Richard Drew had a simple job on September 11, 2001.
As an Associated Press photographer, his mission that Tuesday was to attend a maternity fashion show to take pictures of pregnant models.
What a gig.
But as the moms-to-be prepared to waddle down the runway, American Airlines Flight 11 smashed into the North Tower at 8:46 AM.
Simultaneously, millions of eyes and cameras shifted to the Manhattan skyline.
As did Drew’s lens.
He was shocked when he returned to his office and inserted his camera’s memory card into his computer.
He’d taken one of the most iconic and controversial photos ever.
The next day, The New York Times and many other papers worldwide published what we now call “The Falling Man.”
Some readers said, at best, doing so was in bad taste.
Others said, at worst, it was exploitive, disgusting, an invasion of privacy that robbed the man of his dignity in his final moments.
Others still felt it was important to show the world what happened and publish history, even if it was uncomfortable.
But who was the Falling Man? What would his family want?
Journalist Tom Junod covers the question in depth in a September 2003 Esquire article, The Falling Man, and a 2006 documentary by the same name.
Peter Cheney, a reporter for The Toronto Sun, was initially tasked with identifying the unknown victim.
Initially, Cheney suspected the the man may have been Norberto Hernandez, a pastry chef at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106 and 107th floors.
The Falling Man’s clothes matched the black pants and white shirt that a restaurant employee would wear.
That would make the Falling Man one of 79 servers, cooks, and staff who died in the sky-high establishment, along with 91 patrons.
At first, the Hernandez family thought the Falling Man might be their loved one but later changed their mind after seeing different frames from the set in more detail.
A manager thought he could be an employee named Wilder Gomez, but again, he changed his mind after studying the photo more closely.
The cycle repeated with several others.
Another man fit the description but wasn’t a server or pastry chef.
He was a 43-year-old sound engineer who worked the venue, maintaining music and audio for daily operations, functions, and conferences.
His name was Jonathan Briley.
In an interview for The Falling Man, Jonathan’s sister Gwendolyn said she thought the man in the controversial image could be her brother.
She added:
I hope we’re not trying to figure out who he is, and more, figure out who we are, through watching that. -Gwendolyn Briley
And who are we, exactly?
Whether Jonathan is the Falling Man or not, he definitely died at the World Trade Center, along with 2,997 others.
In the aftermath, survivors and the rest of the country tried to heal as Americans.
Flags draped every front porch, and being American meant something different than it did on September 10.
Whether we were Republican, Democrat, or otherwise was irrelevant, and we had a newfound respect for first responders.
Musicians from Alan Jackson to Jay-Z composed songs to commemorate the attacks and the city.
Of course, controversy and political strife soon followed, but everyday Americans connected in a way they hadn’t for a long time.
That’s who we were.
But where did we go? Who are we now?
Before 8:46 AM on 9/11, Jonathan Briley, or the Falling Man, whoever he is, started the day like anyone else.
Maybe he thumbed through the Post or the Times and saw headlines about Michael Jordan returning to the court or the Yankees putting pitcher Paul O’Neill on the disabled list.
At The Windows on the World, he and his colleagues might have been liberals, conservatives, libertarians, gay people, straight people, Christians and atheists, and everything else.
But they worked together.
They played together.
They called each other friends.
People often ask who we would talk to, alive or dead, in interviews, team building exercises, or for fun.
Maybe we should consider sitting down with Jonathan or the Falling Man.
Some would tell him terrorists killed him because they hate freedom and McDonald’s.
Others would say it’s because the American government acts like a global mafia.
Some would take the conspiratorial route and suggest various levels of government involvement, building 7, and the like.
Some would reassure him that we got the guy responsible ten years later.
Yet we’d owe it to him, to be honest.
We’d have to tell him the attacks put us into the next Vietnam where servicemembers would die decades later who had yet to be born.
And of the Patriot Act that would be sold as a guarantee that nothing like 9/11 could happen again, yet it would give the government permission to spy on American citizens virtually at will.
We’d have to tell him the president would stop attending New York 9/11 memorials 22 years later.
Yet there would be no shortage of illegal immigrants destroying the city while legitimate New Yorkers kill and rob each other because we decided law enforcement was bad and we should treat everyone based on skin color.
We’d have to tell him about the skyrocketing support of child mutilation and sex changes.
That people want to kill babies up to 9 months legally and that our economy is in the toilet.
That there is no southern border, and fentanyl is killing us by the score.
If we told him the government would conspire with private companies to strip everyday Americans of their rights via a virus in which healthy people mostly survive, the Falling Man would call us crazy.
But we’d have proof that the unaparty establishment pitted us against each other.
And we’d have strong evidence that they’re trying to do the same thing over climate change.
Of course, the country, or world, wasn’t perfect before the attack.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, and everything else existed, as it always will.
But overall, did the Falling Man think America was an inherently racist country when his white colleagues told documentarians that Jonathan Briley was someone they deeply respected, called a friend, someone they would like to have known for the rest of their lives?
We’d tell him race is the basis for everything in 2023.
The American flag that brought unity in a crisis following his death is now more controversial than the Falling Man image.
The country he departed from isn’t the same, as the government locks people up without trial for an “insurrection” where the National Guard was denied for 90 minutes and the police escorted “rioters” around.
We’d have to tell him our Constitutional rights are really permissions that can be revoked, like an expired driver’s license, if you say or think the wrong thing.
We’d have to tell him the New Mexico governor is now a small rodent, and she’s trying to suspend the Second Amendment.
We may never know the identity of the Falling Man.
But as Tom Junod suggested, we are the Falling Man.
Servicemembers have The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier.
Us chickens have the Falling Man.
He represents all of us.
And we owe him an apology for allowing the government to grow into what it is today.
But as many of us have awoken in recent years, we can tell him we’re doing something about it.
That we can vote in the ballot box.
That we can vote with our dollars and stop supporting those who hate American values.
We made a difference with Bud Light, Ben and Jerry’s, and Target, and it looks like Dove soap is about to get the same treatment.
Americans got comfortable and complacent, and the establishment took advantage of us.
But things are changing.
A federal judge denied the New Mexico governor’s unconstitutional order, thank God.
Wokeness is failing in entertainment, and more people are catching on to the weaponization of government.
Yesterday, two more men were acquitted in the state’s attempt to frame American citizens for plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer.
Thank God again.
The Unaparty knows we're on to them.
We just have to keep pushing, non-violently, to make our voices heard.
We owe it to the Falling Man, Jonathan Briley, and everyone else whose life was undeservedly ripped from them on 9/11.
Because this isn’t who we are.
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. -Walter Elliot