_{Dan Andrews (left) and Manny Fernandez at StoryCorps in New York City.}

“It was a time in New York City when firehouse doors were always open,” Dan recalled with nostalgia. “They were a real part of the community.” Dan and Manny shared fond memories of touring New Yorkers and their children around the engines and providing them with fire safety tips. They also remembered working under the guidance of what Dan remembers as “a great group of men. It was like a brotherhood. We would go down there every night, pal around. We had a great admiration for them.”

On the night of October 17th, 1966, Manny was preparing himself some peppers and eggs in the firehouse kitchen when he heard the ringing of the bell that in those days signified a fire. At the sound of that bell, the firefighters (“firemen” back then) would “jump into their boots and get ready to roll” and Manny would drive the engine to the scene. Their destination on that night was East 23rd Street, just outside a shop called Wonder Drug.

There wasn’t much smoke when they arrived. “It was just like a hazy pool room,” Manny recalled. So the men of Engine 18 entered the building. Following protocol, Manny stayed outside to tend to the engine. But after hearing a loud “BOOM,” he decided to enter Wonder Drug to investigate. Inside the store, he crawled on all fours, searching for the men through a cloud of smoke. He remembers the sound of perfume bottles popping. “I ducked down and started yelling ’18! 18!’ I couldn’t get any response.”

The “boom” Manny heard was the floor of the building collapsing. When it did, 12 of his fellow firefighters were killed. It was the largest loss of life for the FDNY until the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. “I just couldn’t believe it,” Manny said. When he returned to the firehouse, the perished firefighters’ extra gear and clothes were hanging up. “When I saw them, I would talk to them, like they were still there, like they were just near me. But later on that night, when I realized … I said that they’ll never be forgotten.”

_{“MUTE TESTIMONY TO TRAGEDY: Extra gear left behind by five of the 12 men who died fighting Monday night’s fire at Broadway and East 23rd St.”}

The day after the fire, hundreds of off-duty firefighters gathered in Madison Square Park where they all removed their helmets. Dan remembered one of the officers saying, “Today we all died a little.” Four days later, 10,000 firefighters lined 5th Avenue and watched as firetrucks carried coffins to their respective services. Firefighters came to pay tribute from as far away as Anchorage, Alaska and San Francisco. Every year since what has become known as The 23rd Street Fire, a memorial service is held. Dan and Manny are always there to remember.

_{Lynda Rose (left) and Kate Provencher at our New York City StoryBooth.}

“Then we heard a ruckus,” Lynda recalled. Kate feared the noise might be the client opening his window to jump (they were on the 4th story). So Lynda looked out the fire escape to investigate. When she turned back around, the client’s door was open and he was punching Kate. Lynda grabbed her cell and dialed 9-1-1, but the operator could hardly hear her due to bad reception. So she “went into autopilot” and ran toward him in an attempt to force him off. That’s when Kate yelled, “Please be careful. He has something sharp and I’ve been stabbed.”

Lynda tried to pull the client away, but he threw her against a wall. She fell to the floor and looked up into his eyes. “When I saw what I saw in his face, the thought that went through my head was, ‘Oh my god. We’re not making it out of here. We are going to die and nobody is going to find us.’ But then I realized I had on my boots, and he couldn’t slice through those. That’s when I started kicking him in the knee. That’s when you started to remove the scissors from his hand.” And that’s when Kate told Lynda, “I think we can take him down.”

“Ok, let’s do it,” Lynda said. “We’ve got one shot. We’ve got one shot, because if we miss, we’re done.” Kate straddled the client and held down his arms; Lynda put her knee on his ribcage and her foot on his throat. Meanwhile, Kate was bleeding profusely. In that moment, Lynda was faced with a crucial decision:

I didn’t know how long it would be before you were going to pass out, and it didn’t look like anybody was ever going to come. So, as I was sitting there, looking at the blood you were losing, [I knew that] if you were to pass out, to make sure that we get out of there, I was going to step on his throat and watch him die. Prior to that, I never thought I would have the capacity to kill. And that that capacity was there very quickly, very readily, that’s frightening to me. But throughout the whole thing, I remembered my son’s face as he was getting on the bus to go to kindergarten. There was a piece of that sitting there, that my son needs me. And I need to do what I need to do to make sure that we get out of there.

