The FDNY firefighter who stood beside President Bush on the pile at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 -- Bob Beckwith -- has died.
Although he was retired on Sept. 11, he donned his gear and headed to help. He couldn't sit idly by and do nothing.
"...I was walking back to go to work, and I got a tap on the shoulder by a Secret Service guy. And he says the president's been looking for you," Beckwith said in a 2006 interview, CBS reported.
After standing with Bush as he addressed firefighters, Beckwith said he worried his family would never believe that he was side-by-side with the president.
But, those fears vanished as he turned down the street to his house as a dozen reporters and his proud family were waiting.
"He was a very modest man. He could've done a million things from that moment at Ground Zero, but he didn't," Matthew Beckwith said of his grandfather.
Beckwith, 91, died of melanoma.
Bush called the family Monday afternoon.
