Men work to make sure victims of 9/11 are not forgotten
By James Fuller
Daily Herald Staff Writer
NEW YORK — Vinny Forras should be dead.
Forras, a volunteer firefighter in suburban South Salem, N.Y., went to ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001. His volunteer status detracted nothing from his desire to get there as fast as possible.
It did not diminish for the three weeks after the terrorist attacks he spent digging through the rubble.
His only departure from the site was to go home and wish his daughter Brittany happy birthday on Sept. 19.
The pile of rubble to sift through was daunting. The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in Manhattan by far, and they were only part of the debris. Much of the pile remained on fire for weeks. Navigating around it was guesswork much of the time.
“It was like ants trying to attack a mountain,” Forras said.
While scaling one of the steep slopes of the pile, he plunged into an abyss. He found himself wedged like a cork in a bottle at the bottom.
“The pile shook and that was it,” Forras said. “I was in. It was panic city. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I was stuffed in there like a cork. I was burning. My boots were melting because I was basically on fire.”
Images flooded his mind. The births of his three children came to him. All the sensory feelings. The smell of new babies surrounded him.
“I got to face death,” Forras said.
No one knew he was trapped. There was no way to communicate to other rescue personnel. There was no real equipment necessarily able to rescue him from his particular predicament either.
So Forras pushed and wiggled and dug himself free. It was an encounter with death that had a purpose.
Ground Zero pledge
In the aftermath of the recovery effort, Forras formed the Gear Up Foundation. The nonprofit is dedicated to bringing firefighting equipment to areas of the world that lack basics like fire trucks and ambulances. Gear Up relies on donations of funds and equipment from communities.
That’s where Barrington resident Joe Cantafio comes in.
Cantafio is a stock trader by trade, but a musician at heart.
Four years ago, he came to New York with his guitar and boxes of T-shirts on a mission with two purposes: raise money for families of fallen firefighters and, more importantly, help ease some of their pain.
It was there that Cantafio and Forras formed a friendship. Now Cantafio hopes to use his goodwill in the Chicago area fire departments to help keep the Gear Up Foundation thriving.
His first target is Schaumburg, where several firefighters connected with Cantafio during his local fundraising efforts for the families of Engine 55 four years ago.
Schaumburg Fire Department Lt. Rick Kolomay has agreed to be the Chicago-area coordinator for the effort. He spent part of Monday’s anniversary — “a wonderful day to start,” he said — appealing to area departments to donate equipment to the cause, even one set of gear.
“A lot of departments have recycled or older gear in storage or in a basement,” Kolomay said. “If every department donates one or two, that’s like 30 sets of gear to go to (a department) less fortunate. … It’s a big task, but we’ll get it.”
More 9/11 victims
Cantafio called Forras “just an unbelievable guy. He’s a hero. And what he’s doing with the foundation is just part of who he is. It’s from the heart. Everything he does is from the heart. What a great thing.”
Cantafio is considering a director’s position with the foundation. It’s partly because of Cantafio’s fundraising and event planning ability.
The other part has to do with building a leadership committee within the foundation that will outlast Forras, if need be.
He suffers a number of ailments that he traces back to his ground zero service and the “terrible, toxic cocktail” of chemicals and dust he breathed during the rescue effort.
Health and government officials proclaimed the air safe in the area at the time just after the attacks. That doesn’t explain why so many of the workers have lung problems and resulting health ailments that come with that.
“People are still dying from 9/11, even today,” Forras said.
Five years out from the terrorist attacks, Forras and Cantafio somehow find the inspiration to keep their healing missions going.
At night, the two men sit together figuring out their next steps with smiles on their faces and determination in their eyes. On the wall above Forras’ desk, in a home office cluttered with firefighting memorabilia, is a poster that describes their work: “A living memorial dedicated to doing great deeds around the world in name of those who perished in 9/11.”
Tuesday
Sept. 11, 2006: The Stories
Still seeking answers in New York City
People with suburban ties recall their role in September 2001
BY JAMES FULLER
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Monday, September 11, 2006
NEW YORK - The rising sun streaks the morning sky, and visitors stake out spots at ground zero.
TV news reporters are stationed on the rooftop of buildings overlooking this hallowed ground. They chronicle the attacks. They interview the widows, the rescue workers sickened by the toxic dust.
America still seeks answers.
That quest draws thousands, the mourners and the curious, to the site of the nation's most lethal terror attack. Almost 3,000 people died here. Nearly half were never recovered.
Lower Manhattan bustles again, but people slow down and look as they walk by. Even New Yorkers who didn't lose most-cherished loved ones can't forget.
Janet Stevens was compelled to do something that awful day five years ago. The former Lake Zurich resident went to see if anyone could use a 55-year-old massage therapist. She soon found a gig at St. Paul's, a church near ground zero.