Fortunately, Lynda never had to take that action. The police arrived just in time. They had been searching door to door in response to her call to 9-1-1. That’s when the client stood up from the floor to reveal a dinner knife beneath him. “He’d wanted us up so he could finish us off,” Lynda said. Kate was rushed to the emergency room where she made full recovery. But she attributes her survival on that day to Lynda:

I still think about how hard it is for you to have to live with that moment. So one of the things I really wanted to make sure to tell you today was how much of a heroine you are. We go places together and I introduce you to people and I say, ‘This is the woman who saved my life.’ Because we both know he didn’t stop on his own and he had no intention of stopping on his own. In that situation, people freeze, they run away, they save themselves. And you ran back. You ran back to help me. And that is what makes you a heroine to me.

“Of course I would’ve,” Lynda responded. “Of course I would’ve.”

Sue became pregnant with Deborah while studying abroad in France during her final semester of college. The following summer, she found herself sitting on a beach in Delaware, listening to the 1969 moon landing on the radio, and doing “lots of thinking,” she told Deborah. “It was probably the loneliest time of my entire life, because I had no one to support me. I realized that I was completely unequipped to raise a baby.”

“At the time, unwed mothers were treated very differently than anyone else,” Sue explained, while recalling her birthing experience. During much of her labor with Deborah, she was left unattended by the hospital staff. “Then they took you away, and they wouldn’t allow me to see you. But one of the nurses brought you into my room in the middle of the night, so that I could count fingers and toes. You were asleep, and so I never actually saw your eyes.”

According to adoption practices, Sue had to physically hand Deborah over to the doctor before leaving the hospital. This was an indication of her willingness to give up the child. “That was hard,” she told Deborah.

“I want you to know that I was never angry about that,” Deborah responded. “I never resented your decision. I never had reason to.”

Deborah grew up knowing that she was adopted. “My parents always made it a positive part of my life, that they picked me, that they really wanted me,” she told Sue. Her parents also didn’t place blame on her birth mother, explaining that she was young at the time and had made the decision so that Deborah could have a family.

“I just remember you being a question mark,” Deborah explained. “I always thought that I would probably search for information. I was also very aware of what the implications might be if I found you. Maybe you wouldn’t want to be found. Maybe it would be a secret you would have to reveal to family or friends or children.”

When Deborah was in her early 20s, however, her curiosity caused her to begin a search. One of her first steps was to ask her parents if they had any records. “That’s when I discovered a hospital bill with your name on it,” she told Sue. “On all the other hospital bills, your name was blacked out with a magic marker. But there was this one for, like, aspirin. It was the most inconsequential bill, but there was your name. It was the first moment that you as a person were concrete to me. And it knocked me down.” According to adoption laws, Sue’s name should have remained completely anonymous.

Soon after this discovery, Deborah registered for Soundex, a service that allows those separated by adoption to locate one another via mutual registration. Sue registered for the same service a few years later in order to give Deborah the opportunity to find her. They were matched within weeks.

“The night that they told me that you were going to call,” Sue remembered, “I had made plans to go out to dinner with some friends and I couldn’t focus much on conversation. When I got home, you had left me a message. I kept listening to it over and over again. It just never crossed my mind that I would ever hear your voice. I think it was at least midnight by the time I called you and we talked for two or three hours. It just seemed so easy.”

After months of weekly phone calls and countless emails exchanged, Sue and Deborah met in person. “I recognized you the moment I saw you,” Sue told Deborah, “and I was a little bit shocked at how much you looked like myself.” For Deborah it was “the first time I ever thought about looking like someone. It was something that as an adoptive child just wasn’t a fact of my life.” Some of their interests were also uncannily similar, right down to a penchant for Medieval and Renaissance music.

Deborah describes her current relationship with Sue as “more like a life mentor than a mother. You’re a person that I turn to for advice and someone that I enjoy talking to about all the things that I’m passionate about.” Sue considers Deborah to be “one of the many young people that help keep my perspectives fresh. And I’m really grateful.”

As I hit the stop button the end their recording, I was grateful to have listened to their very special birth mother-daughter relationship.

Janet began her story before cancer with a question she was once asked during a job interview: What hardships have you had to overcome in your life? “I didn’t know what to say,” Janet recalled. “I’ve had a very fortunate life; nothing had gone wrong. I did well in school. I was an athlete. I went to MIT. I was captain of the gymnastics team. I had a great life. Until I put on a tank top one day and I saw a visible lump.”

When Janet found more lumps, she made an appointment with her gynecologist who told her it was probably nothing. Nevertheless, she received the standard mammogram and ultrasound, followed by a series of biopsies. Janet led a supremely healthy lifestyle and spent much of her time waiting for the biopsy results rock climbing or tending to the health of others as a pediatrician.

