As if the tragedies of the deaths of the first responders who died in lower Manhattan on that terrible September Tuesday morning were not in and of themselves terrible enough (rhetorical observation for indeed they were), the awfulness of the day is exacerbated by the fact that a number of the men and women of the FDNY, the NYPD, and the PAPD of NY/NJ killed in the line of duty that morning died while being someplace they were neither obliged nor required to be. Whether they were off-duty - and responded on their own time - or were assigned someplace altogether different and were drawn to the World Trade Center by the inexorable pull of knowing that it was the place they were most desperately needed, it was to the World Trade Center that they responded.
It was there where they died.
Police Officer Nathaniel Webb of the Port Authority Police Department was one such hero. Officer Webb's post was the Holland Tunnel. Yet, after roll call that morning, he headed to the World Trade Center to what he could to help those in need. He died there.
Nathaniel Webb served the public as a Police Officer for twenty-eight years, which was essentially half his life. He was loved by his family, including his daughters, Camille and Valerie. He was also - in his late fifties - unabashedly a mama's boy. He stopped in to check on his housebound mother several times a week.
During his time in the Port Authority Police Department, he received several commendations, including a Meritorious Active Duty Award and a Police Group Citation. He was a man who put others first and whose family, whose friends, and the people for whom he laid himself on the line every day loved him for it. Their only regret?
They did not have as much time with him as they would have liked.
-AK
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