The shield belonged to her son, George Howard, 44, an officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's Emergency Services Unit at JFK International Airport. The 16-year veteran was in his Hicksville, N.Y., home Sept. 11 when he learned of the disaster. It was his day off but the divorced father of two didn't even take time to leave a note for sons Christopher, 19, and Robert, 13, before racing to the scene. As Howard ran toward the north tower to help people escape, the building collapsed, burying him under an avalanche of debris.
Three days later, his mother was one of 200 relatives of fallen firefighters and police officers gathered at Manhattan's Javits Convention Center to meet Bush. She pressed her son's badge into the President's hand. "He said he was very sorry," Howard recalls. "Then he said, 'We're going to get them.'"
It was not the first time Howard had been acknowledged as a hero. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he was decorated for leading hundreds to safety, including 62 children who had been stuck in an elevator. "When I congratulated him," says his sister Geri Anne Satterfield 42, an administrative assistant at the U.S. Space Command, "he said, 'Oh Sis, I don't know why they give you a medal for doing your job.'"
Public service runs in the family. Howard's late father, Robert, was a U.S. Navy lieutenant and his mother was a yeoman second class. His three brothers served in either the military or the police department. And it won't end there. "I'm very proud of my father," says Christopher, "and I'm going to follow in his footsteps."
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