Local towns reflect on what they learned after Hurricane Sandy

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of articles about Hurricane Sandy and the lessons learned during one of the most devastating storms to ever hit New Jersey, causing whatGovernor Christie has estimated to be $36.8 billion in destruction. Look for future installments in each forthcoming Sunday edition.

Although there are many lessons that local officials might take away from the devastation brought by last October’s Hurricane Sandy,Pequannock Township Manager Dave Hollberg may have summed it up best in three words: "Never assume anything." Even if it’s something that you thought was a sure thing.

"I don’t think I ever could have ever imagined that an entire town (would be) without power for the better part of two weeks in the United States of America in the 21st century," he said. "You always think you’ve planned for the worst case, and then something else comes up."

That has proven to be the main lesson emergency management officials learned: No amount of preparation is too much, and even that will not be enough when a mega-storm like Sandy comes hurtling up the coast.

Towns like Pequannock, which contains just under 14,000 people inside its 7 square miles, were hit particularly hard due to their picturesque tree-lined thoroughfares, which, after hundreds of those trees fell due to the gusts of wind measuring 50–80 mph, became tangled spider webs of branches, power lines, and telephone polls.

Precautions taken in the last two years — from the creation of the township’s emergency AM radio station to the installation of generators at the 10,000-gallon municipal fueling station on Alexander Avenue — proved invaluable, however, and led to several "sighs of relief" from officials as darkened commercial gas stations remained unable to pump what was left in their tanks.

The gas shortage, said Hollberg, was something that caught them completely off guard, and being as it was unclear as to whether it was caused by a minor supply disruption or a serious refinery issue, they didn’t have time to think a new plan through. Although it never got to the point where municipal and emergency vehicles were running low, it could have been markedly worse if the shortage had continued or the Alexander Avenue generator had failed.

"We didn’t really have a good contingency plan for that ahead of time, and we had to make it up on the fly," he said.

Backup plans were "dire," he said, and involved sending out the minimum of EMS needed for a given incident — think one fire truck per call — and the issuing of gas certificates to volunteers to ensure they could still reach their stations.

"The demand started to increase on that supply, and if weren’t going to be able to get anything in new. Then you had to be able to stretch that for an indefinite period of time," he said.

‘We should be able to…function as government’

A serious consequence of the outages, he said, was the near-total cessation of normal government functions, from tax collections to the holding of the national election, which was moved to Pequannock Township High School (PTHS) and held by the light of portable lamps with electricity provided by a massive Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)- provided diesel generator.

"We made that up as we went along," he said.

The storm illuminated not only how bad the overall electrical infrastructure is, said Township Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Coordinator Bobbi Jo Murphy, but also how sorely Pequannock lacked generators of sufficient strength at its critical buildings; after three days, the ones the town had were burning out.

"They’re not designed to run for two weeks at a clip," Hollberg said. "We ended up shutting all the lights off, shutting all the computers off, the police desk was running at the bare minimum…that’s no way to operate during an emergency. We should be able to continue our operation and function as ‘government’ in an emergency."

As a result, the township is now seeking funding from the federal Sandy aid declaration to purchase nine new generators of varying strengths to power everything from its water wells and pump stations to Town Hall itself at a cost of just over $960,000. For FEMA to fund the purchase, however, they must be diesel units; in what sounds like a failure in logic, the governmental agency has declared natural gas to be an "interruptible fuel source" because of the threat of ruptured gas lines during earthquakes.

It’s not exactly what they want, but Pequannock isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"If diesel is what they want and they’ll pay for it, then that’s what we’ll get," said Hollberg. 

"But if the feds don’t fund it…over the course of the next 10 years, this needs to be a priority."

One thing that functioned very well during the emergency, said Murphy, was the town’s communications — even though the back-and-forth with power utility JCP&L went notoriously bad, the town’s interactions with its departments and residents weren’t.

"We said from the start that this would be a crisis of communication, and that’s what it was," she said. "The AM radio station was a godsend, because phone lines went out, computers went out, but the all of our updates were on the radio…it ended up being a saving grace for us."

One call Hollberg would make earlier if he had to do it again was the decision to pull the EMS off the streets, he said. Many local departments heard the calls from Wayne, where an officer was critically injured in Packanack Lake when a tree fell on his cruiser, and the manager said Pequannock should have ordered its people back sooner.