Wednesdays from 2 to 8 a.m. for six months, she tried to rub away the horrors for the workers. She'd go home covered in ash and dust. But she'd never go to ground zero.
Today, she finally made it.
"It's not what you expect," Stevens said. "You can't prepare for it. ... All of us, we'd do it again in a New York second. We did what we had to do."
Gone, today, is the 10-story pile of steel, ash, glass and remains. Gone are the seas of letters, trinkets and "Have you seen this person?" posters. Gone are the triage centers, the morgues, the firefighters sleeping on the streets, using helmets for pillows, searching for their brethren for weeks without going home.
What remains is the pain.
Pat Gambaro, a former Wheaton resident, is executive vice president of operations for the New York Board of Trade, which lost five people on Sept. 11. It might have been six if Gambaro hadn't gone to visit his newborn grandson.
Including the New York Mercantile Exchange, he lost 33 colleagues. His cousin Anthony Colandonato, a Cantor Fitzgerald broker, was also among the dead.
"I don't cry," Gambaro said. "I didn't cry at my dad's funeral and we were closer than close. I don't show my emotions."
Today, though, he's tearing up when the 33 names are read at a commemoration ceremony at the Board of Trade. Wives, fathers, daughters too small to reach the microphone deliver messages of love to those lost. Rudy Giuliani speaks.
Gambaro, who got the market reopened six days after the attacks, will persevere.
What's less clear is how the shaking and tearful, here and at ground zero, will persevere without their loved ones. Five years have not filled the void.
Bells toll all day long, counting off the victims. Night comes. Hearts break anew.
Five years are in the books.
America has not forgotten.
People with suburban ties recall their role in September 2001
BY JAMES FULLER
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Monday, September 11, 2006
NEW YORK - The rising sun streaks the morning sky, and visitors stake out spots at ground zero.
TV news reporters are stationed on the rooftop of buildings overlooking this hallowed ground. They chronicle the attacks. They interview the widows, the rescue workers sickened by the toxic dust.
America still seeks answers.
That quest draws thousands, the mourners and the curious, to the site of the nation's most lethal terror attack. Almost 3,000 people died here. Nearly half were never recovered.
Lower Manhattan bustles again, but people slow down and look as they walk by. Even New Yorkers who didn't lose most-cherished loved ones can't forget.
Janet Stevens was compelled to do something that awful day five years ago. The former Lake Zurich resident went to see if anyone could use a 55-year-old massage therapist. She soon found a gig at St. Paul's, a church near ground zero.
Wednesdays from 2 to 8 a.m. for six months, she tried to rub away the horrors for the workers. She'd go home covered in ash and dust. But she'd never go to ground zero.
Today, she finally made it.
"It's not what you expect," Stevens said. "You can't prepare for it. ... All of us, we'd do it again in a New York second. We did what we had to do."
Gone, today, is the 10-story pile of steel, ash, glass and remains. Gone are the seas of letters, trinkets and "Have you seen this person?" posters. Gone are the triage centers, the morgues, the firefighters sleeping on the streets, using helmets for pillows, searching for their brethren for weeks without going home.
What remains is the pain.
Pat Gambaro, a former Wheaton resident, is executive vice president of operations for the New York Board of Trade, which lost five people on Sept. 11. It might have been six if Gambaro hadn't gone to visit his newborn grandson.
Including the New York Mercantile Exchange, he lost 33 colleagues. His cousin Anthony Colandonato, a Cantor Fitzgerald broker, was also among the dead.
"I don't cry," Gambaro said. "I didn't cry at my dad's funeral and we were closer than close. I don't show my emotions."
Today, though, he's tearing up when the 33 names are read at a commemoration ceremony at the Board of Trade. Wives, fathers, daughters too small to reach the microphone deliver messages of love to those lost. Rudy Giuliani speaks.
Gambaro, who got the market reopened six days after the attacks, will persevere.
What's less clear is how the shaking and tearful, here and at ground zero, will persevere without their loved ones. Five years have not filled the void.
Bells toll all day long, counting off the victims. Night comes. Hearts break anew.
Five years are in the books.
America has not forgotten.
Sept. 11, 2006: The Journal
Monday in New York
Daily Herald Staff Writer James Fuller spent the 9/11 anniversary in New York City observing the commemorations. Here are some of this thoughts from the day.
By James Fuller
Daiily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, September 12, 2006
NEW YORK - Day 2 in New York begins before dawn. Vinny Forras, my host, is scheduled to be on the “Today” show with Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw for this morning.
That means we’re up at 5:20 a.m. I’ve logged a grand total of 2¨ hours sleep. I find it hard to rest at Forras’ home. Not because it feels unwelcome, but just from the buzz of the household, with its two high school kids, two college kids, Vinny, his wife Monica and Joe Cantafio.
