After being stretched to my limits in 2001, I simply wanted to get back to something that resembled a normal way of life in the new year. My kids returned to their routines of school and swimming practices. At work, I was now just a battalion chief in Battalion 1. Though I would take a ride to Ground Zero during each tour to check on progress, my life appeared to be as it had been.
On Sunday, February 3, 2002, the guys in the firehouse kitchen on Duane Street were preparing the evening meal as they watched the Super Bowl. I was doing a night tour when I received a phone call from the FDNY dispatcher to report to the Pile immediately. The dispatcher wouldn’t give me any other information, which was a little strange.
As my aide drove me to Ground Zero, I did not say a word. In my heart, I knew they had found the remains of my brother. That was something every family desperately wanted and, at the same time, dreaded.
I had made peace with myself walking along West Street, understanding that my brother had been killed. But I knew finding his body would rip off the scab that had formed over that wound.
The winter night was cold and dark, but the WTC floodlights blazed on the landscape of rubble. When I arrived at the site, I was approached by Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter from Rescue 2, searching for his son, who’d responded as a firefighter on 9/11. Somberly, he told me they had found Kevin. I said nothing.
The sixteen-acre site, now several stories below grade, looked like rolling hills of rubble scattered with cranes, grapplers, and firefighters. The excavation had an eerie hum coming from the darkness and dust.
I walked slowly into the Pit, to a stretcher where my brother’s body was covered with an American flag.
Kevin had been found in the area of the North Tower, wearing his turnout coat emblazoned with his last name on the back. No doubt about his identity. Lying next to him was his eighteen-inch officer’s tool, a special crowbar carried by lieutenants and captains.
Battalion Chief Bob Strong greeted me. We had been lieutenants together in Ladder 128 and in the same study group for promotions. It was good to see a familiar face. I bent down to peel back the flag and look at my brother’s face one last time. I felt Bob’s hand on my shoulder.
“I don’t think you want to do that,” he said. Bob was right. Kevin’s body had suffered terrible injuries and five months of decay. I didn’t want that image to be the lasting memory of my brother.
Engine 33 had been called to respond to the Pile as well. As we gathered around the stretcher, all the heavy equipment shut down. Silence covered the Pile as we bent down to grasp the stretcher. I was at the head of the stretcher on the right, leading my brother home.
We walked through Ground Zero on a dusty dirt road and then up a ramp from the dark, cold pit, south toward Liberty Street. First responders and construction workers stopped their work and lined the ramp to salute or otherwise show respect. Engine 33 and I walked from the B stairs in the collapsed North Tower where we found Kevin, then past the ruins of the South Tower. In my turnout gear and white helmet, I felt the sadness of carrying my brother and the weight of command.
We loaded the stretcher into the ambulance, and I sat in the back with my brother. It reminded me of the times we used to ride in the back of the ambulance together as EMTs in the Rockaway Point Volunteer Fire Department. Kevin had been a teenager then. He’d died at age forty-two.
A police escort led the ambulance to the morgue at Bellevue Hospital as Engine 33 followed behind, its red emergency lights flashing. It was a bit spooky that we were going to Bellevue, since my brother had worked there as a paramedic before he came into the FDNY.
The ride to the morgue was the saddest time in my life. Tears streamed down my face as I laid my hand on my brother’s shoulder, totally overcome with grief. Through the rear window of the ambulance, I saw the lights of Engine 33, a reminder of how Kevin loved the FDNY and his firehouse. I wondered how I was going to be able to escort him into the morgue without breaking down.
I remembered being sworn in as a New York City firefighter in front of City Hall by Mayor Koch in 1981. I was given a badge in the traditional FDNY shape of a Maltese cross. The badge number was 1513, which to me had great significance. It was one of my favorite Gospel readings, John 15:13: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend.”
I wore that badge until I was promoted to lieutenant. When my brother Kevin became a firefighter, I arranged for him to have my old firefighter badge, 1513.
Suddenly, in the back of the ambulance, calm washed over me. I thought of all the times Kevin and I had sailed in Jamaica Bay on his eighteen-foot Hobie Cat sailboat. Life was so simple and filled with joy then, and we would fly one pontoon hull in swift winds. I almost felt the warm winds of sailing with my brother fill the back of the ambulance. My brother was home in my heart with my memories of sailing.
Now that Kevin had been found, we could have a proper funeral. On February 10, 2002, newly elected Mayor Mike Bloomberg attended my brother’s funeral at St. Margaret’s Roman Catholic Church, the first of many such services he would attend.
“I did not know your son,” Mayor Bloomberg told my parents. He referenced the motto on the face of the church, “Serving God and the Community Since 1860,” drawing a parallel to the sacrifice Kevin and all the firefighters had made. “On behalf of all the people of New York City, all we can say is thank you for giving us Kevin.”
I followed Bloomberg and thanked the mayor.
“Your presence here and your support means a lot to us, my family, and the Fire Department,” I said. I was glad he’d chosen to attend Kevin’s funeral, both for my family’s sake and for the morale of the department and the city.
In my eulogy, I talked about how much Kevin loved his family and his FDNY family. Then I told the story of our last ambulance ride to Bellevue and how I’d turned my grief into good memories with Kevin.
Several of Kevin’s friends and the officers of Engine 33 spoke. As the funeral ended, his FDNY brothers carried Kevin’s flag-wrapped casket through the church’s doors and hoisted it onto the top of an FDNY engine. My family and I walked behind the rig, followed by members of Engine 33 and flanked by marching firefighters and the Emerald Society band. The bagpipes and muffled drums played “Amazing Grace” as we moved slowly down 80th Street to St. John Cemetery, a one-block walk. Along the route was a line of thousands of saluting firefighters in uniform.
As we walked, I thought of the last time I saw my brother’s face. He had been so calm as he turned to lead his firefighters up the B staircase.