"That’s a tough call to make, to tell people ‘Don’t respond anymore. Stop doing what you’re trained and paid to do,’" he said. "But we all probably should have made that call about a half-hour earlier."

‘It wasn’t really on the radar’

The situation was similar, if less dire, in neighboring Riverdale, which sits just north of Pequannock but, at 2 square miles, is much smaller and, with 3,500 residents, has less than one-third of the population.

Fire Chief and OEM Coordinator Dan Sturm said that although the town had prepared for wind, fires, and heavy rains, no one could have predicted the mass outage that lasted from between three and 11 days, depending on the neighborhood.

"It wasn’t really on the radar. We knew we were going to lose it in some parts of town, but we didn’t think we’d lose it for that long of a period," he said.

Because Riverdale’s lights came back on sooner, the gas shortage did not reach the straits it did in Pequannock — plus, Sturm said, arrangements were made with multiple local stations to assure that a portion of each delivery be put aside for the municipal vehicles, meaning that there was a reserve of about 2,000–3,000 gallons.

"We didn’t see that coming….we had no warning of a fuel shortage," he said.

The borough’s DPW and emergency responders fared well with supplies of material, however, although new generators for the Riverdale Police Department, water system, and the Loy Avenue community center are in the works. If they only receive FEMA funding for diesel units, Sturm said, conversion kits allowing for multiple fueling options will be installed.

In the future, he said, fuel stockpiles will be built up in advance of storms.

Sandy, he said, has made local officials realize that the purchase of critical backup systems can no longer be put off with promises of future funding.

"I think (Sandy) opened everybody’s eyes that we really need to be prepared… We’re at that point where we have to move forward with it. No more waiting," he said.

The borough is also reinstating its Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), a program that trains volunteers in disaster preparedness and imparts upon them basic disaster response skills such as fire safety, light search and rescue, and medical operations.

Twenty-three members have already been recruited, he said, and will soon be able to perform tasks like man shelters and do door-to-door notifications, thus freeing up firefighters and other EMS personnel to do the work they need to do.

"It’s just a manpower resource that we could use a lot," he said.

Pompton Lakes, which has been through several catastrophic floods in the past five years, coped with the storm well, said OEM Coordinator Al Evangelista — just 2.5 inches of rain fell on Pompton Lake, which had been lowered beforehand.

With the municipal vehicles fueling up at the county depot on Ringwood Avenue, the gas shortage was not a concern, and the regular Pompton residents’ experience with weather disasters went a long way toward assuring that things went smoothly.

"We’ve got a little bit of practice (with disasters)," Evangelista said, "and the response of our community to our reverse 911 calls really, really paid off. We kept (residents) in the loop as we went along."

Also, the borough’s Shade Tree Commission has been active in cutting down old, decaying trees that stood along the public right-of-way, which meant that fewer trees fell on power lines. As a result, the better part of the town did not lose power, he said.

‘Very little’ to be done

Even with its expansive amount of land (80 square miles) and its larger population of 26,000, West Milford seems to have experienced fewer problems than its down-mountain neighbors. According to Deputy Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Ronald Svrchek, the township’s issues stemmed from things that were out of its control, such as the battle to get power restored by its utilities.

Otherwise, the township OEM fared well, said Svrchek.

"We went through our Emergency Operations Plan, we had the appropriate staffing…we’d spent the better part of a week preparing," he said.

West Milford’s municipal fuel depots were kept topped off, he said, and although power was down for between 10–14 days in various spots, generators were maintained, and wear and tear was not excessive due to preventative maintenance performed by the DPW. However, he wants capital upgrades, such as the purchase of new generators and DPW equipment in the future, and an increase in staffing as well.

"It comes down to one word: preparation. You can’t run a 20-year-old bucket loader being held together by rust, and replacing equipment is what you’re supposed to do," he said. "But with a frozen tax base and no building available in this town, we’re strapped. We do the best we can, and we try to be prepared, but we’re at the northern tip (of the county) here."

And in the end, when it comes to disasters like Sandy, he said, there’s "very little" that can be done.

"You can prepare all you want but you’re never going to be prepared." he said. "We’ll continue to prepare…you have to anticipate the worst."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Teacher learns harsh lessons at Fredericksburg

Run your hand along the length of the reconstructed fieldstone wall that sits near the crest of Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg, Va., during a warm summer day in the middle of tourist season, and things will seem far too…perfect.

