Three days after the Twin Towers collapsed, Bob Beckwith showed up in Manhattan to look for survivors in the rubble. He had no business being there.

Nobody thought it was a good idea. Bob was a retired fireman. He was a little long in the tooth to be doing search and rescue work. His family begged him not to go.

“They said you’re 69, you’re too old.”

“But you don’t stop being a firefighter,” an old firefighter once told me. “It’s like being a dad. It’s not a job. It’s who you are.”

Bob Beckwith. A slender man. Loose built. Broad shoulders. Face creased with age. A New York voice—a little defiant, a little in-your-face.

Directly after the 9/11 attacks, Bob heard one of his colleague’s sons was unaccounted for, among hundreds of other missing firefighters.

Bob hopped in the car and drove to Lower Manhattan. Uninvited. Unannounced. He lied his way through the National Guard checkpoints.

He used his official voice. He wore a leatherhead helmet to complete the picture. He acted like he belonged there. Because, of course, he did.

“I cut in between the cones, and I drove over to Williamsburg Bridge.”

Bob jumped out of his car and got straight to work.

“I go start digging with the guys in the North Tower, and we come across a pumper with a 76 Engine. And we’re working because we’re looking for survivors and we’re looking for people, and we’re hoping they found an air pocket or something.”

Ground Zero was a mosaic of emergency workers. Fire-medics. Police. Volunteers. Search and rescue dogs. Paramedics. Mohawk ironworkers. You name it.

They were all digging through ash and steel until hands bled and fingernails popped off.

What happened to Bob next was pure chance. If you believe in chance.

“We found the [charred] pumper, a fire engine, so I jumped up on it. And a guy comes over to me and says, ‘The President’s coming!’”

The president’s deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove dusted off the place near Bob’s foot and asked, “Is this safe?”

Before Bob could answer, Bob was giving the Commander and Chief a hand up, onto the wreckage.

President George W. Bush jumped onto the pumper truck alongside Bob. Bob handed him a bullhorn.

Rescue workers went slap crazy. The collective shouts were earsplitting.

Everyone chanted, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Bob started to climb down, but the President grabbed his arm and told him to stay.

The president shouted into the horn. But few could hear him over the cheers and whistles.

“We can’t hear you!” shouted one in the crowd.

“I can hear YOU!” the president shouted back. “The rest of the world can hear you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

Bob’s image was emblazoned on magazines and newspapers and television broadcasts. Just an old firefighter. A guy who shouldn’t have been there.

In the weeks to come, he became an image. Not just an image of an American. Bob Beckwith was The American.

Years later, Bob was treated for skin cancer, which is common among 9/11 responders. He underwent a host of treatments for malignant melanoma.

But that moment on Ground Zero still lived in his 91-year-old memory. Just as it lives in infamy.

“I stood on that truck and I looked up [at Heaven], and I said, ‘Look at me, Ma, I’m with the President.’”

And as of last night, he’s with his Ma.