Cantafio is a Barrington stock trader and musician looking to add his knowledge and passion to Vinny’s Gear Up Foundation. Cantafio has experience raising funds and providing entertainment for the families of New York firefighters who died in the attacks, and for U.S. troops overseas. Vinny wants to bring much-needed fire fighting gear and training to communities in need around the world.
NBC is operating from the rooftop of the One World Financial Center across the street from Ground Zero. As soon as we step off the elevator at the 10th floor, I get a wakeup call about what the aftermath of Sept. 11 has meant to journalists. The Wall Street Journal also has working space on the 10th floor. There is a plaque on the wall dedicated to the memory of Daniel Pearl. Journalists are not immune to death and torture even as we try to find the meaning and rationale behind it.
Vinny heads off for some last-minute beautification with the makeup crew. I step out onto the roof to see the set. CNBC, NBC and MSNBC are all broadcasting within 2 feet of each other. Chris Matthews, Matt Lauer, Tom Brokaw and some MSNBC host I don’t recognize are all working their TV magic. Behind them is the acreage that used to be the World Trade Center buildings.
Ground Zero ceremonies are already beginning. Reflecting pools have replaced the 10-story-high, mangled mass of steel and rubble and bodies. People line up to say prayers, shed tears and drop roses of various colors in the pools in memory of the dead. The last time I was here, you could still taste the dust in the air, feel it on your skin. That was 2002, less than a year after the attacks. Mourning was still in full effect. Four years later, there are still some tears, but dark sunglasses seem to have replaced watery eyes for the most part. I crack a faint smile to the thought that perhaps some healing, some peace has finally come for those carrying the grief of Sept. 11.
I can’t hear what the newscasters are saying from my vantage point. I go inside and watch a monitor, waiting for Vinny to appear. While I wait, I continue to gaze out the window. Police and fire vehicles are everywhere, standing at the ready. On the wall are four clocks with different time zones. One is New York. One is Turin, Italy. One is Asia. The last clock is stuck at 5 p.m. It’s labeled “Beer O’Clock.” Who says journalists don’t know how to have fun?
I look back to the monitor when I hear Vinny’s voice. He begins to talk about his experiences at Ground Zero. At first he came to save people. There were almost none left alive to save. Just random abysses in the pile that held the promise of saving a life, but often revealed only death when explored.
I look at the New York clock again. It’s 9:11 a.m.
At our next destination I soon find that I may have misjudged the amount of healing that has taken place.
The New York Board of Trade and New York Mercantile Exchange host a memorial tribute to 33 traders they lost when the Twin Towers collapsed. Vinny will speak here, too. He talks about how key the perseverance of the exchange was for the economy and defeating the terrorists’ goal of crippling America.
“You showed them we’re Americans, and we’re not going to let you do this to us,” Forras said. “Never forget 9/11. Keep your loved ones in your heart always.”
Then it begins. The names of the fallen stock traders are read from Evan Bauen to Elkin Yuen. One group at a time their surviving family members come to a microphone and talk about loved ones. Some bring children who aren’t even tall enough to reach the microphone. They’ve lost their daddies. Some families share memories. But some come to the podium and can barely do more than cry. They quiver with emotion, and can’t keep it all in. When their tears come, so do ours. We don’t know them, but somehow, in the hours glued to television watching those planes slam into the towers, we’ve bonded with them.
A dad cries into the microphone about how much he misses his son. His daughter rubs his arm. Next is a little girl. Next is a woman who is more composed, or so it seems. Some fight the tears. They won’t let themselves cry. So we cry for them. Finally we come to Yuen’s name, the last on the list. A little girl stretches up tiny hands to the microphone and announces she is Yuen’s daughter. The crowd loses it. I look around and everyone is whisking away a tear.
This little girl will never know her father. She’ll have only stories and most of those may be about how her dad was murdered by terrorists. Now my tears are flavored with a hint of anger. It’s wrong for this little girl to be robbed of her father. I’ve time warped back to five years ago, sitting in front of my TV. Shock and sadness mix with a simmering fury as the images of the crashes and collapses, the running and screaming play over and over.
There’s no complete outlet for such emotions, and I didn’t even lose anyone I knew.
After the ceremony I chat with one of the traders at the exchange. She tells me how depression sank in after the attacks a little more each day. Even when the market re-opened, it wasn’t the same without her 33 fallen colleagues. The audible cues were out of whack. The pit calls weren’t coming from their usual directions. No one was standing in the right place. No one knew how to fill the voids left by those 33 traders. At night she’d go home, but she couldn’t sleep unless the curtains were shut tight.
“It was sick, but I couldn’t look out onto the city, and it was almost like keeping the curtains closed would somehow stop the planes from flying into my windows,” she said, asking not to be named.