The angles are flawless, the grounds impeccably manicured, the weather too warm, the grass too green. There are no open fields left — like so many of the small villages near Washington, D.C., suburban sprawl has crawled past the town limits, and it laps around the base of the hills that are now home to condos and administration buildings for the nearby University of Mary Washington.

The casual visitor would be hard pressed to believe that anything of any importance has ever happened here, or that this sleepy little town along the Rappahannock River has ever been anything different than…well, a sleepy little town.

But then there are the cemeteries. Many of them. Willis Hill and Fredericksburg National, Shiloh and Fredericksburg City. It seems that one pops up on every corner, and the natural question is why such an impossibly small town has so many dead people in it.

Here, the focus sharpens on the real story of Fredericksburg, and what took place 150 years ago in front of this short, 3-and-a-half foot wall that now serves to separate the blocks of the buried from the blocks of homes on Littlepage Street and Kenmore Avenue, where regular Virginians go about their regular lives in 2013.

It’s here that so long ago, two great armies met on the ground that’s now home to Jake & Mike’s restaurant and the James Monroe High School football field and Pulliam’s Auto Center, and fought to decide the future of a fledgling nation that, with its back on the ropes, had turned on itself.

And for a 35-year-old schoolteacher from Pequannock, his life would change in front of that wall, which became the scene of one of the unimaginable slaughters in the history of war.

Moses Nelson Wisewell

According to Pequannock Township Historian Ed Engelbart, Moses Nelson Wisewell was born in Brandon, Vt., on May 15, 1827. Records from the town’s Historic District Commission note that he came to the bustling little town along the Pompton just prior to 1850 after having left a position as the schoolmaster of a military academy in Yonkers.

In those days, Pequannock was several times larger in land area but, with just 4,126 residents, had one-third of its present population. Wisewell had come to teach the area’s youth, and as was tradition at the time, boarded with the residents — in this case, Thomas and Hester Mandeville.

However, he found more than just eager students, and in what might have been a charming story, fell in love with Mandeville’s 18-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. The two were married in 1850 at the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains, which still stands on the Newark-Pompton Turnpike across from Town Hall.

Over the course of the next 10 years, the couple had two daughters as Wisewell pursued what Engelbart said was a "successful career" as the principal of the Pequannock Township School and "the academy," which was a tuition-based private school.

A year-and-a-half after the first guns had fired on Fort Sumter, Wisewell decided to enlist, and it’s likely that his education and apparent military background earned him a commission as the colonel of the 28th New Jersey, which, in the summer and fall of 1862, was being recruited from throughout Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Camden, and Gloucester counties. 

The 28th, a nine-month regiment, was officially mustered in on Sept. 22, 1862, with Pequannock’s adopted son in command.

There are not many descriptions of Wisewell’s character to be found in literature on the war — he was just another colonel among the hundreds. But according to John Young Foster’s 1868 book "New Jersey and the Rebellion," the New Jerseyan was a man of "fine intellectual capacity" who soon acquired "a marked hold on the confidence" of his soldiers.

That enthusiasm appears to have waned, however, when during a public address he made "certain offensive avowals" about the war and the ongoing governor’s race in his home state and "became obnoxious to a large portion of the regiment." Regardless, he retained his command, and his conduct in the future would show why.

The 28th was 940 strong when it left Freehold for Washington on the night of Oct. 4, 1862. It was attached to General Nathan Kimball’s brigade in General French’s division of the Second Corps of the northern Army of the Potomac, which by December was camped along the eastern side of the Rappahannock River, waiting for orders from commander General Ambrose Burnside.

It was Burnside’s first campaign at the helm of the hard-luck army, which had met with little but defeat since the war’s start. Abraham Lincoln had appointed him to replace the pompous, ineffectual George B. McClellan after the latter failed to purse Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the wake of the northern victory at Antietam. How Burnside would perform was unknown, but he met Lincoln’s major qualification of not being McClellan, and for the time being, that was enough.

The Union commander, like several before and after, sought to march directly on the Confederate capital of Richmond, which sits just 134 miles from Washington. Taking the lightly-defended hub of Fredericksburg, which is nearly equidistant from the two, was a necessary part of that plan.

Burnside moved fast, stealing the march on Lee and arriving at the town in mid-November. The Rappahannock, however, was too high to ford, and his army sat for three weeks while pontoon bridges were built and brought to the front.

