At Public Safety Mass, a Time for Reflection

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Tim O’Gorman came with his wife and three children, “the real heroes” in a peace officer’s life.

They are the ones who put up with the late hours, he said, the ones who sit up waiting for the phone call saying he is all right and on his way home.

FBI Special Agent Steve Martinez came because Sunday was “a great opportunity for public safety officers and their families to reflect on the tragedy of Sept. 11 and the very dangerous situations officers get themselves into.”

It was also a time for officers to remember to “take care of ourselves,” he said.

O’Gorman and Martinez were among the more than 300 people who turned out for the 12th annual Public Safety Mass at the Los Angeles Fire Department’s training center in Elysian Park.

They came in crisp uniforms--every badge bearing a black band of mourning--and in shorts and sandals, some pushing baby strollers, others with youngsters in tow.

A gymnasium at the center--a former Naval Reserve training facility--was converted into a chapel for the service. An antiaircraft battery sat at one end, a weight room at the other.

Sunday, though, was about the cross, not the cannons; about blessings rather than barbells.

“It is fitting that we took this day to make it a day of special prayers for the victims of the tragedy,” said Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who celebrated the Mass.

When the date for Sunday’s event was set more than a year ago, little did the organizers know that it would be a day when the risk public safety officers regularly face would be so palpable.

Speaking of the Sept. 11 terrorism, Mahony said, “All of us have our special images that were burned into our hearts and minds that day.”

For him, the cardinal said, “There is one scene I can never get out of my mind. As all of those people were fleeing, firefighters and police officers were running in the opposite direction. People were running away from the danger. They were running to it.”

That image, Mahony said, “is one that is just so powerful, and it very aptly summarizes why you are here today.”

Pausing, Mahony said, “We see so many men and women who would do exactly the same thing in Los Angeles.”

What might have been very important on Monday, Sept. 10, Mahony said, “suddenly was changed on Tuesday, Sept. 11. Families, children have all gone to the top of our priority list. That is very good.”

On Sept. 11, Mahony said, “our whole country shrank. In a wonderful sense, we see ourselves so interrelated that the vastness of the land has become small. Artificial barriers came crumbling down. What had been differences before simply dropped away.”

Firefighter Michelle McKee, married to a firefighter-paramedic and the mother of two children, had not planned to be at Sunday’s Mass, let alone speak. But that was before she met the persuasive Father Michael McCullough, a Los Angeles Police Department reserve officer and law enforcement chaplain. “We’ve heard it over and over these last two weeks: Tell the people closest to you that you love them,” she told the crowd. “Hug your children.”

The events of Sept. 11 have brought unprecedented fear and uncertainty, McKee said, “fear for the safety of our children and our families. Fear that we may face a similar situation here.”

But if that fear predominates people’s lives in this country, she said, the hijackers will have succeeded in destroying “our way of life, our sense of freedom and our sense of ourselves.

“We will be more cautious. But I will not walk the streets afraid. And when I go home, I will tell the people closest to me I love them. And I will hug my children.”