A blog run by Francois Ier junior and senior students of English +

       My hero is a man who died on 12 October, 2012. This person was my Yayo. To me and my family, "Yayo" is a grandfather in Spain because we are a big Spanish family and over there we call our grandfather like that. Yayo died at 84 years old. Generally this age is considered as a suitable age but when it's your grandfather and particularly someone you consider as your hero, whatever the age, the situation remains very difficult.

       Yayo was born on 17 February, 1929, in Allicante, in Spain and had a difficult childhood with his 4 brothers and sisters. As he always said, in Spanish of course, "My life began on the day I met your Yaya" ( Yaya is the same as Yayo but for the Spanish grandmother). Yayo met Yaya at 19 years old and remained married to her for 65 years. Now this is really something incredible. The first time he saw her, he knew it was the true love of his life. With her my Yayo had 9 children, 24 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren. I love my big family and for me and them, Yayo was the cornerstone, so his death was very difficult for all of us but he left this world in his home with all his family around him. 

       To me, Yayo was considered as a hero because when he arrived in France from Spain with Yaya and the first four children, he had no job, no money and didn't speak the language but all his life he was the best father and grandfather for all his family, all his life he was able to bring us plenty of love. My family and I have incredible memories with him. He was a real hero because I think in my life, I could never be like that for my family. My grandfather did not just give love but taught us a culture, a language, fraternity and a true sense of family. Alzheimer's has killed him but I hope not all his memories.

         Southward, towards Savoy, luggage in the boot, my whole family gathered in the car, and above all, the most important: a pile of U2 Cds that was going to assist us during the 8OO kilometers we had to bear. This recollection was the first element that suddenly loomed up, in front of my blank sheet, next to the assignment paper, and I am still not able to explain why. That seemed obvious to me : I had to choose Bono.

         My mom was about thirteen when she discovered U2 and fell in love with the band and especially the lead singer, Bono. She quickly looked up to him because of his voice, his looks at the time (quite old-fashioned nowadays) and spent her time listening to the band when she was a teen. «  Couldn’t even see the wall of my bedroom, your Gramps was in a fury every time he entered my room » she told me one day, gleefully chuckling. Thus, she conveyed this sort of cult to my brothers, and to me. Indeed, we always listened to U2, always heard Bono’s voice, which finally merged into our brains and became ‘’embedded’’ in our ears when we were kids.

           Bono, whose real name is Paul David Hewson, was born in Dublin in the early sixties and became the leader of U2 in 1976. This band rapidly became a world-famous one and gave concerts worthy of shows. (I attended one in Paris in July 2009, that was amazing and I will never forget this day). Anyway, all the previous things I said don’t make a hero of him, but what I am going to say does. Or, at least, to my mind.

            Bono writes most of his songs on humanitarian themes (I am thinking as it comes about "Walk on", a committed song written in 2000 that backs Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese woman who was under custody for almost 20 years in the nineties because the elections in her country were held and won by the national league for democracy (formerly led by her) and the military leader of Myanmar refused to step down and didn’t acknowledge the election results so consequently, the pro-democracy leaders were put under house arrest by the military), and he is involved in several philanthropic organizations such as Artists Against Apartheid, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, War Child and Jubilee 2000. He also, in his past, organized many benefit concerts, received many prizes (notably by J. Chirac, in 2003, who bestowed him the Legion of Honor), he met influential politicians such as Obama and tried to improve the world thanks to his fame and his money. (He even created jobs in Ireland to restart the local economy).

        I definitely look up to him because he is on all fronts, musical, political and humanitarian. He is not a simple star spending his money on cars, garments or huge villas. Putting one’s fortune to the service of the poor people is something very self-forgetful and public-spirited. (Very scarce in the showbiz sector) Bono is also my hero because his music is utterly profound (I am totally immersed when I listen to U2) and because he is committed in the world’s matter. He embodies the « man of peace » of his decade(s) and I admire him for his courage, his talent and his genius.

          It was approximately 3:00 pm in Paris (9:00 am in New York) when my father was in his office and started a meeting with his colleagues when another colleague entered his office and said that apparently there had been a terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in New York. My father and his group immediately went on the Internet and turned the TV on. They were all stunned. It was 3:15 pm in Paris and 9:15 am on the US East Coast. The second plane had just crashed into the South Tower. There were terrible pictures on TV which he remembered was CNN. He said it was very difficult to understand what was happening because some journalists talked about attacks in NYC and some others in Washington DC.

           He realized with pictures of the Pentagon burning that there were several attacks in parallel. He remembers that there was a big question mark about where President George W. Bush was. Journalists said that the presidential airplane “Air force 1” took off to put the US President away from terrorist attacks. My father finished his meeting and the group focused their attention on the Internet and TV. The most terrible thing, he said, was to see people jumping from the towers and firefighters climbing up the towers with all their equipment. Suddenly, he saw the second tower collapsing; he was in shock and never thought that the towers could collapse! He worried a lot about what was happening because he didn’t get the whole story before the end of the day. He remembers sending a message to his colleague and friend in New York but he didn’t get any reply. So he decided to call his office and got a secretary who was absolutely nervous and frightened. She was in the Upper West Side and told him that her director told her that it was forbidden to go home. As she was not directly living in NY City, she was prepared to spend a night in her office.

            Of course these events altered the course of his day because he was only concentrating on this disaster. Before that he did not take Al Qaeda very seriously but then he changed his mind. On the following days he got confirmation that there had been several attacks of planes then by young men from different nationalities who were apparently well assimilated to the American life. He remembers watching TV series on piloting schools where terrorists took lessons to learn how a plane was working, and also a new voice that was presented as the first public enemy: Bin Laden. The most shoking was Bin Laden’s capacity to explain how he had plans and had prepared the 9/11 attacks. My father also gets nervous about France’s future concerns on terrorism.

My aunt recalls that on 11 September, 2001, she was interviewing a Frenchman in New York about his factory in the USA, as she's a journalist. She wasn't far from the Twin Towers when the terrorist attacks began!

During her interview, she heard an explosion which she thought was a bomb. She also recollects somebody yelling «evacuate!» as nobody knew where the explosion had occurred. She ran down the stairs in order to go out rapidly. The elevators were unfortunately out of work that day. She said to me that people fell down and were all crying, shouting, terrified and their voices were shaky.

When she reached the street, she saw this tragic and terrible event. She had been struck by the smoke of the Twin Towers. It was a nightmare with people screaming, sobbing, crying and running everywhere. She remembers this dreadful day as if it was yesterday.

She couldn't go back home for two weeks (because of medical problems). When she tells us about her nightmare her voice still sounds traumatized.

Mathilde Furic