This gave the southern army plenty of time to respond, and by the time Burnside crossed the river on Dec. 12, the Army of Northern Virginia had occupied a line of ridges southwest of the town — squarely between the Army of the Potomac and the Confederate capital.

The 28th crossed the Rappahannock on Burnside’s pontoon boats at sunrise on Dec. 12, and passed a bitterly cold night camped near the town before being called to arms on the fateful morning of Dec. 13.

History can only assume that Burnside, a poor commander who was a perennial loser in the war, did not understand what he was looking at when he gazed through his binoculars at the sloping heights and wooded ground that housed the rebel army. All his subordinates, however, did, and men on the northern end of the line saw all too well that Marye’s Heights, what with its sunken road framed by a stone wall on the near side, formed a nearly impregnable natural fortification.

This did not deter him. It should have.

At the gates of hell

On the morning of the 13th, southern General James Longstreet later wrote, the armies were veiled from each other by an "impenetrable mist" that hid guns and flags but allowed voices to carry eerily across the field with "almost startling" clarity.

The attack on the southern portion of the Confederate line began shortly after dawn, and met with some success before falling apart a few hours later. As that advance faltered, Kimball’s brigade — and with it, Wisewell’s 28th — received the order to fall in line and act as the tip of the spear for the assault on Marye’s Heights.

The 600 yards they had to cover before reaching the fortified wall was difficult ground, interspersed with houses, fences, and a canal that forced all the troops to funnel themselves onto three small wooden bridges to cross.

The rest was open, and every inch of it was covered by batteries of artillery. Confederate artillery commander Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander quipped that "a chicken could not live on that field when we open on it."

Longstreet, who commanded the defending troops, described the advance in his typically dry prose.

"French’s division came on in gallant style, but somewhat hurried. He gathered his ranks behind the swell of ground near the canal, and moved to the assault," he said.

And what an assault it was. According to Francis Augustin O’Reilly’s book "The Fredericksburg Campaign," the 8th Ohio was in front, with the 28th and 24th New Jersey behind them.

One Confederate, watching from a freshly dug artillery pit, noted that he’d "never witnessed such a battle array before," while another recalled "how beautifully" the Federals came on.

"Their bright bayonets glistening in the sunlight made the line look like a huge serpent of blue and steel," he wrote.

As soon as the northerners cleared the town, however, they received a rude welcome as the heavy guns roared to life. Cannonballs tore the ranks apart, and sent "arms, hands, legs, and clothing into the air." O’Reilly wrote that a shell decapitated the 8th Ohio’s flag-bearer, "leaving his blood and brains upon comrades and the flag."

Still the brigade moved forward, but when the quadruple ranks of Confederate infantry behind the wall finally stood and leveled their rifles at the lead regiment, the barrels of their guns became the last thing many a northerner would ever see. Men in the rear loaded for those in the front ranks, and rifles were passed back and forth simulating what would eventually be known as "machine gun fire." The results were ghastly.

"Hell erupted," O’Reilly wrote. "Cobb’s Georgians (behind the wall) stood up from behind their stone wall and unleashed a devastating volley that paralyzed the Yankees."

General Kimball rode down the lines, and stopped on occasion to address the men before reigning up in front of the New Jerseyans.

"Boys, we are the attacking brigade. I shall expect you to go ahead and open the first. Keep steady, aim low, and let every man do his duty….Remember, you are Jerseymen!" Kimball said. Later, O’Reilly wrote, the general would tell them that "they can’t kill all of you, but they may hurt some of you."

"I thought that was pretty poor satisfaction or comfort to us," one soldier wrote.

The closer the 28th got to the heights, the worse the situation got, and the regiment’s Lieutenant Colonel, Edward A.L. Roberts, later said that it suffered "a most galling and deadly fire of shot and shell," all the while bogging down in the mud that slowed their movement to a crawl.

As the bee’s nest of the bullets grew worse, the northern line curled and fell like "dry grass before the fire," one soldier said. Foster, however, wrote that the 28th moved on "in the face of a murderous fire…(and) pressed steadily forward until the plain was crossed and the foot of the first ridge was reached."

By then, their ranks were "terribly thinned," with one fifth of the regiment having been killed or wounded within minutes of starting the advance.

