Reluctant Hero: A 9/11 Hero Speaks Out About What He's Learned, How He's Struggled, and What No One Should Ever Forget
By: Michael Benfante / Narrated By: Chris Ruen
Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
Reluctantly giving this one a pass… There are better ways to handle PTSD, but ya gotta be honest, and ya gotta be brave
I was initially enthusiastic to chuck a credit out to purchase Reluctant Hero even tho’ it’d been on m’ Wish List for, like, FOREVER and had never gone on sale or had a price reduction. I mean, it HAD to be worth it: Somebody lauded and hailed as a National Hero stemming from one of the worst days in American History as he struggled to survive the fraught aftermath of the nightmare, huzzahed to the heavens even as he flailed to live from day to day post-9/11?
And it starts off well enough with author Michael/Mike Benfante introducing himself to us as the person he was before the horrors of that day. He was engaged to be married to Joy, and their biggest worries were where to have the wedding, and would they see a movie this weekend, or would they go down to the beach?
That Tuesday morning, Sept. 11th 2001, he was chiding coworkers playfully about getting in on time, sending some out for their sales calls of the day, and then all hell broke loose. Deafening noise, screaming, the building swaying, tilting, feeling like it was going to topple down. Smoke, shattered glass, and instantly his mind clicked into a Stay Calm laser-like focus. He began shepherding his group of staff members, checked each room on their floor, found a safe stairwell, and he sent them down before searching the 81st floor’s men’s bathroom as he’d been told there were people trapped in there. Upon finding it clear, he began the looooong trek down. At the 68th floor, he came upon a group of women who were hesitating, surrounding something. That something was a woman in a wheelchair, one of those desperately heavy mechanized chairs. The women couldn’t lift their fellow coworker, and they didn’t want to leave her there by herself.
Benfante never hesitated, simply asked the woman, who seemed frightened but proud, if she needed help. She said Yes, and that was it, he and a coworker, John, a young man who’d barely started at the Trade Center three months earlier, quickly settled her into a portable chair and took her down, flight by flight, step by grueling step. Sometimes someone would help them for a few flights, but they’d eventually peel away to save themselves. FINALLY, Mike and John got her down, got her into an ambulance, and looked around to see horrors they’d never forget, to hear the sound of bodies crashing from the towers.
A news crew interviewed Mike, who answered in a daze before he and John wandered away, and then the crew filmed Mike as he sprinted past them, the second tower falling.
All this is told in precise, well-articulated and sometimes graphic prose. It’s indeed very memorable. And Mike’s fight to stay alive doesn’t cease after that last-minute sprint, there’s diving beneath a truck, struggling to breathe as dark and suffocating dust, pulverized concrete and glass, threatened to kill him. There’s the walk back to a friend’s apartment, and there’s seeing himself on the news while he’s grabbing a necessary drink with buddies reunited hours later.
Fine, good, I’m with Benfante all the way. And I’m even with him as he immeeeeediately begins accepting media appearances, not judging him to be a media whore as would be my usual take, cuz the guy is still in a TOTAL fugue state. He rambles about what he’s seen, and as appearances continue, he makes sure to thank school children for the cards they’ve sent him as those are the only things keeping him afloat. And when he discovers that the woman he and John carried down 68 flights of stairs is still alive? Oh dang it, thought I to m’self, I think I’m gonna cry right along with him. Cuz even tho’ he’s being lauded as a hero, he’s pretty sure that the ambulance they put the woman, Tina, in was pancaked by the crashing tower, as it was driving towards the collapse, not away from it.
But then I started to feel uncomfortable with all the media appearances. Sooooo many, so much fawning about how AWEsome Oprah was. Still, I held back my rather knee jerk judgmental thoughts as he framed the appearances as showing positivity about such a wretched event.
But then I started noting that oh yesssss, he was sooo candid when onstage or in front of a microphone, but dude! when he was home? Not only was he NOT sharing with Joy, he was all shutdown, and irritable and short-tempered. I know I know I know: CLASSIC PTSD, but good golly gosh, people kept saying: Dude! You got PTSD, and he’d just snarl at them; therapy was for other people. He was from an old-fashioned Italian family where he was always the put-together Mike. Nooooo therapy for him.
Just more speaking engagements, life on the road, a resurgence of interest around the first anniversary of 9/11, followed by bitterness that soon Americans wanted to hear more about Paris Hilton than they did his story, yet again, and again. And again. Whazzaa? No more interest in my story? Then what is the meaning to my life? Seek therapy?
Nope, just become a more abusive jerk. Be a loser of a husband. Dive deep into the bottle. And truly, I get it. I was NOT a decent person after I came home after New Orleans Post-Katrina. But at a certain point, when you look at who you’ve become, and you see that you’re NOT a decent person? You get help. You do.
EsPECially if you’ve taken to badmouthing your supportive wife, trashing her to any who’ll listen, or slur drunkenly at those who are edging away. And you CERtainly get help once you have a child. You do.
Nope, this is HOURS of listening to a guy oh so candidly express what a miserable SOB he became, and how he was hoping that writing about it all 10 years later would save him. And this blazing ta-ra-ra-RAH epiphany he’s had (That he has a nice wife and a great kid, and a loving family), to go with writing it all down, will supposedly CURE him and make him a decent chap. I googled him to see what kinda a person he is, but I kinda sorta groaned and rolled my eyes when I got to his eponymous website and the About Mike section has him as a National Hero for blah blah 68 flights of stairs blah.
Here, 2021, 20 years after 9/11, I’m kinda feeling moody and am getting ghostly memories of that horrific day, so forgive me if I’m sounding harsh. I SHOULD be in a grateful mood that people survived, and I am indeed glad that he’s still with his family.
It’s just that I WISH the About Mike section had him as Loving Husband, Grateful Father.
Nope, doesn’t seem so Reluctant after all.
P.S. Dunno about Chris Ruen as a narrator. Did well, but couldn’t make me like Benfante, so make of that what you will…
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