STEPHEN LEWIS looks at the bond of friendship and history uniting two cities on opposite sides of the Atlantic

COMPARED to the estimated $50-$100 billion cost of rebuilding a shattered New York - and of trying to rebuild the lives of families left bereaved by last week's terrorist atrocity - the £50,000 being raised by firefighters here in York and North Yorkshire is peanuts.

But to think of it in those terms is to entirely miss the point.

According to firefighter Jim Dawes, one of the men behind the collection, it is about far more than pounds and pennies. It is a hand of friendship and sympathy extended across the Atlantic to the bereaved families and colleagues of the men who died - and to the people of New York itself.

Jim says the most extraordinary and uplifting thing about the collection was the spontaneity and enthusiasm with which ordinary people responded - raising £21,000 in just four days.

"I feel proud," he says. "It's just been an amazing, spontaneous gesture from the citizens of York, a way of saying we are your friends.

"We only had to get off the fire engine and we were like a magnet attracting people. They didn't need to ask, they knew what we were doing and what the money was for straight away.

"It was old ladies, it was little kids, it was everybody. Hob Moor School said they would make a cake for us, and when we got there, we were amazed at how many cakes had been made. It was a wonderful thing. It brought a lump to my throat."

In a week of extraordinary emotions and continuing shock, the spontaneous response to the firefighters' appeal has been the most concrete manifestation of the huge wave of support, sympathy and grief the people of York and North Yorkshire have felt for their cousins over in New York.

For Lord Mayor of York Councillor Irene Waudby, the most moving moment came not during the three minutes silence observed throughout the country on Friday morning, but at the service of remembrance at York Minster on Saturday.

Almost 2,000 worshippers - among them many Americans - packed the great cathedral that morning to pray for the victims and their families. But it was when the Bishop of Tennessee, Bertram Herlong, spoke that Coun Waudby found herself reduced to tears.

"I had kept myself under control until then," she says. "But when the bishop spoke about how New York had been his parish, and then we had the US national anthem at the end...."

The messages of condolence - whether at the Minster, at the Guildhall, or on the Evening Press' own thisisyork website - demonstrate just how strongly the ordinary people of York share the Lord Mayor's grief, shock and sympathy.

At times like this, as we grope to express our feelings, we all tend to fall back on the simplest of utterances: words which, for all their apparent banality, express most deeply and sincerely the feelings we all share.

That's why, in the messages of condolence, the same words and phrases are repeated again and again.

"To the people who have lost someone in the disaster in America, my thoughts and my family's are with you," wrote Janet Caywood of Acomb. "While your heart still beats, your loved ones are with you and always will be."

"We have shed tears for you, now we send you our love, our prayers and above all we send you hope for the future, that you all have the strength to continue with your lives," said Barbara Burn, from Woodthorpe. And D Bowsley of South Bank, York, added simply: "My thoughts and prayers are with you."

Simple the words may be: but their power to reach out and comfort is very real. Among the messages on the Evening Press's thisisyork condolences website are some from Americans touched by the sympathy and support being expressed over here.

"Dear citizens of York," wrote Mike Kennedy, from New York. "From all of us in the USA to you - thank you for all your thoughts and prayers at this time."

It's only right and proper that the people of York - and the county which bears its name - should be thinking of the people of New York in their time of need.

The two cities do, after all, share a name, as well as a history and a common language and culture.

New York was founded by the Dutch on the southern end of Manhattan in 1624 - but in those days it was named New Amsterdam.

It wasn't until after the English expelled the Dutch in 1664 and Manhattan was permanently ceded to England that it was renamed New York, in honour of James, Duke of York.

Despite winning independence - along with the other American colonies - in the American Revolution and going on to become the biggest, brashest, most cosmopolitan city in the world, the people of New York never forgot the people of old York.

In 1924, a plaque donated "in a spirit of friendship" by the New York mayor to the city and people of York "from its Godchild" was put up in the Guildhall. It survived the blitz and is there to this day, hanging above the book of condolences that has been signed by so many in the last few days.

Coun Waudby, who wrote letters of condolence to both New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and to the US Embassy in London in the aftermath of last week's attacks, admits there is still a special link between the two cities.

Her message to the people of New York, she said, was simple. "We are thinking of you, our hands are stretching across the ocean to you. We are with you in spirit, and we offer all our prayers, our strength and our sympathy."

Last week's tragic events will only have strengthened the bond between the people of old and New York.

There could be no more potent symbol of New York's determination that it will be "business as usual" - and no more welcome signal that New Yorkers still feel a "natural affiliation" with the English city after which their own city is named - than yesterday's announcement that the New York Economic Development Council is going ahead with its plans to sponsor York Wasps.

In the light of recent events such a sponsorship deal may seem on one level trivial. But, as with the fundraising efforts of the firefighters and ordinary citizens of old York and North Yorkshire, it's the gesture that really counts.

While such a spirit of determination and friendship exists, the terrorists can never really win.

Updated: 10:36 Wednesday, September 19, 2001