O’Reilly was harder on the Jersey boys, and wrote the "inchoate 24th and 28th New Jersey regiments quailed before the fire" before laying down along an exposed fold in the ground that left them pinned down and unable to retreat or advance.

"Bullets flew among their prostrate ranks, and their effectiveness diminished," he wrote.

It was here, O’Reilly reports, that a single Confederate bullet, made up of one-ounce of soft lead, finally found its mark, and struck Wisewell directly in the jaw. He would have to be carried from the field, his fate uncertain, and the regiment left without a commander.

His soldiers, badly shaken, "did not exactly run, yet they were very nervous all the time," and O’Reilly said that when three straight artillery shells landed amongst them with fearful effect, the virgin regiment finally broke and ran for the rear. Their leadership was also lacking, as Roberts, who assumed the command after Wisewell’s wounding, was later cashiered for evidently tendering his resignation "in the face of the enemy."

Foster paints a more positive picture of the 28th’s conduct, though, and wrote that "the command stood firm, deliberately opening fire upon the enemy from the shelter of a ravine, and holding the position tenaciously until night put an end to the conflict."

"Only the very highest courage could have held the 28th in the perilous position it occupied, exposed to all the fury of the enemy’s attack," he said. "From first to last, the men fought with the same heroism, the same cool determination, as the veteran troops around them.

It is unclear which account is more correct.

Several more Union assaults followed, and the slaughter continued until darkness enveloped the field. Finally the 28th withdrew, leaving 200 of its original 600 dead, but with its "standards lustrous with the halo of brave achievements." Many other northerners passed the night still pinned down, cradled between stacked corpses meant to block the bullets.

Burnside had wished to renew the attack in the morning and physically lead the corps he’d once commanded against the position, but his subordinates convinced him not to. It would be the last time he commanded the Army of the Potomac.

By the end of the day, the Army of the Potomac had lost 12,500 men. Somewhere between 6,000 to 8,000 lay in front of the stone wall on Marye’s Heights. No soldier had gotten closer than 50 yards before being gunned down.

Cheating death

After being carried from the field, Wisewell, by some miracle, survived his wounds even with the lack of antibiotics and general ignorance of medical procedures that abounded in 1860s America. Like any good New Jerseyan, however, he could not keep quiet when it came to his opinion of his commander.

"After Fredericksburg, he excoriated Burnside for his incompetence," said Engelbart, "and Burnside was ready to bring him up on charges. It didn’t happen, but he was more or less told to shut up."

However, he was promoted to brevet Brigadier General for his "gallant and meritorious service" at the battle, and was mustered out in July 1863. In just one fight, the schoolteacher-turned-soldier assured his place in history, small though it may be.

"His courage…was undoubted," Foster wrote. "And at the Battle of Fredericksburg, he led his regiment with great gallantry."

He was later made the military governor of Washington, D.C., and after the war, became a civil engineer and merchant. His obituary in The New York Times noted that he "built many railroads and was involved in many public works," and also obtained the first patent for Oleo margarine.

He became involved with trying to build a military academy in Pequannock that would be New Jersey’s answer to West Point, but due to a lack of funding, it was never built.

After his wife died in 1886, Wisewell spent an increasing amount of time in New York City, where he died two years later. He was brought back to Pequannock, and now lies in the graveyard of the church he was married in.

And even though his old regiment was full of those who only signed up for a nine-month fight, it would distinguish itself at the Federal disaster at Chancellorsville before being mustered out in NJ later that summer.

Foster, once again, wrote a fitting description.

"During the whole time that the 28th was connected with the Army of the Potomac, it held a position on the immediate front…and was, consequently, at all times exposed to attack by ‘raiding’ parties of the enemy. It is simple truth to say of the regiment that wherever placed, it did its duty courageously and efficiently, and that though serving the dark hours of the war, it never lost its faith in the Republic."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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The truth shall set you free

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." – Mark Twain. Or Winston Churchill.

No doubt you’ve seen it when you open your email — it’s always forwarded by the same folks, and it usually starts with a blaring headline like, "You’re not going to BELIEVE this one!!!!"

You open it, thinking, "Oh, I better open it then, maybe it’s a YouTube video of something cool like a dog shooting a rifle while riding on a horse," but you’re sorely disappointed to find that it’s a bit… political… in nature. How can you tell? Why, the first line, of course.