How do you get past such a fear? How long does it take to get back to “normal?” And when you do, how do you rationalize for the instant loss of 33 people who used to be part of your life five days a week?
Maybe it takes five years. Time, and picking apart things to their basic parts has helped her.
“I woke up this morning thinking about something that my son said to me when he was little and got stung by a bee,” she said. “He said it hurt, but it also hurt more because I he didn’t know bees could hurt him. He thought bees were his friends.”
Travel is part of so many New Yorkers’ lives, but planes no longer fly in the friendly skies. America has not fully recovered from Sept. 11. The stock trader’s story reveals something to me about myself that I had not considered before. Americans love America. We’ve fought wars before. We’ve even been attacked before. But it’s never been about outright hate before. Hate for America’s beliefs, values and way of life led to mass murder. Maybe part of healing is realizing that not everyone loves America.
Daily Herald Staff Writer James Fuller spent the 9/11 anniversary in New York City observing the commemorations. Here are some of this thoughts from the day.
By James Fuller
Daiily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, September 12, 2006
NEW YORK - Day 2 in New York begins before dawn. Vinny Forras, my host, is scheduled to be on the “Today” show with Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw for this morning.
That means we’re up at 5:20 a.m. I’ve logged a grand total of 2¨ hours sleep. I find it hard to rest at Forras’ home. Not because it feels unwelcome, but just from the buzz of the household, with its two high school kids, two college kids, Vinny, his wife Monica and Joe Cantafio.
Cantafio is a Barrington stock trader and musician looking to add his knowledge and passion to Vinny’s Gear Up Foundation. Cantafio has experience raising funds and providing entertainment for the families of New York firefighters who died in the attacks, and for U.S. troops overseas. Vinny wants to bring much-needed fire fighting gear and training to communities in need around the world.
NBC is operating from the rooftop of the One World Financial Center across the street from Ground Zero. As soon as we step off the elevator at the 10th floor, I get a wakeup call about what the aftermath of Sept. 11 has meant to journalists. The Wall Street Journal also has working space on the 10th floor. There is a plaque on the wall dedicated to the memory of Daniel Pearl. Journalists are not immune to death and torture even as we try to find the meaning and rationale behind it.
Vinny heads off for some last-minute beautification with the makeup crew. I step out onto the roof to see the set. CNBC, NBC and MSNBC are all broadcasting within 2 feet of each other. Chris Matthews, Matt Lauer, Tom Brokaw and some MSNBC host I don’t recognize are all working their TV magic. Behind them is the acreage that used to be the World Trade Center buildings.
Ground Zero ceremonies are already beginning. Reflecting pools have replaced the 10-story-high, mangled mass of steel and rubble and bodies. People line up to say prayers, shed tears and drop roses of various colors in the pools in memory of the dead. The last time I was here, you could still taste the dust in the air, feel it on your skin. That was 2002, less than a year after the attacks. Mourning was still in full effect. Four years later, there are still some tears, but dark sunglasses seem to have replaced watery eyes for the most part. I crack a faint smile to the thought that perhaps some healing, some peace has finally come for those carrying the grief of Sept. 11.
I can’t hear what the newscasters are saying from my vantage point. I go inside and watch a monitor, waiting for Vinny to appear. While I wait, I continue to gaze out the window. Police and fire vehicles are everywhere, standing at the ready. On the wall are four clocks with different time zones. One is New York. One is Turin, Italy. One is Asia. The last clock is stuck at 5 p.m. It’s labeled “Beer O’Clock.” Who says journalists don’t know how to have fun?
I look back to the monitor when I hear Vinny’s voice. He begins to talk about his experiences at Ground Zero. At first he came to save people. There were almost none left alive to save. Just random abysses in the pile that held the promise of saving a life, but often revealed only death when explored.
I look at the New York clock again. It’s 9:11 a.m.
At our next destination I soon find that I may have misjudged the amount of healing that has taken place.
The New York Board of Trade and New York Mercantile Exchange host a memorial tribute to 33 traders they lost when the Twin Towers collapsed. Vinny will speak here, too. He talks about how key the perseverance of the exchange was for the economy and defeating the terrorists’ goal of crippling America.
“You showed them we’re Americans, and we’re not going to let you do this to us,” Forras said. “Never forget 9/11. Keep your loved ones in your heart always.”
Then it begins. The names of the fallen stock traders are read from Evan Bauen to Elkin Yuen. One group at a time their surviving family members come to a microphone and talk about loved ones. Some bring children who aren’t even tall enough to reach the microphone. They’ve lost their daddies. Some families share memories. But some come to the podium and can barely do more than cry. They quiver with emotion, and can’t keep it all in. When their tears come, so do ours. We don’t know them, but somehow, in the hours glued to television watching those planes slam into the towers, we’ve bonded with them.
