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To those I ping...thanks to V's wife for the ping...
and I apologize for pinging folks again for this article.
Why not ping for visibility and traffic on a Sunday for the memory of a good man...

Then, on September 11, 2001, he faced the ultimate test.

Other factoids about the Rescorla story that hit me:

1. He was the last man out of the WTC tower that the radical Islamists (from a mosque/
Afghan resettlement center in NYC funded by Osama) failed to topple in 1993.

2. Rescorla and his friend Hall (a Muslim convert, how 'bout that?) had already figured
it would be an attack from the air the next time the radical Islamists came for the WTC Towers.
Of course, Rescorla got a reputation as an obsessive-compulsive for harping on this scenario.

3. IIRC, Rescorla was originally suppossed to be on vacation on Sept. 11, 2001. I think he
traded vacation days with a fellow worker.

To me the real takehome message of Rescorla's life and sacrifice is this:
He saw the bullet coming...and on the day it arrived, he didn't flinch.
Even though probably no one would have blamed him for his first sweep and sheparding the
bulk of his charges down the stairs.
He knew the risk, stayed and paid the price.

A book review posted here (Business Week?) slammed the book for being too reverential
to Rescorla; I think the reviewers argument was Rescorla was made to look too saintly.

For me, just from what I've heard, I suspect that Rescorla was probably bigger than life,
maybe not always easy to get along with every day...but showed the good example of
what a fallible human can rise to in the clutch.
And Rescorla seemed to have made this sort of performance a major part of his life-style.
We're just lucky (especially the Morgan-Stanley employees that escaped) that
this man (not a saint) was around at the right time.

Oh, I'll also turn this into an OU Sooner bump, as Rescorla was a graduate of
the University of Oklahoma earned degrees there, including his law degree.
I suspect he may not get much in the way of public recognition there as
his resume says he was a "mercenary" in Africa before he found a new home in the USA.

May I offer an insight into why I pinged this? I am teaching a religion class to a bunch of eighth grade kids making their confirmation. I was at church with them this morning, and prior to service beginning I was relating to them about Lord of the Rings, and what a brilliant author Tokien was, and what a great movie was made from the book. I am trying to get across to them that we have a concept of good and evil, right and wrong, which we get from our Christian civilization, from our faith in God, and which impacts our culture, whatever your particular brand of religion. They are tv and movie kids and grasp concepts within that framework, so that's why I was working that particular angle. One kid, a tough guy, said he didn't like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, so I said, what about We Were Soldiers Once, that was a great movie. His eyes widened and he said: "Yeah!" So, I told him about Rick Rescorla and what a hero he was. These kids live in the New York Metro area, and, in fact, many 9/ll firefighters and cops were from our neck of the woods. I described Rescorla's life as I remembered reading about it and told of his heroics at the WTC. I told the kid--it's all about discipline, good things come from discipline. Then I decided to re-read the Rescorla bio right where I read about it first: FreeRepublic. Thanks Aloha Ronnie!V's wife.