Set the table again

To the Editor:

I spent my young years on ships and my working life in firehouses. Before 27 years with the FDNY, I sailed in the merchant marine, served as a naval officer, and then piloted vessels around New York Harbor. Those places teach you things no cable news panel ever will.

The sea doesn’t care how you vote. A fire doesn’t ask where your grandparents came from. And the best meal you’ll ever eat is at a scarred firehouse table at three in the morning. You still smell of smoke, the coffee is burnt, and you’re sitting with men who just went up the stairs beside you. They’re Irish, Black, Puerto Rican, Italian, Spanish and Jewish, and nobody cares, because the job asked it of them and the city needed it.

That table is what this country is supposed to be. It isn’t pretty and it isn’t polite. It’s loud, argumentative and usually short on money, but everyone gets a seat, and everyone pulls his weight.

Politicians will always be politicians but even the ones who failed us understood something basic: the office was bigger than the man. Eisenhower earned his stars on the beaches of Normandy; he didn’t need to pose for them. Kennedy got his Purple Heart the hard way in the Pacific. When Nixon’s lies caught up with him, his own party walked him to the door, because they loved their country more than they feared him.

What we have now is something else. It’s a man who mocked a disabled reporter in front of a cheering crowd. In my firehouse, a guy who picked on the weak got set straight fast, and not by a memo. The men at the table did it. Leadership is that simple and that old.

I’ve watched the peaceful transfer of power my whole life and felt it in my chest every time, win or lose. The losers hand over the keys, and that’s the whole miracle of this country. On January 6th I watched a mob beat police officers with flagpoles inside our Capitol. As a man who wore a uniform, I have no words describing that are polite enough for this newspaper.

I’m no preacher, but I remember the part about the least of these.

People learn what they live. Lies, lies and more lies are the norm now. When this is over, and it will be over, our job is to set the table again. We need to pull up more chairs than we think we have, pour the coffee, and show our grandchildren what grown-ups look like when they put the country ahead of themselves.

Robert Gass
Calverton
Retired Battalion Chief, FDNY