In the days immediately following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, a 77-year-old man from Teaneck, New Jersey, tried repeatedly to cross the George Washington Bridge. He was turned away. But he tried again, and again, until finally police and military personnel waved him through, and soon enough, he was among those thousands who were putting their lives at risk in what proved to be a vain attempt to find and rescue survivors in the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers.

The man from Teaneck knew something about rescues, about building collapses, and about fires. Reginald Julius had joined the Fire Department of New York in 1949 after giving up a job as a letter carrier for the Post Office. His motivation was simple: The Post Office job paid $2,400 a year; the Fire Department paid $3,000. “No decision necessary,” he would say many years later. Julius went on to serve in the FDNY until the late 1980s, when he retired as chief of the Twelfth Battalion, which covers parts of northern Manhattan. As with so many other firefighters around the country—from the largest paid department to the smallest volunteer organization—Reginald Julius’s “retirement” from the fire service simply meant an end to collecting full-time pay. Although he moved to suburban New Jersey, he stayed in touch with colleagues (like his brother, Vincent Julius, a retired FDNY captain), regularly visited firehouses, and kept up with the latest developments in fire science.

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