Here’s how I, Essex Porter, came across this story. I was in New York City on Monday of this week and I took a tour of the 9/11 memorial museum. At the museum, I was surprised to find an exhibit featuring northwest firefighters and their search dogs at ground zero.
The exhibit is called K-9 Courage. And a picture of dog Ohlin and handler A.J. Frank is part of the exhibit.
“A great dog. 75-pound male chocolate lab. fun dog”
Twenty years after 9/11, Ohlin is gone. But handler A.J. Frank holds him close.
‘He had a great nose. Great personality.”
Frank is a retired Seattle firefighter. We asked him to look back to 9/11, 2001.
“Watching TV in the morning and it’s like, whoa, this looks weird. What is this? I’ve never seen the show before. Oh, this is real.”
The collapse of the twin towers was already seared into his memory when as a member of FEMA Washington Task Force 1 he arrived in New York with a search team from Western Washington.
“It was an eye-opening experience. There was paper, smoke just everywhere. Like I said, again, the buildings were gone. It was amazing. I (saw) just big piles of rubble.”
Ohlin and A.J. searched to find the living. Failing that, to at least find remains that would bring some closure to the families of lost loved ones.
“On the way, there would be signs and people lining the street, you know, look for my husband. Bob looked for my wife, Jane, look for this person, looked for that person. Because they did not know where they were.”
Ohlin and A.J. worked alongside other Western Washington dogs and handlers. The dogs served a comforting role as well.
“People would come up all the time. Hey man, can we pet the dog? Sure. And they just take a moment, pet the dog, get out of whatever mind space they were in and get into the mind space of, hey, I’m just petting a little loving dog.”
For A.J. Frank the 20-year-old memories are a present-day reminder.
“Love your loved ones and just let them know that you love them. Because you don’t know how long this is. This thing is going to last. This life’s going to last.”
A.J. Frank may be retired from the fire service, but he still helps with searches and he’s looking for a new dog to train.