Jim Dwyer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times, died earlier this month. He was 63.
Throughout his nearly 40-year career, Jim was drawn to stories about discrimination, wrongly convicted prisoners and society’s mistreated outcasts. From 2007, he wrote The Times’s “About New York” column — when asked whether he had the best job in journalism, he responded, “I believe I do.”
Dan Barry, a reporter for The Times who also wrote for the column, has called Jim a “newsman of consequence” and “a determined voice for the vulnerable.” Today, he reads two stories written by Jim, his friend and colleague.
These stories were written by Jim Dwyer and read by Dan Barry. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
My name is Dan Berry and I've been over.
order and columnist at the New York Times since forever
Today I am going to read a few stories.
By my colleague and friend, Jim Dwyer
I knew Jim Dwyer before. I knew him because I had read his
columns over the years, and I admired his writing and its commitment to justice.
Jimmy columns often focused on
the every person he
name from self. By writing exclusively about the subways he wrote about the people who worked
The subway system, who rode the subways, and he understood
More than anyone else
how the subways connect
did the city. He would
the noses of the powerful, whether it
May I catch married thinking
mayor, Giuliani, mayor De Blasio, it didn't matter and ninety
Ninety five June, one a Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his car
comes about New York City. The columns at their best were prose palms. You could smell
apartment with a tenement. You could smell the subway, you could you you were there.
women I had several connections. For one thing, we were both narrow backs, which means that we
the children of irish immigrants and the term witches derogatory to some people mean.
that you do not have the shoulders as broad as your parents or the people that were back in Ireland.
That you were too strong.
over the years. We would sit in that
half a and chat. I would always approach him and he would say Daniel and, I would say James.
And we would sit down and commiserate about the in politics
your times or about the news
the day, New York City, and often we
talk about Ireland. He did a pretty good county, carry accent or broke.
I never really tried resounded silly Jim died earlier this month after a very difficult battle with cancer, he was sixty three years old
And it seems like I've known him forever. I was thinking I even this morning about calling about something you I'm gonna to.
Now I'm going to Rita peace by him, there was written about.
after nine eleven and it appears
section there was dedicated to the reporting that followed, the terrorist attack is called fighting for life. Fifty floors up with one tool and ingenuity.
Now, memories orbit around small things, none of these
other window washers liked his old green bucket, but Jan denser,
who worked inside one world trade center found its rectangular mouth perfect for dipping in wedding.
sweetie in one motion so
morning of the eleven as he waited at the forty fourth floor sky lobby, to connect with elevators for higher floors bucket and squeaky dangled from the end of his arm
The time was eight forty seven with
other men Shiva
Ire John Pesky George Phoenix Colon
Jason and another man whose identity
not be learned. Mr Denham,
boarded car sixty nine a an express elevator that stopped and floors sixty.
Seven through seventy four the car rose, but before
reached its first landing. We felt a muted thud mister. I said the building shook the elevator swung from side to side like a pendulum
plunged in the car someone punched an emergency stop button. At that moment, eight forty eight a m
one world trade Center had entered the final one hundred minutes of its existence. No one knew the clock was running, least of all the men trapped inside car, sixty nine, a they were cut off five hundred feet in the sky is if they have been trapped. Five hundred
under water, they did not know their lives would depend on a simple tool. After ten minutes, alive voice delivered a blunt message over the intercom. It had been an explosion. Then the into common silent smoke seeped into the elevator cabin one. Man curse,
Skyscrapers Mr Phoenix, the tallest, a port authority, engineer poked for a ceiling, hatch, others pride apart, the car doors,
propping them open. With the long wooden handle of MR dancers squeaky. There was no exit they faced
war stenciled with the number fifty that particular elevator
did not serve the fiftieth floor,
so there was no need for an opening to escape. They would have to meet
One themselves, MR denser felt the wall Sheetrock having worked and construction in his early days as a polish immigrant. He knew that it could be cut with a sharp knife. No one had a knife from his pocket. Mister Denzil drew
His squeaky, he slid its metal edge against the wall back and forth over,
and over he was
Still by the other men against the smoke they breathe
through handkerchiefs dampened in a container of milk. Mr Phoenix, I just bought sheet
comes in panels about one inch thick Mister Temple,
called because an inch then two inches
Mr Dempsey, hand eight,
carved into the third panel his hand shook he fumbled
squeaky at a dropped down. The shaft he had one tool left a short metal squeeze
handle they carried on with fists feet and handle.
