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-
No comments:
Post a Comment