"OBAMA’S MUSLIM CURTAINS SHOW THAT HE IS GUN-HATING ANTICHRIST BENT ON DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA!!!!!!"

It’s all in capitals, and there’s a lot of exclamation points, because these things are exciting!

The subjects can vary, but they’re mostly about things like Jane Fonda beating American prisoners in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, Denzel Washington paying the entire cost of constructing a veterans hospital, or Obama acknowledging on video that he’s not an American citizen. (Surprise!)

Unfortunately, exciting though these stories may be, they’re not true. In fact, most aren’t even based on a kernel of truth and are entirely made up to inflame the passions of the uninformed and hopelessly gullible.

The misinformation hasn’t stopped there. Social media sites have allowed this plague to reach epidemic proportions. Think about it: how many times have you come across a meme of a Founding Father’s portrait with some political slogan plastered across it that has a hundred likes and 20 shares from those who aren’t even sure if what they’re seeing is a real quote?

Allegedly both sides of the political spectrum do this, but in my experience one side is far more willing than the other to reconstruct history via internet, and they are rarely called on it. It’s as if with the advent of the search engine, all source material has been burned, and all we have left is brainyquote.com. I’m not sure people understand how truly dangerous this sort of thing is, in that Orwellian "who controls the past, controls the future" kind of way. 

Think for a second what the power to attach your chosen phrase to anyone in history actually does — is there any more valuable tool in persuasive speaking?

Concise, witty quotes that prove a point while giving little room for retort are priceless when it comes to swaying opinions. In advertising they become catchphrases, in presidential debates, "zingers," and one need look no further than our own history to find examples of how small, quotable treatises like "Common Sense" and "The American Crisis" influenced the political discourse of the time and, by consequence, the history of the world.

That history, like a shadow dancing on the wall, is hard enough to grasp as it is because it’s cast by a candle that can be filtered and manipulated to serve this purpose or that. But if it can be blatantly rewritten like the ending of poorly done sitcom — and if we actually encourage its rewriting — how can we ever know who we are?

Think of it like this: everything we are as individuals is based on where we’re from and how we came up. It’s what our parents were like, what neighborhood we lived in, who our friends were, and what we’ve been through that shapes our personalities and, by proxy, our future. 

The nation itself is no different. The storms we’ve come through shine the light on where we are headed as a people, and to selectively change our back story is to rob the ship of its rudder.

So next time some asinine e-mail with a headline caterwauling about something that seems too ridiculous (or too good) to be true comes your way, take a second to do a little research before you hit "forward" or "share."

Go to snopes.com, or factcheck.org, type in what you just read, and see if it’s as real as the writer wants you to think it is. Consider it your civic duty, and a personal favor to all of history.

More often than not, you will be surprised what you learn.

And when in doubt, remember Abraham Lincoln’s words of wisdom: "90 percent of what you read on the Internet is BS."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Amputee Kyle Maynard proves yet again that there are ‘no excuses’

Bend down, put your hands on the floor, and bear crawl across the room. Just do it. Really.

Sucks, doesn’t it? It’s amazing the pain that this one simple, fairly natural movement can create in your shoulders, thighs, back, and just about everywhere else.

Now consider doing that for 38 miles, with a little slope in the middle that culminates at an altitude of 19,341 feet, and you’ll understand the magnitude of what 26-year-old congenital amputee Kyle Maynard accomplished last January when he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro — Africa’s highest peak — to become the first ever to do so without assistance.

The journey to the summit began seven years ago when a friend goaded him into hiking a small mountain overlooking Palm Springs, Calif. He’d just held a speaking engagement, he said, on the philosophies of his 2006 book "No Excuses," which chronicled his journey from being born with no arms or legs below the elbows or knees to becoming a football player, champion high school wrestler, and accomplished weightlifter.

Initially, he balked at the proposal, but his friend wouldn’t let it go.

"It was like a dare," said Maynard. "I was thinking in my head, ‘There’s no way I have enough time, I’ll be stuck up there with no clothes, no gear…’ and then as I was verbalizing these things, he said, ‘You just spoke about this. No excuses. Let’s do it.’ And it was awesome. It gave me the itch."

A few hours later, as he sat on the peak and watched a Cessna circle below him, and everything changed.

Seven years, a dozen preparation hikes, and scores of Crossfit workouts later, he began the 18-day trip up the tallest free-standing mountain in the world as a way to prove to the disabled — and specifically to veterans returning from America’s wars — that nothing is impossible.

