

"And I will carry this: It is the police shield of a man named George Howard, who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son."

- President George W. Bush

George Howard's mother was searching through her son's belongings just before his funeral Wednesday when she found a poem in his bureau drawer. It was titled "A Quiet Hero."

"I decided to take it to the funeral parlor and put it where people could see it," she told me yesterday from her home in Hicksville. "The poem had someone else's name in it, but I substituted George's name because all the things said in it reminded me very much of my son."

She read the poem to me:

Some men die a glorious death full of fanfare and fame

Others die so quietly we hardly know their name

It doesn't matter how they die, the void they leave is great

Steve died a quiet hero, there really is no debate ...

He saved the lives of others, snatching victory from defeat.

Arlene Howard, 77, a WAVE in World War II, said she didn't know who the Steve named in the poem was, or who had written it. She wrote "author unknown" under the poem.

"At the funeral parlor a woman I had never met approached me and said 'You don't know me, but George was a poet and he wrote that poem. He wrote it for my husband,'" Arlene Howard said.

George Howard, a Port Authority police officer who joined the force in 1985 and was assigned to work in the Emergency Services Unit at Kennedy Airport, was given a hero's funeral Wednesday and was buried in St. Charles Cemetery in East Farmingdale.

His body was pulled from the building the day of the tragedy. The Port Authority police force suffered stunning casualties with two confirmed deaths and another 35 unaccounted for.

On Thursday evening, Howard's grieving mother watched President George W. Bush speaking to the nation on television and was unprepared for his mention of her son in front of millions of Americans.

"I was startled but overjoyed and very happy," she said.

George Howard, 44 and the father of two young boys, didn't have to confront that terrible event on September 11. It was his day off. When he heard reports of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center he jumped into his truck and sped to one of the worst scenes in this nation's history.

His boss, Lt. Kevin Hassett, said yesterday that Howard was a "go-to guy." He knew everything about his job and at the end of his training had to rappel down the 300-foot-tall airport tower at Kennedy.

Howard was born in St. Albans and grew up on Long Island, along with four siblings. He graduated from Chaminade High School in Mineola where he played hockey and lacrosse.

"He was a good son, full of humor," his mother recalled. "He loved being an officer."

Arlene Howard met Bush last week at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, where he had come to meet with the families of victims.

"That's when I gave him the badge and I told him that his father had also been given an officer's badge years ago."

That was police officer Edward Byrne's badge. Byrne, a 22-year-old cop with the 103rd Precinct in South Jamaica, was shot to death by drug dealers while guarding a witness.

His father, Matthew, a police lieutenant, gave the badge to then Vice President George Bush at Christ the King High School in Middle Village. Bush, who was later elected president, vowed - as did his son Thursday night - to keep the badge forever.

Howard now lies in the same cemetery where young Byrne was buried. There is a jarring photograph on a wall a few steps from where I am writing this. It shows Byrne's parents, Matthew and Ann Byrne, walking alongside their son's coffin being carried by police officers.

It is a picture of almost unbearable sadness.