Brenda Berkman was in her apartment in Brooklyn the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 when she got a call from a friend in Kentucky telling her to turn on her TV. That was the moment that Brenda, one of the first female firefighters in New York City, knew something catastrophic was happening.
She ran to a nearby fire house, grabbed some gear, and hopped in a van full of off-duty firefighters headed for the World Trade Center. As they drove over the Brooklyn Bridge toward Manhattan, the opposite side of the highway was filled with shocked and sobbing people walking out of downtown, many of them covered in dust.
The firefighters made it into Manhattan just as the second tower fell, covering the van in debris. They got out, expecting to hear chaos; instead, it was “a dead zone,” Berman recalls. She found members of the fire station where she worked, and together they found a fire chief who assigned them a position at Ground Zero (though it wasn’t called that yet).
For the next several weeks, Berman and her colleagues worked the site, at first looking for survivors, then remains, and finally helping to clear the area. It was in incredibly dangerous worksite, and the risks they and other first responders took would follow them from then on.
“It was worse than my worst nightmare,” Berman once said.
In all, three women first responders died on September 11: Port Authority Police Department Captain Kathy Mazza; EMT Yamel Merino; and NYPD officer Moira Smith. Dozens more women worked at Ground Zero — firefighters, police officers, EMTs, construction workers, medical officers, even volunteers who provided food and water — and in the years since that awful day, Brenda Berkman has made sure that every one of them is included in the museum and in official memorials.
Representation is the hallmark of Brenda’s life. She came to New York City in the mid-1970s to attend law school at New York University. Instead, she decided she wanted to become a New York City (FDNY) firefighter, but at the time women were not allowed. When the city opened applications to women in 1977, Brenda was in her third year at NYU but decided to apply anyway. Then she sued them.
Turns out, applying was the easy part; the physical abilities test wasn’t. It required applicants to scale an eight-foot wall and carry a 120-pound duffel bag up and down three flights of stairs. None of the women could do it, nor could many of the men.
Brenda believed the test wasn’t legal because it didn’t test the actual physical requirements of the job. She took her concerns to NYU’s Women’s Rights Clinic, and after an unsuccessful meeting with the FDNY personnel office, took the FDNY to court. It took a few years, but in 1982 the judge ruled the test discriminatory.
A few months later, Berman joined 41 other women as the first female training class in FDNY history.
Needless to say, the boys didn’t like it — so they did everything they could to make the women quit. They gave them gear that didn’t fit and dropped tools on them during drills. They turned over their lockers, made rude remarks, and at one point gave some of the women trainees carbon monoxide poisoning.
Despite the harassment from instructors and male trainees, almost all of the women made it through.
But after graduating from the academy and being assigned to fire houses, the harassment continued. Some women firefighters found their air tanks drained of oxygen, while others were threatened with being thrown off building roofs. Women were verbally abused, and a few were sexually assaulted.
When they complained, Brenda and another woman were fired for ‘physical incompetence’ but were quickly reinstated by a judge who called the firings retaliatory.
Despite everything, Brenda refused to give up. She loved helping people, and the physical and mental challenges of the job. More importantly, she believed in setting an example for girls and women who would come after her to fight for equality on a bigger scale. In addition to being a woman, Brenda was the first openly gay New York City firefighter.
Brenda was promoted to lieutenant in 1993, and in 2006 retired as captain after 24 years on the job. She received dozens of awards, including the Susan B. Anthony Award from the National Organization for Women. She was also named a White House Fellow by President Clinton.
Still, one day continues to haunt Brenda. After retiring, she took up art to help cope with the emotional trauma of Sept. 11, 2001, though it was 10 more years before she was able to make any art related to that time. She organized a collaborative project with 13 other artists around the world, lending their interpretations of the event to a collective piece that was displayed in New York.
Today Brenda volunteers as a tour guide at the 9-11 memorial, and has just finished “38 Views of One World Trade Center,” a series of stone lithographs depicting the construction of the new building. It took her three years to finish; the first piece features the twin light towers that are illuminated every year on the anniversary of that day.