By Rhonda Westfall

A chorus in one of the anthems on Bruce Springsteen's latest CD, The Rising, is an accurate expression of the grief - and determination not to give in to the sorrow - which remains in everyone's consciousness one year after September 11.

May your strength give us strength.
May your faith give us faith.
May your hope give us hope.
May your love bring us love.

That prayerful litany from the track, Into the Fire, salutes the efforts of firefighters and civilian rescuers in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - and continues to lift the spirit of our nation.

"We all know people who went to incredible lengths to rescue people and help the families of those who lost their lives - and who are still doing it today," says former St. Johns resident Renae Ditmer who was working at the Pentagon at the time of the attack.

"People are still a little shell-shocked - there's been a lot of soul-searching in the past year."

The perspective is slightly different for Mike Johnson, chief of Clinton Area Fire & Rescue who helped organize the group of eight local firefighters who were part of rescue efforts at 'Ground Zero' in the days after 9-11.

"It's such a helpless feeling going into something like that - the area was so large, so big," Johnson said of the emotions that the local group shared with all the other rescue workers at the site in the heart of New York City.

"Those firefighters and workers who responded immediately after the planes hit knew they probably weren't going to come out of the rubble - we can’t forget how many people died."

Along with Johnson, firefighters from CAFR who traveled to NYC were Vince Towne, Rodney Bond, James Johnson and Jeremy Vermeer. The county-wide team also included Adam Moore and Todd Moore from Ovid Ambulance and the Ovid Fire Department, and Mike Blemaster from the Maple Rapids Fire Department.

Being at the site where the Twin Towers once stood remains vivid in the minds of Johnson and the other firefighters.

"It really brought us face to face with how important volunteer service is," Johnson said. "Things that we thought were overwhelming to us now don't mentally and emotionally effect us like they used to - 9-11 brought a lot of strength to why we do what we do as firefighters."

Being part of the rescue effort also increased the already strong bond that unites persons who serve as emergency workers.

"We've stayed in contact with several individuals in the NYCFD and hope to make a trip back there this winter to visit with them," Johnson said, recalling a conversation with a NYCFD battalion chief from Queens, N.Y.

"His unit didn’t leave the site for 48 straight hours - he talked about going to 16 funerals in one day for the firefighters from the department. How do you deal with that?"

Attempting to manage the feelings of loss remain with Ditmer who was asked to return to her assignment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense on the day after the Pentagon attack.

"Stepping back in the building - there was dead silence; it was tomb-like," she recalls. "The smoke was still thick and they had set up a temporary morgue in the inner courtyard. We treated being there with a lot of reverence."

Following the completion of the OSD assignment, Ditmer left the Pentagon for several months before returning again to her current duties in the counter-proliferation branch of the U.S. Air Force under the Department of Defense operations division where she helping develop strategies for situations involving weapons of mass destruction.