Oct.
4, 2001 On the morning of Sept. 11, Zack Fletcher told his twin
brother to 'be safe.' (Enlarge Photo) (CBS) "When they were 2
or 3 years old I bought them a fire truck. I figure that's where
it all started." Lunsford Fletcher, the twins' father Photos of
the Andre and Zack cover a wall at the twins' parents' house.
(Enlarge Photo) (CBS) The WTC collapse also killed Zack's best
friend, Michael Weinberg. (Enlarge Photo) (CBS) (CBS) CBSNews.com's
David Kohn reports on one family's struggle to come to grips with
the consequences of 9/11
At Andre and Zack Fletcher’s kindergarten graduation ceremony,
the children had to say what they wanted to be when they grew
up. The Fletchers, fraternal twins, both gave the same answer:
They wanted to be firemen. The twins made good on their plan.
Zack ended up at Engine 4, Ladder Company 15, a firehouse in lower
Manhattan. Andre became a member of Rescue 5, on the northern
tip of Staten Island. Now one is missing in the World Trade Center
collapse. The other sorts through the rubble trying to find him.
At 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 11, Zack was driving in Brooklyn. He was
off duty, and his car radio was off. He was doing errands; he
had lost his W-2 form and was on his way to the City Administration
building in lower Manhattan to get a copy. He noticed that the
air seemed smoky, so he called his twin brother on his two-way
radio. "I dialed him up, and I say, 'Andre, do you know anything
about a big fire going on somewhere?'" Zack remembers. "He says,
'Are you kidding me? You don't hear what’s going on? There's two
planes crashed into the World Trade Center.'" Andre was also in
Brooklyn, speeding toward the fire. They agreed to find each other
at the scene. "Be safe," Zack said before hanging up. Andre brushed
off his brother's concern, telling him not to worry. It was their
last conversation. Zack rushed to his own firehouse, which is
less than a mile from the
World Trade Center. The trucks had already left, so he grabbed
his gear and began walking toward the burning towers. When he
was about a block away from the scene, the second tower collapsed.
"It was almost like a freight train," he says. "It was so loud."
To avoid the onrushing cloud, he and several other firefighters
dove into a vestibule. "After the buildings collapsed, I kept
trying to get Andre on the two-way radio," says Zack, who is 37.
"And it would chirp, which means the signal was going through.
But he wasn't picking up. I didn't really worry about it too much."
When he was busy at a fire, Andre often didn’t pick up. "When
everything started settling a little bit, I started worrying,"
says Zack. "I started asking if anybody had seen any of the people
in Rescue 5." No one had. He spent the next few hours frantically
working at the site, putting out smaller fires and looking for
survivors. He also tried constantly to reach his brother. By 1
p.m. or so, Andre's phone stopped chirping. Instead, a message
appeared on the console of Zack’s phone: User Not Available. Three
weeks later, Andre is still missing, as are the other seven Rescue
5 members who went to the World Trade Center. The only sign that
the unit was there: its truck, which was found a few hundred feet
from ground zero. (Although battered, it still ran, and is back
in service.) Besides his brother, Andre leaves behind his parents
and a 12-year-old son, Blair. As has happened with many firefighters
and police officers, Zack’s losses extend to lmost every corner
of his life. Fourteen men from his own company are missing; his
best friend, a firefighter named Michael Weinberg who worked in
a midtown firehouse, died in the collapse; his body was recovered
Sept. 12. Zack didn’t talk to Weinberg on Sept. 11. The next day,
he called his best friend’s cell phone, which was still working.
"I was crying when I left the message," he remembers. "I said
'I know you'll never hear this message, but I just want to let
you know how much I loved you, and how much you meant to me.'"
In the weeks after Sept. 11, Zack worked at "The Pile," as the
enormous mass of steel, rubble and remains has come to be known
by those trying to dismantle it. At first, he worked with frenzied
hope, but that gave way to a grim sense of duty. Although his
captain told him that he didn’t have to work at the site, and
indeed didn't have to come to work at all, Zack continued to pull
his shift. "Honestly, now I would rather not be working on the
Pile," he said last week. "It's just so depressing. But I still
have to do it. I have to know that I’m doing my part to help find
my brother." A brawny man with an iron handshake and a shaved
head, Zack has not quite given up faith. "I lost - possibly lost
my brother," he says, catching himself. "He's not just my brother,
he's my twin brother." Like thousands of people whose friends
and relatives are missing, he is facing an agonizing dilemma.
