It's Oscar time and I'm happy to see that James Marsh’s wonderful documentary Man On Wire,  has been nominated. 

This documentary follows Phillipe Petit’s extraordinary wirewalk thirty-four years ago between the two rooftops of the now destroyed twin towers of the World Trade Center.  Petit, France’s busking performer/provacateur, had been obsessed by the towers from the moment he read that they would be built. The film details the meticulous and sometimes haphazard preparations leading up to Petit’s jaunty trek on August 7th, 1974.

And, of course, it shows us the walk itself, an exciting, breathtaking, pulse-pounding, once-in-a-lifetime event.

I was lucky enough to have been there that morning. The lady I was dating lived nearby and I was leaving her loft to go to work.  The people who were on the street that early  were frozen, staring upward at the impossible image of someone walking a tightrope strung between the two monumental towers that twelve puny Islamist terrorists brought down.

My first thought as I watched this unimaginable moment was to consider the degree of courage necessary to do such a thing.

We all understand the instinctive courage of people who reflexively charge into a dangerous situation to save someone, or to daringly improvise a new action for a mission gone awry. Soldiers, firemen, policemen go through this every day.

Then there’s the courage of someone who knows fully the dangers that lie ahead, is aware of the pitfalls, but nevertheless takes on the job anyway. This seems a different kind of courage, more deliberate, the fruit of practice and expertise, what fighters have entering the ring or what’s represented in the high roll of an entrepreneur staking his house and savings on an idea he believes in.

Many of us exhibit a quieter, but no less valiant courage when we refuse to do something against our consciences, knowing that a superior, friends, family or community will marginalize you for taking a stand and bucking the tide. It’s the courage we hope to get from politicians, but are disappointed more often than not. We have few Mr. Smith’s going to Washington these days.                                                                                                                                                                                                  Keep On Truckin’

But the greatest courage, I think, is the courage to, as the cartoonist Robert Crumb famously wrote, “keep on truckin’.

From 1961 to 1963, I was assigned to the newly revived Psychological Warfare Center at Fort Bragg and Special Forces was part of the Center’s compound. At chow we sometimes saw Colonel Logan Weston, once the chaplain for the legendary World War II unit, Merrill’s Marauders. Weston himself was a legend as well.

As young, impressionable soldiers who were fully aware of the heroic exploits of the Marauders arduous guerrilla campaign through Burma, we cornered Colonel Weston one day and peppered him with questions about the Marauders, which he answered with gracious humility. At one point I commented on the courage it must have taken to endure the grueling combat they experienced in the Burmese jungle. He said, “Specialist, courage is putting one foot in front of the other. You just keep going.”

The profundity of that observation didn’t register at first, but I think I eventually learned what he meant. We all display that kind of courage daily — the courage to assume responsibility by getting up each morning, going to the job, raising a family, paying bills and dealing with the problems life throws at us all. Nothing spectacular, nothing glamorous, nothing notably heroic, nothing for the TV news. Just the courage to keep on going.

                           Petit Truckin’ Along’

On that misty morning in 1973, Phillipe Petit displayed all those aspects of courage. It was the instinctive courage of someone reflexively responding to his lifelong love, the wire, the courage to embark while knowing the risks and the courage to keep on going, to put one foot in front of the other.

In the film’s most entertaining moments, Marsh details how Petit, two close friends and a couple of Gang-That-Couldn’t-Shoot-Straight American accomplices — one of whom was a musician who says he was probably stoned at the time — managed to sneak thousands of dollars worth of steel cable and rigging equipment into the World Trade Center, set it up in one night under darkness and have it ready for Petit to walk across the next morning.

It was a delightful scenario of ordinary Joe’s outwitting the system with no malice or evil intent — just a focused effort to help Petit accomplish his walk, to allow him to put one foot in front of the other, to display the courage of confidence in his ability to challenge the wire.

Watching this wonderful film, however, was also a hollow experience. Not one word is mentioned about the destruction of the towers. This isn’t to criticize the film or the director — after all, the film was about Petit’s accomplishment, but the knowledge that the towers are no more hangs in the air, the elephant in the film’s room. Ignoring their destruction was, to me, unsettling, as if 9/11 had never happened.

On this anniversary of the towers’ terrible destruction, I can’t help but compare the innovative audacity of Petit and his friends to the inefficient bungling of the bigwigs assembled years ago to rebuild Ground Zero. It’s been seven years and the boondoggling of the various special interests and agendas of the many powerful forces involved have produced … nothing.

The inability of these so-called movers and shakers to replace the tragic loss of one of the great symbols of our country’s economic health is disgraceful. It is the antithesis of courage. The private interests have locked themselves into their insular, selfish orders-of-the-day, building walls around their narrow interests instead of building for the good of the country. This inaction is driven by fear, which trumps courage every time.

Competing ideas and agendas and a lack of leadership has also stalled the memorial  to United 93, the plane our American citizen/heroes brought down in Pennsylvania.

Ironically, and only because I referenced Colonel Weston on courage, the morass those cooks have made messing with the Ground Zero soup parallels the difficulties General Stilwell faced in the Burma campaign. He had to deal with General Orde Wingate and the Chinese forces, each group pursuing their own approach to victory without coordinating with Stilwell and his Marauders, making ultimate victory that more difficult.

From Gary J. Bjorge’s document on the Marauders, officially the 5307th Composite Unit (provisional), code-named Galahad and then re-christened after its commander, General Frank D. Merrill.

There is much to be gained by examining the experiences of the 5307th. The soldiers established an inspirational standard of endurance and courage in the face of an extremely harsh natural environment and a dedicated foe. But no lessons to be learned are greater than those related to the conduct of combined or multinational operations. If, as Colonel Hunter asserts, “Galahad Force was the most beat upon regimental-sized unit that participated in World War II,”107 the reason for this happening is to be found most of all in the combined nature of the northern Burma campaign. As the only American combat unit within the combined force, Galahad could not avoid being given the special burdens that came from being Americans. …. Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, it collapsed under the weight of its combined load.

Rebuilding the towers has collapsed under the weight of its combined constituencies. The project needs the vision and courage of one man, someone like Phillipe Petit, who isn’t afraid to face risk and danger, to dare criticism, to make and learn from mistakes, but to never give up, to walk the wire of entrenched bureaucracy from one end to the other and give us the monument we need.

The World Trade Center needs another Man On Wire.