Accompanying him were two veterans, Army Staff Sgt. Sandra Ambotaite and former Marine officer Chris Hadsall, who, according to the group’s mission statement, "deployed to combat zones and bear both seen and unseen scars from their combat tours." Also present was expedition guide Kevin Cherilla of the K2 Adventures Foundation, as well as a film crew from ESPN.

"Our goal was to reach the veterans that were laying in the hospital in Walter Reed or Brooks Army Medical Center that had recent injuries or burns," Maynard said. "It was to help them have some hope."

There was one other goal, too: spread the ashes of Corey Johnson, a Marine who had passed away in May of 2011, at the top of the mountain at his mother’s request.

"She said that Corey would like to be able to help in some way… and she asked if we would carry (his) ashes up," he said. Maynard agreed.

Two things about the excursion worried him: the sheer length of the hike, and the weather conditions. Although the weather would hold out, the distance proved hellish and forced Maynard to crawl through 12-hour days filled with boulders, ice fields, and uphill climbs.

"(It) was as bad or worse than I expected," he said. "The wear and tear on my body was the hardest part. I just remember several moments in days four or day five, laying down in my tent and crying… and going off in private to have those moments."

During those times, he forced himself to recall why he was there.

"There are so many brave men and women that go through their issues, they’re going through something way harder than I am, and they’re not giving up, so I’m not giving up," he said.

Nine days in, the team switched from the more gradual incline of the Machame route to the more direct (but far more hazardous) Western Breach as a way to speed up the hike. As Cherilla said in the ESPN video (which can be watched on YouTube), it’s "a big risk."

Maynard quickly agreed and fought through the pain as he nearly slid down steep slopes and had to attach chains to the specially made carbon-fiber shoes that covered the ends of his limbs to move in the snow.

He and his team reached the summit, and Maynard tearfully cast the fallen soldier’s ashes across Uhuru Peak, which is Swahili for "Freedom."

The experience, he said, was remarkable.

"That morning, you’re sitting there at the summit, above the clouds — we had to go through waist-deep snow to get there, which is neck deep for me — that was incredible," he said. "It was really just incredibly tranquil, so calm and peaceful."

Maynard, who had once again conquered that which had seemed invincible, hopes that his journey inspires others to similar ends.

"Over the course of our lives, there’s various times that are a call to adventure, and you’ve got to decide whether or not you answer it or whether you let it go," he said. "You’ve got to be willing to take the first step and take the leap of faith to do it."

I jokingly asked if we would ever see him on the slopes of Everest. Although he has other things on his list — he has "adventure ADD," after all — he is not nearly as hesitant as I anticipated.

"It’s funny, because our guide (Cherilla) said that the only way he would go back to Everest is if his kids do it, or if I want to," he said pensively. "He’s an amazing climber, and he’d be a great asset."

The wheels are already turning. With Kyle Maynard, that means "watch out."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/188159001_Maynard_proves_yet_again_that_there_are__no_excuses_.html?page=all

An Epicurean lesson courtesy of a hard year

FRIDAY JANUARY 11, 2013, 11:15 AM

BY  STEVE JANOSKI

"This is a year we'll never forget."

Every December, someone inevitably says this, but rarely is it true. 2012, though... this one might deserve it. Especially in New Jersey.

It started inauspiciously enough, I guess; no great, snowy winter, no wildly rainy spring to raise the floodwaters. All was serene, quiet.

It was summer's heat, though, that felt as if it brought the madness: the Aurora shootings, the burning of the Libyan embassy, the never-ending talk of economic collapse and a second recession. Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent blackouts. The absolutely brutal presidential campaign.

Then, as if that was not enough, there was the final blow: the bloody massacre at a Newtown elementary school that is still so difficult to comprehend, so horrifying, that no possible combination of adjectives can do it justice.

I will say it frankly: I have seen enough of this year. By far. And even though I do a moderate job at coping with it - mostly by writing this column - 2012 has proved as unnerving to me as it has to anyone else. Sometimes I too wonder if the world is going mad, or why so often the bad news seems to outweighs the good.

But even in this year that was blanketed in the worst that humanity had to shovel, there were moments of awe that proved we are still (I think) moving forward as a whole. Thank science for this.