Should he continue to hold out hope? Should he accept the prospect
that, as New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly said, finding
survivors now would be a "miracle"? At what moment should he give
in to mourning? Lunsford Fletcher, the twins' father, is also
grappling with this question. Sitting in the darkened living room
of his tidy house in Freeport, a middle-class Long Island suburb,
he tries to explain his mindset. Now retired, Lunsford worked
for many years managing the computer department at Prudential
Securities, which archived its documents in one of the twin towers'
underground levels. "It is a fortress down there," he says. "The
whole foundation is 10 feet deep of concrete and steel. Six levels
down. It is secure. I know that if he was down there, and that's
what I was hoping for, that he'd be secure, if he could get air
and water. That's what kept me going for two weeks. And now it's
fading away..." He trails off, choking up. "We have to face it
right now." His wife Monica, the twins' mother, is not yet ready.
"I still feel that Andre is alive," she says. "I haven't given
up hope yet. And I'm not gonna give up hope. I just keep praying
and hoping that they will find him alive." A social worker for
New York City, she has not been back to work since Sept. 11. Waiting
for news wears on her; she says she often feels "queasy." The
living room is filled with family pictures. One wall is devoted
to photographs of Andre and Zack. To an unpracticed eye, they
are indistinguishable. Lunsford explains to a visitor that the
photos on the left are of Andre, and those on the right are Zack.
In the middle is a portrait of them together, two teen-agers with
afros, staring wide-eyed into the camera. A thin, gentle man,
Lunsford alternates between laughing at memories and trying to
hold off tears. "When they were 2 or 3 years old, I bought them
a fire truck. I figure that’s where it all started," says Lunsford,
a Jamaican immigrant whose voice still carries a lilt. "They got
hooked on fire trucks. When I look back on it now, I say, I shouldn’t
a done that. But it was fun." Like many twins, Andre and Zack
competed fiercely with each other. “I remember they had a candlestick,
shaped like a flower petal, and Andre pick it up, they were jostling,"
says Lunsford. "They were 3 or 4 years old. Andre picked it up
and jam it in Zachary’s head. Gash! I had to take him to the hospital.
I had to rush him over there to get stitches." During another
childhood battle, the boys broke a dining room table. "We were
competitive in all things," says Zack, who is two minutes older.
"But just about anything that we'd do we’d want to do it together."
Both loved "Star Trek." When Andre bought a motorcycle, Zack soon
followed suit. Together, they bought cars at police auctions and
restored them. They traveled together, frequently driving to Toronto
to visit relatives. They both played on the FDNY football team,
at the same positions – wide receiver and defensive back. When
football became too strenuous, they joined the baseball team.
Andre ended up running the team. "They were inseparable," says
their friend, Greg Matthews. A Seattle firefighter, he met the
pair in May, at the funeral for a fireman killed at a blaze in
Queens. They hit it off immediately. Matthews and a co-worker
spent the visit hanging out with the Fletchers. "They wouldn’t
let us buy anything," Matthews says. "They bought us dinner, they
bought us drinks." Last week, Matthews flew to New York to spend
time with Zack and work on the rescue mission. Andre and Zack
grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, during the '70s and '80s.
It was a "hard area," as Lunsford puts it, and the twins had many
opportunities to see firefighters in action. "I remember the blackout
in '76," says Zack, referring to the infamous power outage, during
which looters throughout the city broke into stores and set many
aflame. “It was bad. I had so much respect fr the firefighters.
These guys would go in there, and they'd put out the flame, and
even when it's still a little glowing, there's another store,
a block down the street, still on fire. They didn’t even have
time to put the hose on the truck. They'd pick the hose up, in
the spaghetti that it was, hop on the back of the truck, drive
a block down, and start again. I'm talking nonstop for 12, 13
hours." In college, the twins joined Freeport Volunteer Fire Department.
Eventually, they applied to the FDNY. In 1994, after several years
on the waiting list (the result of a hiring freeze), they were
accepted, becoming the first African-American twins to join the
department. Andre eventually became a member of Rescue 5, a specially
trained unit that responds to the most serious emergencies. "They're
what the Army Rangers are to the Army,” says Zack. “He loved it
there." The assignment offered exactly what Andre craved: maximum
adrenaline and the constant opportunity to help people in danger.
To honor Andre, Zack wants to join Rescue 5. He wants to take
his brother's place; he even wants the same locker and bed. His
father opposes the idea. "I don't want anything like this happening
again," says Lunsford, pausing to collect himself. "But if that's
what he wants, and it's a tribute to Andre... then I’ll go along
with it. But it scares me." Last week, Engine 4 returned to regular
duty, meaning that Zack no longer works at the Pile. Still, he
refuses to take time off. “I can’t,” he says. “If I do, I’ll have
too much time to think about things.” Written by David Kohn; ©
MMI, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved
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