She received her diagnosis over the phone while boarding a plane to Seattle. It was infiltrative ductal carcinova, a common kind of breast cancer in women. “I was in shock,” Janet recalls, “but I was getting on a plane. I couldn’t break down and be a mess. So I just put sunglasses on and cried quietly.” Janet called everyone she could think of to tell them the news. “Somehow I felt like telling everybody would spread it around and I’d have less cancer by sharing it.”

When Janet returned to San Francisco, her news took a turn for the worse. A full-body PET scan showed not only lumps in both breasts, but something also lit up in her liver. Janet would have to wait the weekend, however, for definitive results. She remembered celebrating Yom Kippur that Saturday:

“Yom Kippur was really hard. It’s a Jewish holiday where you read about who shall live and who shall die and by what method and how you should make the next year better and how to become a better person and all I could think of is how bad is my next year going to be. I don’t want to die. Is this going to kill me? Is it too late? Did I wait too long to get this checked out?”

An ultrasound found Janet’s liver to be clear of cancer. “I was so happy. I felt like laughing and singing, even though I knew I still had breast cancer.” Soon after, she began four rounds of intensive chemotherapy. The chemo hit her hard. She lost her hair and her appetite, frequently fell into naps, often needed the assistance of friends to leave the house, and lost a lot of her physical strength. “I felt like I was being punished for something that wasn’t my fault,” she said.

_{Janet in a “bald self portrait,” December 2007}

But throughout, Janet kept her sharp sense of humor and, most importantly, her spirit. This strength came out of a very surreal feeling she felt while canceling a visit to her aunt’s house, canceling her monthly talks, and getting coverage for her work shifts. Suddenly she thought, “What am I doing? Why am I giving myself shots in the stomach? Why am I canceling my whole life? I feel like I’m going on vacation, but I’m staying home.”

So, during periods of strength, Janet seized the opportunity to have fun, including a trip to Las Vegas. “It was totally therapeutic,” Janet recalled. “It was fun to dress up and put on makeup and go out and dance. I felt good after 8 days of fatigue, nausea, acid reflux, depression. I was back to my usual self.”

_{Janet in a long, blonde wig during her trip to Vegas}

During chemo, Janet also continued her usual snowboarding trips. The first time she hit the slopes again after chemo, however, was a struggle. “I was tired,” Janet said. “Normally I take no breaks and I ride all day. I don’t need lunch. But this time I took a break both days for lunch and I was done before the lifts closed.” But snowboarding was empowering too:

“While snowboarding, I pretty much forgot about cancer entirely. When you’re doing it, you can’t think of anything else. You’re focused, you’re concentrating. The only thing that matters is you and the hill and where you’re going. You forget about anything else that may be bothering you. Maybe that’s why it was so great during chemo. It was an escape.”

_{Janet snowboarding near Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevadas in January 2008
(A “cornice” is a mass of snow projecting over a mountain range)}

It’s been a year since Janet was diagnosed. She took a moment to reflect on her treatment and survival. “It’s hard remembering how bad I felt. And all the love and support from family and friends. It’s just overwhelming. I’ve had some old friends who live far away come and visit. It’s been so wonderful reconnecting. I value spending time with my friends and my family above all else. A big thank you to everyone who sent cards and flowers and sat with me during my ordeal.”

As 40 minutes in the StoryBooth came to an end, Harriet testified to her daughter’s endurance: “When the big thing came, she took it with aplomb. She was able to cope. It was scary, but since you were okay, I was okay. We love you and we’re so glad that we can still enjoy things together.”

“Thank you. I love you too,” Janet replied.

The following are just a handful of the many earliest memories we’ve recorded. Some are stories, some are snapshots, and some are a child’s perspective on larger historical events. What is YOUR earliest memory? Share it in the comments section below!

“My earliest memory is standing by the stove and my mother peeling white potatoes on a little green stool, a chair with the back broken off. And she let me stand there and watch her. And she’d always give me a piece of the raw potato and I just loved it.”
- Betty Livingston, age 71, in Indianapolis, IN

“My grandmother swimming fully clothed in the river and doing backstrokes.”
- Oscar Velasquez, age 74, in Abilene, TX

“My earliest memory was the day WWII ended. I have a very vivid memory of being a young, young child in the back seat of a convertible and seeing adults do things like run and scream and jump, things that were very unusual for adults to do.”
- John McReynolds, age 64, in Logan, UT

“Being on my pop pop’s shoulders and pushing on his straw hat.”
- Camille Atkinson, age 29, in New York, NY