In a regular rectangle about twelve by eighteen inches. Finally, they hit a layer of white tiles, a bathroom they broke, the tiles.
One by one, the men scroll through the opening headfirst sideways.
Popping onto the floor nearest. Think Mister Denzil turned back, I said pass my bucket out. He recalled
by then about nine thirty to fifty
floor, was already deserted, except for fire fighters astonished to see the six men emerge
I think it was engine company five, Mr Ire said they hustled us to the staircase.
On the excruciating single file the sent through the smoke. Someone tease, MR denser, about bringing his bucket
the company might not order me another one. He replied at the fifteenth floor. Mr our said we heard a thunderous metallic roar.
I thought our lives, it's really ended, then the South Tower was collapsing. It was nine hundred and fifty nine it's a Dempster dropped. His bucket the firefighters shouted to hurry at twenty three minutes. Past ten they burst onto the street, ran for phones, sip, oxygen and five minutes later
as the North tower collapsed, their escape had taken ninety five of the one hundred minutes it took up to one
a half minutes to clear each floor.
anger at the lower levels. Mr Ire, an engineer with the port authority, said if the
later had started the sixtieth floor instead of the fiftieth. We would have been five minutes too late, and
man with the screeching. He was like our guardian angel
Since that day, Mister Dempster has stayed home with his wife and children. His
together the faces of the missing with men and women. He knew when stations of his old life, the security go
the japanese bank on the ninety third floor,
to let a man at six thirty, the people had core futures and ninety two, the head of the Port Authority,
their faces, keep him awake at night. He says his hands
one that held the swedish and the other. The carried the bucket shake with absence.
Now, I'm going to read a column by Jim, about a police shooting a nineteenth
Seventy three of a ten year old boy, named Clifford Glover Jim, wrote the column in two thousand fifteen
after another. Please shooting inside
Carolina
not of a man named Walter Scott. It's called a police shot to a boys back and queens echoing, since nineteen seventy three it was
one. Seventy three long before anyone could imagine hashtag declarations of solidarity and protest. The kind of message to the world that today might read hashtag. I am Clifford Glover in the fourth grade.
No one could pull out a phone to make a video of Clifford Glover a ten year old running from a plain clothes police officer, with a gun who had just jumped out of a White Buick Skylark.
to make a queens on a spring morning in nineteen. Seventy three, I am sure a camera would have helped, but the ballistics were clear. Albert gaudily, a former queens prosecutor, said this week. The bullet entered his lower back and came out at the top of his chest.
He was shot T square in the back with his body, leaning forward. He was,
turning away
let bullet killed. Clifford Glover its trajectory
for a family, a neighbourhood. A generation can be traced to this day.
In injuries that never healed in a story with no final word, when a black
Man named Walter Scott was shot by a white police officer in North Trust in South Carolina on April. Fourth, a cell
phone video made by a passer by showed that Mr Scott was also
running away when he was killed and then.
Was not, as the police officer claimed, carrying a police taser with all this killing and stuff said pulling, or instead a sister of the dead boy. They need to go back to clearly Glover Clifford, a black boy had been shot by officer, Thomas Shea, a white man who said he had tried to question him in a step farther because they fit the descriptions of cab robbers
They ran the offers a said. He fired when Clifford in flight pointed a gun at him, which the mortally injured boy had then managed to toss or a hand to a step farther.
In the hours and days that followed the shooting armies of investigators scour the streets and sewers poured over court wreck.
And arrived without warrants to search the homes of Clifford, family and relatives, guys we're trying to help shape and coming up with all kinds of stuff, said: Mister gaudily, who was the chief homicide prosecutor in queens at the time someone showed up with a starters pistol, but as soon as he pressed them on it, they folded. There was no gun. People in Jamaica rose in protest. The streets were blocked with heavy construction equipment owned by a black contractor. Mr Shea became the first police officer nearly fifty years to be charged with committing birder, while on duty she says it. The kid turned and.
to have a gun. Mr Delhi said: that's what got him indicted the ballistics made Shea a liar, but not apparently a murderer
in the eyes of the jury of eleven white men and one black woman who found him not guilty afterward many of the jurors.