A dad cries into the microphone about how much he misses his son. His daughter rubs his arm. Next is a little girl. Next is a woman who is more composed, or so it seems. Some fight the tears. They won’t let themselves cry. So we cry for them. Finally we come to Yuen’s name, the last on the list. A little girl stretches up tiny hands to the microphone and announces she is Yuen’s daughter. The crowd loses it. I look around and everyone is whisking away a tear.
This little girl will never know her father. She’ll have only stories and most of those may be about how her dad was murdered by terrorists. Now my tears are flavored with a hint of anger. It’s wrong for this little girl to be robbed of her father. I’ve time warped back to five years ago, sitting in front of my TV. Shock and sadness mix with a simmering fury as the images of the crashes and collapses, the running and screaming play over and over.
There’s no complete outlet for such emotions, and I didn’t even lose anyone I knew.
After the ceremony I chat with one of the traders at the exchange. She tells me how depression sank in after the attacks a little more each day. Even when the market re-opened, it wasn’t the same without her 33 fallen colleagues. The audible cues were out of whack. The pit calls weren’t coming from their usual directions. No one was standing in the right place. No one knew how to fill the voids left by those 33 traders. At night she’d go home, but she couldn’t sleep unless the curtains were shut tight.
“It was sick, but I couldn’t look out onto the city, and it was almost like keeping the curtains closed would somehow stop the planes from flying into my windows,” she said, asking not to be named.
How do you get past such a fear? How long does it take to get back to “normal?” And when you do, how do you rationalize for the instant loss of 33 people who used to be part of your life five days a week?
Maybe it takes five years. Time, and picking apart things to their basic parts has helped her.
“I woke up this morning thinking about something that my son said to me when he was little and got stung by a bee,” she said. “He said it hurt, but it also hurt more because I he didn’t know bees could hurt him. He thought bees were his friends.”
Travel is part of so many New Yorkers’ lives, but planes no longer fly in the friendly skies. America has not fully recovered from Sept. 11. The stock trader’s story reveals something to me about myself that I had not considered before. Americans love America. We’ve fought wars before. We’ve even been attacked before. But it’s never been about outright hate before. Hate for America’s beliefs, values and way of life led to mass murder. Maybe part of healing is realizing that not everyone loves America.
Sept. 11, 2006: The journal
Sunday in New York
Daily Herald Staff Writer James Fuller is spending the five-year anniversary of 9/11 in New York City observing the commemorations. Here are some of this thoughts from his first day in New York Sunday.
James Fuller
Daily Herald Writer
Posted Monday, September 11, 2006
NEW YORK - I awake this morning, Sept. 10, 2006, already thinking about Sept. 11, 2001. It’s been five years since I sat transfixed in front of my TV by the images of America being attacked. I was shocked. I was angry. And, yes, a little scared. No attack on America on that scale had ever happened during my lifetime. Pearl Harbor was just a story in my history books that seemed so long ago and so impossible to recreate.
Perhaps it was a bit of that lingering fear that causes me to put on my blessed medal of St. Christopher before heading out to O’Hare airport. I rarely wear it, but he’s supposed to protect travelers. It’s not Sept. 11, but the Orange Alert status at the airport reminds me that it’s close enough.
I sit on a bench in the terminal and watch the line of United Airlines passengers waiting to check their bags. If you’re at the end of that line, you can’t even see where it begins. I’m surprised how many people are willing to travel so close to a landmark anniversary for the attacks. But then again, it is Sept. 10. Maybe all these people are just trying to avoid traveling on Sept. 11.
Me and my beat-up, green suitcase are waiting for Joe Cantafio. Today we will travel to New York, back to the main stage for the horror of Sept. 11. I have not been there since July 2002.
I spent a week with Joe living with the men of Engine 55 in New York’s Little Italy neighborhood. I spent my days and nights trying to understand the emotions the men felt in losing five of their brothers when the Twin Towers collapsed. Joe spent his days and nights trying to heal that pain. Joe was a Barrington stocktrader by trade, but a musician by heart. He’d already spent months touring the suburbs of Chicago with his guitar to raise money for the families of New York firefighters who lost their dads, brothers, husbands and cousins on Sept. 11.
Joe, like many Americans, felt like he had to do something in response to the attack. In his late 40s at the time of the attack, the Army rejected him when he tried to enlist. Joe decided his alternative outlet was his music. So he went around the Chicago suburbs playing small gigs and selling T-shirts to raise money that would benefit New Yorkers. In choosing whom should receive the money, he randomly selected Engine 55 out of a hat.
It’s four years later. Joe is still on a mission. As we chat over some airport scrambled eggs, I find he hasn’t changed a bit.
