25 years later, a bittersweet reunion
Yoni Brook, left, and Michael Sauer at Sauer's home in Woodmere on Friday. The two met when Brook took an iconic photo of Sauer on 9/11. Credit: Newsday/Thomas Hengge
The firefighter in the photo is kneeling down, his uniform caked with dirt as he desperately drinks water pouring out of an open hydrant. All around him is the horror of that day — bent steel, piles of debris, toxic dust and just a sliver of blue sky.
Michael Sauer was 34 and an off-duty volunteer firefighter for the Woodmere Fire Department when he and another firefighter went into the city to help at Ground Zero after 9/11.
Yoni Brook, a 19-year-old NYU student and a stringer for The Washington Post, had just gotten out of class when he rushed to Ground Zero to capture scenes from the destruction of the terror attacks.
"I saw the devastation, and there were firefighters looking for people and helping people who were wounded," said Brook, who snapped the photo of Sauer drinking. It would go on to be published in the Washington Post, a NYU newspaper and won an award.
Twenty-five years later, the photographer and his subject met on a beach at Point Lookout Friday, then went to Sauer's house in Woodmere, and remembered the day together.
For Sauer, now, 59, and Brook, 45, it was a bittersweet reunion.
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