Beverly Hills Firefighters Give 9/11 Runners a Proper Send-Off

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, James Dowdell was a senior in high school and sitting in Spanish class in lower Manhattan about the same time that his father was running into the burning South Tower of the World Trade Center.

His firefighter father always took the time to call home after a big blaze to let his family know he was OK, Dowdell said.

"You always keep that window of hope and think maybe it's just really crazy down there and he'll get home," he said. "But by that night, when he didn't contact us, we knew something was wrong."

Dowdell's father died in the World Trade Center that day along with 343 other firefighters. Determined to carry on his father's legacy, Dowdell joined the Fire Department of New York, where he has served for the last five years.

On Wednesday, Dowdell and 35 other firefighters and police officers from around the United States and Australia gathered at the Beverly Hills Fire Department's headquarters to celebrate the launch of the Tour of Duty run, which began Thursday at 8:46 a.m. at the Santa Monica Pier.

To commemorate the firefighters, police officers and rescue workers who gave their lives on Sept. 11, the Tour of Duty participants will run a relay across the U.S., from Santa Monica to New York City. The plan is for the run to end at Ground Zero at precisely 8:46 a.m. Sept. 11, exactly nine years to the minute after the first plane collided with the World Trade Center. The 4,600-mile route will pass through Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Wednesday night, Deputy Fire Chief Mark Embrey and the rest of the Beverly Hills Fire Department threw a dinner for the runners, 18 of whom are firefighters from Australia. The rest of the runners are from fire departments around the United States, and two are police officers from North Las Vegas.  

"[Sept. 11] has a big significance for the fire service because we lost so many brothers and sisters, and we commemorate it every year," Embrey said. "These guys here coming all the way over from Australia to commemorate it, it's just incredible. We are happy to host them."

The run was organized by Australian firefighters who have held similar relay runs in their country. 

"As firefighters we've brought it together on both sides of two great nations. It doesn't matter where we are in the world in the brotherhood, we've all worked and banded together, and it's really paid off," said Paul Ritchie, an Australian firefighter with the Melbourne Fire Brigade and one of the organizers of the Tour of Duty Run.

Among those attending the dinner was Brad Burlingame, whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was destined for Los Angeles but was instead hijacked by terrorists and slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. The brothers grew up in Anaheim and had planned on getting together the next day.

"Whenever he was scheduled for a Los Angeles flight he would get to come here and typically try to talk me into going to a baseball game, which was the plan for the next day, which was also his birthday," Burlingame said. "So that's basically what happened. He was coming out here to celebrate his birthday and go to an Angels game."

Burlingame is president and CEO of the West Hollywood Marketing and Visitors Bureau and came to hand out minted coins to each of the runners. He spoke for several minutes after the dinner about his brother and the sacrifices that firefighters and other rescue workers made Sept. 11.

Recalling how the flight data recorder indicated his brother attempted for more than four minutes to fight off the terrorists who had stormed his cockpit, Burlingame became overwhelmed with emotion and had to pause to regain his composure. It was a sobering reminder for those in attendance not just of the tragedy the nation suffered on that day, but of the many personal heartbreaks that people such Burlingame and Dowdell suffered.

Tuesday night at the Australian Consulate-General's headquarters, Dowdell received a surprise when he was presented with a firefighter's helmet that had his father's signature on it. The hat had been signed by members of his father's firehouse more than 12 years ago and was given to an Australian who had been training with them. That Australian saw a small news article in a local paper about the Tour of Duty run and gave the hat to one of the firefighters to give to Dowdell.

Dowdell and his mother, who was also at the consulate event, had no idea the hat existed.

"My brother just got deployed to Afghanistan. He's been there a couple months on his second tour," Dowdell said. "But my father, he's watching over the both of us. A little sign like that, for a helmet to come all the way from Australia, it lets me know he's watching out for us."

For more information on the Tour of Duty run, visit http://www.tourofduty.com.au.