The Mars Lander, appropriately named "Curiosity," landed on an alien planet and sent back information every day about a world that human eyes will one day look on firsthand. The Large Hadron Collider in Europe continued to amaze and performed test after test to slowly unlock the mysteries of the subatomic world and further blur the line where science and philosophy meet.

And in late October, a former Austrian paratrooper amazed the world by making a 24-mile freefall that proved that the human spirit is every bit as present (and important) as our intellect.

Then, of course, there were the smaller, more personal epiphanies that many of us came upon as a result of 2012's hardships. I learned that a world without electricity is not all that daunting (and not wholly unattractive) and that candlelight casts a far more gorgeous glow than an LED ever could. I remembered how dark the night actually gets and that nature not only does not really give a damn about us, but also has quite a bit more power than I recalled.

I learned that I need to get away from technology and Twitter and Facebook and phones, even though I love them, in order to quiet my own mind.

Now, as our calendars flip to 2013, let us not make the ridiculous resolutions that we won't keep or the promises to do that which we will never do; after last year, that should seem trivial and stupid.

Instead, let us pause just once to appreciate what is around us, whatever that may be - our youth and our strength, our age and accomplishments, our knowledge or wisdom. Just today, while things are still calm, because our lives so often end "en media res."

"Dum vivimus, vivamus," as the saying goes - "while we live, let us live."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/186260272_An_Epicurean_lesson_courtesy_of_a_hard_year.html

Serious about secession? How dare you

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2012

BY  STEVE JANOSKI

Most red-blooded Americans will be the first to tell you that democracy is the best form of all governments — until their favored party loses a presidential election. Then, all bets are off on what they will say and who they will curse.

I admit that during the darkest years of the Bush administration, I may or may not have been one of those people who doubted the efficacy of the democratic process, and I may or may not have had some choice words for the 50.7 percent of the population that voted to keep that man in the Oval Office.

But even then, I thought, what can I do? It is my country’s course, for better or worse, and I knew that inevitably, the pendulum would swing once again. Until that happened, I would see things through.

Eight years and one especially bruising election later, things have changed, and it seems that a certain segment of the population is no longer willing to follow the very fine American tradition of loudly griping while occasionally screaming, "I told you so" on and off for four years.

Thousands upon thousands of these disgruntled whiners have signed a number of petitions that have been pouring into the White House, with the aim of promoting the idea that their respective states should secede — secede — because of Obama’s reelection.

I’m sure at least some of the signatures are farces, included by caustic people like me who just want to a pain in the ass; I cannot say that I have not been tempted a number of times to sign the 100,000-person petition demanding that Texas secede.

And, I daresay an even larger portion come from broke, obese southerners who, despite being on disability or Medicare or Social Security, despise the federal government every bit as much as they rely on it. The signatures of these hypocritical louts should simply be laughed at.

But the most frightening, however, are the ones who think that secession is truly not only a plausible idea, but a good one. And believe it or not, they actually exist.

After such a prolonged and brutal election season, it doesn’t surprise me that people feel disenchanted. But the fact that these sniveling cowards wish to walk the child’s path of "I’m taking my ball and going home" is pathetic beyond comprehension and a disgusting insult to every man and woman who’s fought under the American flag in the past 236 years.

The petitions illuminate an incredible failure on the part of their signers to comprehend history; this dance has been done before, with terrible consequence. Make no mistake: hinting that this nation’s sons and daughters should be forced to go through the storm of civil war again is borderline treasonous — as is advocating secession in any way.

And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a sign of absolute, utter cowardice. Every single signee who is actually advocating separation from the United State of America is a coward, and we should all be ashamed that they ever considered themselves Americans in the first place.

They are weak, worthless mice who have soiled themselves in fear and decided that flight is a better option then standing and fighting it out in our legislators’ great halls the way our Founding Fathers intended. They are an abomination to the democratic ideal, and if I had my way, signing one single petition supporting secession would eternally strip them of their right to vote, hold public office, or lay their hands on an American flag.

While trust in government may be at historic lows (and that may be warranted after the past three decades), we are still the player on the world stage, and we've attained that position because over the past two-and-a-half centuries, we've held together even in times of great trouble.

That includes our first Civil War, the graves of which should serve as stark reminders of the fires that will inevitably test nations of the truly divided.

We would be wise to heed their lessons.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/182308911_Serious_about_secession__How_dare_you.html