Only four Sept. 11 firefighters remain at New York station that lost six in attack
By Joe Hallett
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
NEW YORK CITY — With its three-story red brick facade and a massive bay door opening to a single fire engine, not much has changed about dingy Squad 41 in the 96 years it has been a guardian angel for a poor slice of the Bronx.
That is, not much has changed on the outside.
Inside, the Squad 41 family marks time since Sept. 11, 2001, each member in a different stage of recovery, soldiering on with lives that have done nothing but change since six of the squad’s firefighters died in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
The family — current and former Squad 41 firefighters, widows and their children, surviving parents and in-laws — came together yesterday, two days before the fifth anniversary, to honor Lt. Michael L. Healey and firefighters Robert W. Hamilton, Richard B. VanHine, Michael J. Lyons, Thomas P. Cullen III and Gregory A. Sikorsky.
Just inside the bay door, a shrine with portraits and plaques reminds Steve Gillespie of his lost friends every time he backs the big engine into the firehouse.
“I thank each of them for bringing us back safely, because they’re always with us.”
After a memorial Mass at nearby Immaculate Conception Church, the family gathered for lunch at the station. Some have moved on with their lives, and some are stuck in that horrific day.
“Sept. 11 is going to be part of us forever,” said Theresa Healey, 46, Michael’s widow. “It’s never going to go away. You have to learn to live through it.”
Of Squad 41’s 24 members on Sept. 11, only Gillespie and three others remain in the unit. Five have retired, some forced by lingering physical and emotional problems common to first responders — acid reflux, asthma and mental stress.
A Fire Department of New York study released this year reported that firefighters who worked at the site lost lung capacity in the first year after the terrorist attack equal to what they might have lost in 12 years of normal duty.
“I feel I will die from it,” said retired Squad 41 Capt. Russell Vomero, 54. “Whatever I breathed in down there, whatever it was that I took in, will eventually kill me.”
For months after the attack, Vomero and other squad members spent countless off-duty hours digging through the World Trade Center rubble, searching for their six among the 343 firefighters who died.
Miraculously, after unearthing equipment and tools with Squad 41 markings from the south tower debris, surviving squad members carried what they believe to be the remains of the six out of the site in March 2002. Hamilton, VanHine and Sikorsky were positively identified, Gillespie said.
The ordeal sapped Vomero and other members of their good health and desire to remain firefighters.
“Since 9/11, I don’t watch or read any newspapers,” Vomero said. “I came here today out of respect for the wives. Otherwise, 9/11 is a day I don’t want to be conscious of. I want to wipe it out. I don’t know if that’s good.”
Gib Craig, 45, who retired from Squad 41 on April 25, 2005, after 18 years with the department, shares Vomero’s emotional place. Now living in Cape Cod, Craig did not attend yesterday’s memorial but said earlier by phone that he is having trouble overcoming the tragedy.
“It’s an everyday thing for me, an everyday thing, and I’m tired of it every day,” Craig said. “So, when everybody else gets their interest piqued at this time of year, it’s almost offensive to me. It’s like: You should have been living in my mind for the last five years.”
Craig, who has respiratory problems, said he is emotionally exhausted from Sept. 11 and rarely talks about it, but he consented to an interview because readers of The Dispatch, which has chronicled Squad 41 since the attack, have been so generous to the unit’s widows’ and children’s fund.
“Give me Sept. 10,” Craig said. “The job ended for me on Sept. 11, not on April 25, 2005, when I retired. I was done after Sept. 11. Done. Just done.”
Gillespie, 39, said he sees a therapist for his haunting memories and found after working two recent fatal fires that “I didn’t know if I wanted to do this any more.”
“It’s different for everybody,” Gillespie said. “You hear about guys who can’t sleep, but for me, whenever (the memories) come on, all I want to do is sleep.”
Two widows, Healey and Sue Cullen, 36, said nurturing their children through the trauma has helped their own recoveries. Cullen, a therapist specializing in grief counseling, married a firefighter in March, and Healey said she is “pretty serious with a wonderful man.”
Still, Healey and Cullen said that after being married 20 years and 5 1/2 years, respectively, they dearly miss their deceased husbands.
“I talk to Mike all the time,” Healey said. “He’s guiding us, kicking me once in a while and saying, ‘C’mon, get going.’ ”
Her three children, a daughter, 20, and sons, 22 and 17, gradually have overcome the raw grief, “but it was very difficult for them in the beginning. ... We talk about Mike a lot. We laugh and I’ll say, ‘Oh my God, you sound just like your father.’ ”
Cullen said her son, Thomas, was 2 when his father died and has no memories of him.
“It’s been difficult at times, exceedingly sad, especially when I talk to my son about Tom, because I feel the void of my husband in his life,” Cullen said.
“It’s still hard. I hate this time of year, because it opens everything up all over again.”