Like Mr Shea, in his lawyers at Queens Boulevard, restaurant to celebrate, they told reporters. It was possible. Mr Shea had been telling the truth
with about seeing a gun is
Day, word of the vote
reached a baseball field on the grounds of the south Jamaica houses.
known locally as the forty projects. Eric Adams, who is
thirteen year old from the neighborhood was waiting to bat
We were playing a long island team that happened to be all white said. Mister Adams
came a police officer and is now the Brooklyn borrow president. When the
this came out about two hundred people emerged on the field they just took
baseball bat and started beating the white players chanting. She got
later Mister
they would be fire despite a rally by police officers and the pleas of his lawyer, Jacob S, Seraph,
You said his client was needed on the force quote to protect
As for the animals who roam the store,
some New York end quote the long island baseball team had come to queens as part.
interracial intern neighbourhood thing. Mister Adams said it was their first visit. The Jamaica teen tried to stop the assault, but could not.
That was all the outrage. He said, adding that, because of what happened
A lot of our guys quit the team, never played baseball again
for his generation of black boys and girls. Mr Adam said the verdict brought a lot of despair. The year after Clifford Glover died, the number of shots fired by officers declined by nearly half in two thousand and thirteen. The number of shots fired was two hundred and forty eight, the fewest since the police department began keeping detailed records and nineteen seventy one at the peak in nineteen. Seventy two officers fired two thousand five hundred and ten bullets, because Mr Shape.
spoken freely with his superiors, the largest policing, and began a campaign urging its members not to talk after shooting. Until a union lawyer had arrived for Clifford Family, his death changed everything. They wrote that we were poor, darling, homestead, a younger sister said this week as she and three other siblings Kenneth Paulie.
And Patricia Farmstead described the household this week. The family may not have had much money, but before Clifford killing it was sound, darlings, father, add or instead, who was Clifford.
The father went to work every morning at a junk yard. The family had dinner. Each night, at the same time, around one table, Ms Einstein said then watched cowboy shows on television on summer weakened
neighbourhood children feasted in the back yard, on watermelon, laid out on a door covered by a sheet had rested on to clean garbage cans
add ons dead in his brothers enjoyed cigars and burgers. My father taught us structure, darling farmstead said she had to me
beg one brother, had to clean the yard and bring out the garbage Clifford, a fourth greater and public school. Forty went with his step farther on weekends, to the junk
Lord carrying his own little wrench,.
On the morning of April, twenty eight nineteen, seventy three a Saturday at arms, did work Clifford before DAWN,
So they could be it the yard to move cranes into place for a delivery. They walked. A few
locks along New York, boulevard known today as guy or Brewer Boulevard, when an unmarked car pulled alongside them, Mr Homestead, carrying wages that he had been paid the day before
that he in Clifford ran afraid that they were going to be robbed. Hearing shots. He flung down a patrol car, not realising a Clifford had been filled,
Mr Shea testified that he did not realise that Clifford who stood just fine
Tall and weighed less than one hundred pounds was a child. After the shooting prosecutor said Mister Chaise Partner
The sky was recorded on a radio transmission saying Die
little adding an expletive, Mr Scott denied it was his voice. Clifford death sent his mother Aluys Glover into a tailspin
My mother turned on my father. Did you have a gun? They said you had a gun, darling arms TAT said it caused them to break up
My mother lost her mind. The family received a settlement from New York City that, in the memory of the children, came to about fifty thousand dollars, most of which the mother lent to local churches, but never
back, my mother didn't want no one to know when she was going outside Misunderstood said she always used the back door is on
neighbor called sleeping knights on chairs and hospital emergency rooms. While her mother was being treated and living off restaurant handouts, she was going to pay this guy to board up the house and she would pay him to bring the food to us. She said the children went to foster care and group homes. One brother was in a psychiatric institution for about ten years.
Her mother, who had diabetes, died in nineteen ninety at each fifty four add oersted died in two thousand and five at eighty three, they put guns on him. They said he had guns at work at home. Kenneth arms had said to demonizing would help chaise story
Mr Shea, who moved out of the state after his marriage broke up, could not be reached.
I lost it all. He told the author, Thomas Hauser, his one thousand nine hundred and eighty book. The trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea is a comprehensive account of the episode the Defense lawyer, Mr Evseroff, said a video would have changed nothing. The case was resolved as a result of a trial. He said for Mr Adams. The quick termination of the South Carolina police officer in the shooting this month of Walter Scott was a positive step. That mayor said, you know what it is just gone too far. Mr Adam said the pathway of Shays bullet physically stopped when it hit Clifford Glover, but the emotional pathway probably still continues to this day
This is recorded by the New York Times
special thanks to Dan Berry.
Transcript generated on 2020-10-18.