“My earliest memory is sitting in a green bedroom at our next door neighbors’ and playing with their toys. It wasn’t until many years later that I found out from my mother that she had been stricken with Polio, and they had sent me next door because an ambulance was coming to take her to the hospital.”
- John Eichenlaub, age 59, in Cleveland, OH

“I remember my mother telling me that little children were found under a cabbage leaf. My mother said that some little fairy had put me there for her particularly. It was quite a long time before I learned where I really did come from.”
- Carole Falvey, age 67, in Denver, CO

“Playing with a doll house on the linoleum floor of the living room.”
- Sharon Mast, age 57, in New York, NY

“Some of the earliest memories I have involve being with my father, sitting on the floor, and him cleaning shoes and me helping him clean shoes because he was a police officer and his shoes had to shine.”
- Kay M. Edwards, age 48, in New York, NY

“I had a little iron bed that I slept in every night that was rolled up to the side of my parents’ bed and dad held my hand until I went to sleep.”
- Imogene Psschall, age 87, in Murray, KY

“My mother was regaling a group of people on the beach and I wandered away from her. I walked into the water and fell into a deep hole. I had the presence of mind, thank God, to raise my little hand. The tips of my fingers were above the water and a man came and plucked me out like Moses was plucked from the Nile.”
- Alexander M. Blanton, age 72, in New York, NY

Sherry has worn many (hard)hats in her field of construction. After graduating from NEW, she has worked as an operating engineer, welder, metal fabricator, and mechanic on developments and infrastructures throughout the city. Some of these sites include the foundation at the new Yankee Stadium, the Van Courtland Park reservoir, the Grand Concourse (a boulevard in the Bronx), an underpass on 161st Street, and the widening of a runway at JFK Airport.

_{“NEW taught me about all the different jobs and helped me to make decisions,” Sherry says.}

For the past month, Sherry has been working as an oiler and operating engineer on the foundation for the new Brooklyn Nets stadium at the Atlantic Yards, a $4 billion mixed-use development project. As an oiler, Sherry greases the machines and performs maintenance and oil changes on them. As an operating engineer, she operates Earth-moving machines to drive piles (a type of deep foundation) for excavation. This means digging up to 50 feet into the ground and pulling boulders as big as cars out of Brooklyn soil!

“Without the [operating] engineers, nothing can go on at the job,” Sherry says. “The moment you step in the machine, you’re responsible for a lot. You realize that you’re at the top of the totem pole. You can’t let it go to your head, but it’s a nice feeling for a change being at the top of the totem pole than the bottom. Or not on the pole at all.”

_{The proposed 20,000-seat basketball stadium for the Brooklyn Nets. Photo by Andrea Mohin/The New York Times}

When Sherry started at NEW, she didn’t know any other women in construction. “I didn’t think of it as being pioneering or anything like that. Just a good job,” she says. “It was more of a survival decision.” But now Sherry would like to see more women on the job. She also wants to see equality. “I get looks at lunchtime,” she says, “and it’s mostly from the guys. People don’t want to talk to me ëcause I’m dirty, but I make good money getting dirty, so I’ll get dirty every day.”

“I think my biggest challenge is to keep my mouth shut,” Sherry says with a smirk. “I let a lot of things slide. Like, [I've been] called girlfriend. ëCome here, girlfriend!’ I’m like, ëI’m not your girlfriend!’ I’ve been called Oprah, which isn’t really a bad analogy if you’re going to compare me to the richest black women in media. I mean, I’m kind of flattered. I’ll be the Oprah of Local 15.” Local 15 is Sherry’s branch of the International Union of Operating Engineers. She is one of between 30 and 60 female operating engineers out of 2500 in her union.

_{Sherry’s hardhat sports stickers of union pride, and one from Local 15 New York City.}

“I’m proud,” Sherry says. “I mean, I sit down at night and I pull my union card out and I stare at it. I took a bath with it last night. It was right there by the bathtub! I’m self-sufficient. I’m able to take care of my family. I’m not broke all the time. I’m able to pay for my mom’s insulin and take care of her a little bit better. And that’s really been the reward, seeing the relief on my mom’s face, like she’s not worried if I’m going to be okay if something happens to her. That was her biggest fear, that if something happened to her I wouldn’t be able to survive or take care of myself. So now that she sees that I’m making a decent amount of money she’s relaxed a lot. And just that alone is the best reward.”

After her StoryCorps interview, Sherry went back to work. While I was archiving her interview for the Library of Congress, I looked up at the buildings and down at the streets that surround our StoryBooth in Foley Square. And I thought about all of the workers who have built and continue to build the setting of so many New York stories.