Joe is sometimes criticized for his eye-for-an-eye reaction to the terrorist attacks. If his finger was on the red button, Afghanistan and Iraq would’ve been bombed into oblivion and any survivors would spend the rest of their lives chipping the resulting glass back into sand.
Joe is so unapologetic about his stance that he once walked out of a homily at Mass when the priest began lecturing about how the current war on terror is wrong.
“Jesus didn’t have to deal with suicide bombers,” Joe explains. “They’re killing themselves to kill us. The war is the lesser of two evils.”
Joe doesn’t even pull punches with his own family. On Sept. 9, Joe played at a “Family Freedom Festival” in Barrington with a strong military theme. At the same time in Oak Park, Joe’s nephew played in a band at a peace festival. Joe’s nephew believes the war is wrong.
“I told him we’re gonna take all of our missiles and tanks at our rally and point them right at him at his peace rally,” Joe said.
When we move to our gate, Joe spots three young U.S. Navy personnel coming through the security checkpoint. They’re on their way to Connecticut for more training. When Joe sees them in line to buy coffee, he springs up to pick up the tab. Joe lost a cousin who was fighting in Iraq to the war. In some way, these young seamen seem to be adopted children to Joe. It’s the same whenever he encounters a firefighter or soldier.
“Now they know a little bit about what the American citizen thinks about what they’re doing,” Joe explains.
As we board the plane, Joe tells one of the flight attendants his seat number and advises her he’s available and ready for anything that may happen.
Vinny Forras picks us up from LaGuardia airport. Vinny is why Joe is in New York this time. Tomorrow, Vinny will ring the opening bell at the New York Board of Trade. When I find out why Vinny was bestowed the honor, it makes perfect sense that he and Joe are teaming up.
Vinny was a volunteer firefighter serving out of South Salem, New York. On Sept. 11, he responded to the World Trade Center along with his full-time brethren. While working to rescue people in the pile, he fell into a cavern and was trapped. It took well over an hour to extract him because the right equipment was not available.
“The pile shook and that was it,” Vinny says “I was in. It was panic city. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I was stuffed in there like a cork. I was burning. My boots were melting because I was basically on fire.”
Vinny used that near-death experience as inspiration. He started the Gear Up Foundation to take fire equipment that’s being discarded and find new homes for it in areas with little to no equipment at all. That mission has taken him as far away as Ecuador to deliver that fire gear and train fire fighters.
Vinny’s work at Ground Zero has had unintended consequences. Five years later, Sept. 11, 2001, is still claiming victims. Someday, Vinny may very well be one of them. The air at Ground Zero has played havoc with Vinny’s health - so much so that he’s already worried about how much time he has left.
He’s asked Joe to get involved with the foundation because of Joe’s track record with being an apt fundraiser and organizer. Vinny is building a board of directors for the foundation that will be able to take over if he’s suddenly no longer around.
Joe serves a second purpose because of his connections with firefighters in Chicago and its suburbs. Vinny hopes Joe will help kick start an effort to get Chicagoland fire departments to donate their excess or used equipment to the Gear Up effort. Schaumburg is first on Joe’s target list of departments to give.
The banter between Vinny and Joe in the car shows me they’ve hit it off because their views on the war are so similar. Vinny’s son, Michael, enlisted in the Marines because of Sept. 11. Some parents would’ve tried to talk their son out of enlisting during and evident time of war. Not Vinny. When we arrive at his house, pictures of Michael in his uniform line the walls. Is he proud of his son’s decision to enlist?
“Oh my God, you have no idea,” Vinny responds.
Sept. 11 wasn’t about plane crashes. It wasn’t about some sort of freak accident. It wasn’t about heroic efforts.
“Sept. 11 was an attack,” Vinny says. “It was an attack against America.”
Vinny may very well be dying. His lung capacity is significantly diminished. His hair began to turn gray within weeks of the attack. He doesn’t have the same energy level. The chemicals he breathed into his lungs and swallowed everyday he worked on the pile are doing untold damage to him. This follows many affirmations my various levels of government that the air at Ground Zero was safe.
That would be enough to make anyone mad.
But factor in that he doesn’t get the same workman’s compensation the full-time firefighters receive. He has to go through insurance company doctors who always tell him nothing is wrong with him, then get overwhelming evidence to the contrary from independent doctors to get any assistance.
And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of President Bush. The walls of Vinny’s home have photos of himself shaking hands with the president. There are signed, personalized letters thanking Vinny for his service and continued efforts.
On TV interviews, you’ll never hear Vinny say anything negative about the president. All he asks in return his help with his health care and the medical needs of all the other volunteers at Ground Zero who are in his same situation.
“I blame the terrorists for this,” Vinny says about his health. “I’m assuming decisions were made for the good of Americans about work at Ground Zero and keeping the country going. Now Americans must make a commitment to take care of us and our families.”
