A blind man and his dog offer comfort and guidance as they escape from the North Tower on 9/11.
Now That Should Be A Movie
Hello and thank you for reading today’s post of That Should Be A Movie. Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero by Michael Hingson with Susy Flor, from Thomas Nelson.
Michael wasn’t born blind, but he was born fifty-nine days early. It was due to the medical procedure of placing premature babies in sealed incubators and pumping them full of oxygen that he lost his eyesight. He was one of more than ten thousand premature babies that were blinded by this medical procedure between the early nineteen forties and early fifties. Despite this tragedy his parents chose to encourage and raise him as if he was any other boy. Michael learned to rely on his other four senses as he ran around the house and even rode his bike on the suburban street. One sense he learned to pay reliance on was his sense of feeling. He developed this sense to the point that he could feel objects in front of him and avoid them.
Michael’s story highlights the struggle of the blind in America. He was involved in the legal battle to allow dogs in schools and public transportation. He explains that the high unemployment rate among the visually impaired is due to a lack of public awareness of the wide range of skills and talents that the blind possess. He also stresses that being blind is way down his list of what he identifies as and how he things of himself as an independent, capable person. The worst thing you can do to a blind person is patronize them with special treatment when they have not asked for help.
Thunder Dog also highlights the life of a guide dog. It takes years to train puppies from birth and then their careers can be cut short by injury or sickness. It delves in the relationship between the blind and their dog, how the blind must have control but trust the dog. Michael recalls one guide dog that would always walk him into mailboxes until he learned to jerk on the lease every time he felt the presence of a mailbox nearby.
The ultimate test of this trust between Michael and his eleventh guide dog, Roselle, comes on September 11, 2001 when American Airlines Flight 11 is flown into the 94th and 98th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Michael is on the seventy-eight floor, where he works as a sales representative for Quantum/ATL, a Fortune 500 company. He is just fifteen floors below the site of impact. He hears the boom and then paper and debris brushing the window behind him. Then he can feel the building tilting twenty feet and hears ceiling tiles falling. He is afraid he is going to die but stops worrying when he sees how calmly Roselle, who is afraid of thunder, is behaving. If he was in really danger, she would be panicking. He, a friend named David Frank, and thirty other people decide to evacuate. Before leaving, Michael calls his wife, Karen, to assure her that he is okay.
Michael chooses to trust Roselle as she leads him and the other people down one thousand, four hundred sixty-three steps of the North Tower’s stairwell. In the concrete stairwell no one has cell service, but Michael, a frequent flyer, smells something he recognizes from airports, jet fuel. He says out loud that a plane has hit the building. He hears someone yell “Burn victims coming through” and can feel people rushing past him. His friend David describes the victims to him. A woman stops walking and starts to have a panic attack. Roselle’s training kicks in. She nudges the woman, who pets her, calming down.
David calls out each floor number as they continue to descend. At each floor, more people join the throng. At one-point Michael can feel his throat becoming scorched, but since Roselle is calm, he realizes the fire has not spread down the stairwell. He counts the stairs to fight boredom. Ten stairs, then a landing, then nine stairs, then a landing, then ten stairs. The lights flicker and he is afraid the power will go out, plunging everyone into equal darkness. “Don’t anybody worry. Roselle and I are giving a half-price special to get you out of here if the lights go out,” he says. This lightened the mood.
Even though temperatures in the stairwell are rising, the shared anxiety and fear of the group creates a team. People began joking about having to lose weight, having a heavy dessert at the end of the day and never wanting to see another staircase in their life. Someone broke open a vending machine and water bottles were passed out among the group. Michael let Roselle lick the brim of one of the bottles.
He hears firemen rushing past him up the stairs. They meet the tired and sweaty first responders on the 30th floor. One fireman stops and pets Roselle and offers Michael help. Michael, knowing that the firefighters are not even halfway to the fire that needs fighting, insisted that he was okay. This caught the fireman off guard, since he was use to people obeying his orders. He gave Roselle one more pat and then headed up the stairs, possibly to his death. Every fireman that passed Michael and Roselle asked him the same question, “Do you need help?” Each time Michael says he is alright. Spontaneous clapping broke out whenever the firemen passed. Michael wonders if Roselle can smell courage.
The closer they get to the ground floor, the faster Michael wants to go, but the crowd in the stairwell is moving slower due to everyone moving to the left to let the firemen pass. Michael feels that the steps are now slippery and wet from the sprinkling system. Roselle tries to lap the water up, but Michael is afraid jet fuel might be mixed in with it, so he jerks her harness up. When they reach the ground floor, it’s a warzone with debris everywhere in the ankle-deep water. Still Michael finds time to let Roselle sit and relax. He pets her head, telling her what a good job she did. She shakes her whole body in response. An FBI agent then directs Michael and David to take an underground concourse out of the tower.
Once out of the concourse and on the street, Michael must trust Roselle even more as she leads him through the dust cloud from the collapsed South Tower. He will never forget the sound of it collapsing, a cross between a freight train and a glass waterfall. Debris is falling everywhere and hitting everyone. It is every man for himself, except for Michael and Roselle who have to rely on each other. At one point Michael actually picks up Roselle bodily as he runs. With even his guide dog blinded by the smoke and dust, Michael only has one person left to rely on, God. He can feel His presence as he runs with Roselle.
Michael and Roselle are forced to take shelter in a subway station. Roselle stops at the last minute, keeping Michael from falling down the stairs. Once down the stairway they encounter a woman whose eyes are full of dirt when she cries out for help. She afraid she might fall on the subway tracks. Michael takes her hand and tells her to trust Roselle to keep them away from the edge. With just a little irony, Michael notes how a lifetime of permanent blindness prepared him to help this woman who was temporally blinded.
Fortunately, Michael and Roselle are far away from the World Trade Center when the North Tower collapses. At 10:32 a.m. Michael is finally able to call his wife Karen to assure her that he is alright. It’s 5:30 in the evening when Michael arrives home, Roselle runs off to play, another day of guiding her human accomplished.
After 9/11 Michael became Public Affairs Director for Guide Dogs for the Blind. He and Roselle would appear on several television shows including Larry King Live and Regis and Kelly. They would also ride in the Pasadena Rose Parade in 2002.
Roselle was not the only guide dog to behave heroically at the World Trade Center on September 11th. Salty led Omar Rivera, who worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, from the 71st floor of Tower 1. He refused to leave Omar’s side. Both Roselle and Salty would receive the Dickin Medal from the British charity People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals
Michael and Roselle’s story is an inspiring one of perseverance, endurance and faith and trust in God and each other. I believe that the dog theme would make it a great way to introduce children to one of the darkest days in American history. Its inspirational themes would make it a good subject for a movie about 9/11, making it be sobering but not depressing.
Because it is a light of inspiration on one of the darkest days in American history, I believe that Thunder Dog by Michael Hingson Should Be A Movie.
