For a number of years, the Dick Tracy comic strip has featured a memorial for the 9-11 incident on its anniversary. I was asked by Tribune Content Agency to do the memorial this year. In thinking it over, I recalled the fate of the 300 that defended the pass against the Persians, and drew the parallel with the slightly more than 300 that defended the Twin Towers against the raging fires. Both groups perished, but their actions have become symbolic for bravery in face of terrible odds. Hence, the borrowing from Simonides' famous epitaph. The truck from "Ladder 3" is at the 9-11 Museum in downtown Manhattan.

The epitaph has many translations, from the literal to the poetic. This particular translation came from, of all places, my late father. At one of our regular lunches out together in the years just before he died, I mentioned the Spartans' defence. He paused, and recited the epitaph as I have it here. This was highly unusual, since he was a structural engineer by training and profession, and normally did not show his literary side. It turns out he had had to translate that when he studied Greek, a requirement at Clongowes Wood College in Dublin, where he studied in the early 1950s.

Art by Charles Ettinger; Dick Tracy is a trademark of Tribune Content Agency