page_title: Bob Beckwith
section_title: Actions at Ground Zero
hierarchical_section_title: Bob Beckwith / Career / Actions at Ground Zero
context_page_description: Bob Beckwith is a former member of the New York City Fire Department. He became well known to the United States' public after he stood next to President George W. Bush as the president gave a speech at the ruins of the World Trade Center after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Photos of Beckwith and the president appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News and the cover of Time magazine. This exposure launched him into the national spotlight and led to press attention and interviews. Beckwith has met several times with President Bush since then, spoken extensively in public, and acted as a fundraiser for charities.
context_section_description: On the morning of September 11, 2001, Beckwith was tending to his grandson, who had been hit by a car while biking to school.  Before he arrived at the hospital with his grandson, Beckwith was aware that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. When the boy appeared to be in stable condition, Beckwith left the hospital and went to World Trade Center site after he saw the South Tower collapse via television. Even though he had been retired for seven years from the New York City Fire Department, he grabbed his old gear and bluffed his way past the blockades and barricades that had been set up and began helping with bucket brigades and missing person searches.
  On September 14, after Beckwith and some men had unearthed a fire engine buried in rubble from the fallen buildings, they tested its stability as a stand from which to speak, and a Secret Service agent ordered him to help President Bush onto the platform. Beckwith handed Bush a bullhorn with which to address the crowd of responders and workers and was told to climb down by the Secret Service and Karl Rove, but Bush insisted that Beckwith stay with him. An image of Bush with Beckwith was featured the next day on the front page of the New York Daily News.
caption: U.S. President George W. Bush speaking at Ground Zero with Beckwith beside him
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