September 11, 2001
The John J. Harvey had an unexpected encore. During the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the boat's owners asked FDNY officials for permission to assist in evacuations from Ground Zero. Meanwhile, firefighters had determined that the vast scale of destruction had damaged many fire mains, depriving fire crews of water. Officials radioed the Harvey to drop off her passengers as soon as possible and return to the disaster site to pump water, reactivating her official designation Marine 2. Alongside two other FDNY fireboats, she pumped water at the site for 80 hours, until water mains were restored. The National Trust for Historic Preservation gave the Harvey a special National Preservation Award to recognize this incident. The Harvey's story was the subject of a 2002 children's book.
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“Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace ... will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.”
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