At night, we go to Fox TV studios in New York. Vinny is interviewed about the health problems of rescue personnel at Ground Zero and Sept. 11 in general. His answers are never rehearsed. Having spent the past six hours with him, I now know they come straight from the heart.
The emotional impact of Sept. 11 on New Yorkers and people like Vinny is immeasurable. Those who deal with it the best are the ones who talk about it. Not all the time. Talking about it all the time brings the pain to a level of unhealthy obsession. Vinny admits that he feeds off interviews and the Gear Up Foundation like the one on Fox tonight to help him cope. They are distracting salves. They keep his mind from going back in the same way Vietnam War veterans have flashbacks.
“If I didn’t have this forget it,” Vinny explains. “I’d be a wreck. I’d be crying my eyes out at Ground Zero.”
Tomorrow, Vinny will go back to Ground Zero. Joe will accompany him, as will I.
My visit 10 months after the attack chilled me. I felt tears that just wouldn’t come to the surface. For others visiting the site, tears flowed unabated. I wonder what the morning will bring. I’ll pray tonight for the souls I felt there last time. I hope when I visit tomorrow I’ll feel a sense of peace.
-30-
Daily Herald Staff Writer James Fuller is spending the five-year anniversary of 9/11 in New York City observing the commemorations. Here are some of this thoughts from his first day in New York Sunday.
James Fuller
Daily Herald Writer
Posted Monday, September 11, 2006
NEW YORK - I awake this morning, Sept. 10, 2006, already thinking about Sept. 11, 2001. It’s been five years since I sat transfixed in front of my TV by the images of America being attacked. I was shocked. I was angry. And, yes, a little scared. No attack on America on that scale had ever happened during my lifetime. Pearl Harbor was just a story in my history books that seemed so long ago and so impossible to recreate.
Perhaps it was a bit of that lingering fear that causes me to put on my blessed medal of St. Christopher before heading out to O’Hare airport. I rarely wear it, but he’s supposed to protect travelers. It’s not Sept. 11, but the Orange Alert status at the airport reminds me that it’s close enough.
I sit on a bench in the terminal and watch the line of United Airlines passengers waiting to check their bags. If you’re at the end of that line, you can’t even see where it begins. I’m surprised how many people are willing to travel so close to a landmark anniversary for the attacks. But then again, it is Sept. 10. Maybe all these people are just trying to avoid traveling on Sept. 11.
Me and my beat-up, green suitcase are waiting for Joe Cantafio. Today we will travel to New York, back to the main stage for the horror of Sept. 11. I have not been there since July 2002.
I spent a week with Joe living with the men of Engine 55 in New York’s Little Italy neighborhood. I spent my days and nights trying to understand the emotions the men felt in losing five of their brothers when the Twin Towers collapsed. Joe spent his days and nights trying to heal that pain. Joe was a Barrington stocktrader by trade, but a musician by heart. He’d already spent months touring the suburbs of Chicago with his guitar to raise money for the families of New York firefighters who lost their dads, brothers, husbands and cousins on Sept. 11.
Joe, like many Americans, felt like he had to do something in response to the attack. In his late 40s at the time of the attack, the Army rejected him when he tried to enlist. Joe decided his alternative outlet was his music. So he went around the Chicago suburbs playing small gigs and selling T-shirts to raise money that would benefit New Yorkers. In choosing whom should receive the money, he randomly selected Engine 55 out of a hat.
It’s four years later. Joe is still on a mission. As we chat over some airport scrambled eggs, I find he hasn’t changed a bit.
Joe is sometimes criticized for his eye-for-an-eye reaction to the terrorist attacks. If his finger was on the red button, Afghanistan and Iraq would’ve been bombed into oblivion and any survivors would spend the rest of their lives chipping the resulting glass back into sand.
Joe is so unapologetic about his stance that he once walked out of a homily at Mass when the priest began lecturing about how the current war on terror is wrong.
“Jesus didn’t have to deal with suicide bombers,” Joe explains. “They’re killing themselves to kill us. The war is the lesser of two evils.”
Joe doesn’t even pull punches with his own family. On Sept. 9, Joe played at a “Family Freedom Festival” in Barrington with a strong military theme. At the same time in Oak Park, Joe’s nephew played in a band at a peace festival. Joe’s nephew believes the war is wrong.
“I told him we’re gonna take all of our missiles and tanks at our rally and point them right at him at his peace rally,” Joe said.
When we move to our gate, Joe spots three young U.S. Navy personnel coming through the security checkpoint. They’re on their way to Connecticut for more training. When Joe sees them in line to buy coffee, he springs up to pick up the tab. Joe lost a cousin who was fighting in Iraq to the war. In some way, these young seamen seem to be adopted children to Joe. It’s the same whenever he encounters a firefighter or soldier.
