In his New York Daily News column today, Michael Daly writes of brave men:

Fire Lt. Kevin Dowdell was killed at the World Trade Center, but his living spirit carried one son into the FDNY and another to West Point. The older son, 24-year-old Army 1st Lt. Patrick Dowdell, departed for Iraq on St. Patrick’s Day. He was in the air even as his brother, 23-year-old Firefighter James Dowdell, marched in the parade for the first time as a member of the FDNY Emerald Society Pipes and Drums. The father was as fine a man as I have met, and the sons are everything he could have hoped they would become … I only wish I had known what to say. I would have had a hard enough time mustering the right words if he were going to a war with the whole country behind him, but when Americans think about the Iraq war at all, a majority think we should just leave…
…
Patrick was on the way when Flaherty donned his big bearskin hat and raised his staff and led the band up Fifth Ave. Among those who followed was James Dowdell of Ladder 174. At the postparade gathering, Flaherty informed everybody not already aware that Patrick was on the way to Iraq, appropriately with a stopover in Shannon, Ireland. The band then played “The Army Goes Rolling Along,” the official Army song, in his honor.

The Dowdell boys’ mother was there, rightly proud of the two phenomenal sons of a phenomenal dad. Rosellen Dowdell has already lost a husband. Now her older son was heading into a war where the American toll has reached 4,000 dead. Still, she manages to laugh when she recounts what Patrick and James say to her as they place themselves in harm’s way. “They tell me, ‘It’s what we do,'” she said.