“Now they know a little bit about what the American citizen thinks about what they’re doing,” Joe explains.
As we board the plane, Joe tells one of the flight attendants his seat number and advises her he’s available and ready for anything that may happen.
Vinny Forras picks us up from LaGuardia airport. Vinny is why Joe is in New York this time. Tomorrow, Vinny will ring the opening bell at the New York Board of Trade. When I find out why Vinny was bestowed the honor, it makes perfect sense that he and Joe are teaming up.
Vinny was a volunteer firefighter serving out of South Salem, New York. On Sept. 11, he responded to the World Trade Center along with his full-time brethren. While working to rescue people in the pile, he fell into a cavern and was trapped. It took well over an hour to extract him because the right equipment was not available.
“The pile shook and that was it,” Vinny says “I was in. It was panic city. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I was stuffed in there like a cork. I was burning. My boots were melting because I was basically on fire.”
Vinny used that near-death experience as inspiration. He started the Gear Up Foundation to take fire equipment that’s being discarded and find new homes for it in areas with little to no equipment at all. That mission has taken him as far away as Ecuador to deliver that fire gear and train fire fighters.
Vinny’s work at Ground Zero has had unintended consequences. Five years later, Sept. 11, 2001, is still claiming victims. Someday, Vinny may very well be one of them. The air at Ground Zero has played havoc with Vinny’s health - so much so that he’s already worried about how much time he has left.
He’s asked Joe to get involved with the foundation because of Joe’s track record with being an apt fundraiser and organizer. Vinny is building a board of directors for the foundation that will be able to take over if he’s suddenly no longer around.
Joe serves a second purpose because of his connections with firefighters in Chicago and its suburbs. Vinny hopes Joe will help kick start an effort to get Chicagoland fire departments to donate their excess or used equipment to the Gear Up effort. Schaumburg is first on Joe’s target list of departments to give.
The banter between Vinny and Joe in the car shows me they’ve hit it off because their views on the war are so similar. Vinny’s son, Michael, enlisted in the Marines because of Sept. 11. Some parents would’ve tried to talk their son out of enlisting during and evident time of war. Not Vinny. When we arrive at his house, pictures of Michael in his uniform line the walls. Is he proud of his son’s decision to enlist?
“Oh my God, you have no idea,” Vinny responds.
Sept. 11 wasn’t about plane crashes. It wasn’t about some sort of freak accident. It wasn’t about heroic efforts.
“Sept. 11 was an attack,” Vinny says. “It was an attack against America.”
Vinny may very well be dying. His lung capacity is significantly diminished. His hair began to turn gray within weeks of the attack. He doesn’t have the same energy level. The chemicals he breathed into his lungs and swallowed everyday he worked on the pile are doing untold damage to him. This follows many affirmations my various levels of government that the air at Ground Zero was safe.
That would be enough to make anyone mad.
But factor in that he doesn’t get the same workman’s compensation the full-time firefighters receive. He has to go through insurance company doctors who always tell him nothing is wrong with him, then get overwhelming evidence to the contrary from independent doctors to get any assistance.
And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of President Bush. The walls of Vinny’s home have photos of himself shaking hands with the president. There are signed, personalized letters thanking Vinny for his service and continued efforts.
On TV interviews, you’ll never hear Vinny say anything negative about the president. All he asks in return his help with his health care and the medical needs of all the other volunteers at Ground Zero who are in his same situation.
“I blame the terrorists for this,” Vinny says about his health. “I’m assuming decisions were made for the good of Americans about work at Ground Zero and keeping the country going. Now Americans must make a commitment to take care of us and our families.”
At night, we go to Fox TV studios in New York. Vinny is interviewed about the health problems of rescue personnel at Ground Zero and Sept. 11 in general. His answers are never rehearsed. Having spent the past six hours with him, I now know they come straight from the heart.
The emotional impact of Sept. 11 on New Yorkers and people like Vinny is immeasurable. Those who deal with it the best are the ones who talk about it. Not all the time. Talking about it all the time brings the pain to a level of unhealthy obsession. Vinny admits that he feeds off interviews and the Gear Up Foundation like the one on Fox tonight to help him cope. They are distracting salves. They keep his mind from going back in the same way Vietnam War veterans have flashbacks.
“If I didn’t have this forget it,” Vinny explains. “I’d be a wreck. I’d be crying my eyes out at Ground Zero.”
Tomorrow, Vinny will go back to Ground Zero. Joe will accompany him, as will I.
My visit 10 months after the attack chilled me. I felt tears that just wouldn’t come to the surface. For others visiting the site, tears flowed unabated. I wonder what the morning will bring. I’ll pray tonight for the souls I felt there last time. I hope when I visit tomorrow I’ll feel a sense of peace.
-30-
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