See Newsday&#39;s latest news and stories related to 9/11 as New York City, Long Island and the nation mark the&nbsp;anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

9/11 Anniversary

Craig Schneider

So many stories about 9/11 are sad, but two Port Washington men share one that, whenever they tell it, brings a smile to people's faces. 
 Milton Josephs and John Chalker had two chance encounters — one in which Chalker went the extra mile to help Josephs in the harried days after 9/11. The&nbsp;other — 11 years later — was when&nbsp;they bumped into one another in a Port Washington diner, recalled that moment,&nbsp;and realized&nbsp;they lived in the same community. 
 &quot;We've kept in touch. We're good friends,&quot; said Josephs, 54. &quot;It's one of the strongest coincidences of my life. It's a 'feel-good' story from 9/11.&quot; 
<h3> The first meeting </h3> 
 In September&nbsp;of 2001, Josephs had recently moved from London to&nbsp;lower Manhattan. Then&nbsp;the planes struck and the towers tumbled. He had been in London tying up loose ends on&nbsp;his move. As 9/11 occurred he was on a flight here from London. It was turned around midflight.&nbsp;By the time Josephs returned to New York a few days later, the area around the World Trade Centers had become a militarized zone guarded by soldiers and police. 
 John Chalker was a Port Washington patrolman at the time, and a&nbsp;part-time&nbsp;member of the Army National Guard. His regiment — the 'Fighting' 69th Infantry — was mobilized and deployed to Ground Zero, he said. 
 &quot;We were the first soldiers in the war against terror. We were right there at the site,&quot; said Chalker, 69. 
 The Friday after the attacks, Josephs, just home from Britain, was walking toward his Greenwich Street apartment when he reached a checkpoint. There was Chalker, standing guard. 
 Josephs asked Chalker if he could go on to his apartment, a few blocks from the collapsed towers. 
 &quot;I hate to say this but I can't let you. That building was damaged and we're keeping people away,&quot; Chalker recalled telling him.&nbsp; 
 Josephs persisted; he brought up that he was a commissioned officer&nbsp;in the Royal Air Force in England. 
 That spurred Chalker to say his own father was an crewman on a B-29 bomber during World War II.&nbsp;If Josephs could produce a military ID, he'd take him.&nbsp; 
 Josephs came back the next day in military uniform with his ID. Chalker handed him a helmet&nbsp;and they walked up nine flights of stairs with flashlights&nbsp;in the dark — power was still out — to Josephs' apartment. Josephs quickly gathered clothes, toiletries and his passport and headed out to stay at the parents of his fiancee in Roslyn Heights. 
<h3> The second meeting </h3> 
 Years passed. Five years, 10 years.&nbsp;The two men's' second&nbsp;encounter occurred under far more pleasant circumstances, in a setting where so many important meetings happen on Long Island — a diner. 
 Josephs had married his fiancee and moved to Port Washington in 2002. The terror attacks changed the trajectory of his career, from working in human relations to emergency disaster planning at an insurance company. He then turned to teaching and school administration in Levittown.&nbsp; 
 Chalker, for his part, had served a year in&nbsp;Iraq in 2004-05, even though he was 52 at the time. 
 &quot;Somehow I passed all the training. I must be a tough guy,&quot; he said. 
 Chalker said he earned a Purple Heart after his Humvee encountered an &quot;improvised explosive device&quot; in Iraq. He credited &quot;being here&quot; to the vests sent by police — including from&nbsp;Long Island and the NYPD ---to the soldiers in Iraq, who placed the vests on the floors and under the seats of vehicles. 
 His injuries were not life-threatening, he said. 
 In the fall of 2012, Chalker was sitting on a stool at the Port Washington Diner when he struck up a conversation with a man a few seats over.&nbsp;It was Josephs. 
 Chalker commented on the man's&nbsp;British accent, and Chalker said to him that, in the aftermath of 9/11, he was a guardsman at Ground Zero. He&nbsp;had helped a Brit make his way to his apartment near Ground Zero. 
 That's when they put things together. 
 &quot;I looked at him&nbsp;for about 30 seconds, and realized he was the guy who got me to my apartment,&quot; Josephs recalled. &quot;Here we were, 11 years later, and the guy happens to sit down next to me.&quot; 
 That serendipitous encounter began a friendship that has lasted to this day. The two had that instant rapport that often occurs between those who've served in the military, Josephs said.&nbsp;They get together every few months. 
 Chalker helps lead VFW Post 1819 in Port Washington, and Josephs has become involved.&nbsp; 
 &quot;He can't be a full-fledged member&quot; of the VFW because he's British, Chalker said.&nbsp;&quot;But we include him in activities.&quot; 
<h3> Their lives now </h3> 
 At their meetups, the two men talk about their lives now, how Josephs divorced after 10 years of marriage. How they've watched Joseph's daughter, Lily, grow up. She's 19 now, and wasn't even born when 9/11 occurred. 
 &quot;He texted me the other day that he saw my daughter in Starbucks,&quot; Josephs said. 
 They talk about 9/11. Josephs recalls the &quot;utter horror and sadness&quot; of first seeing the massive pile. He recalls the &quot;sick sweet&nbsp;smell&quot; in the air and that, when he got into his apartment,&nbsp;his dark wood furniture&nbsp;was covered with a quarter inch of dust. 
 Chalker had stayed at Ground Zero until Thanksgiving that year before returning to the police force in Port Washington. He retired nine years ago. He's married. 
 The two men also talk about the imprint that 9/11 has left on their lives. Chalker came through a bout of cancer that he linked to his time at 9/11, but he doesn't like to talk about it other than to say, &quot;It's an awful thing.&quot; 
 &quot;I got the full dose of 9/11, from the attack site all the way to the Middle East in Baghdad,&quot; Chalker said. &quot;Then cancer.&quot; 
 Josephs recently signed up for the World Trade Center Health Registry, which was created&nbsp;to identify and register people who were exposed to the toxic substances around the downtown site. He plans to check into a terrible cough he gets three times a year, he said. 
 When they do get together, the two men sometimes share&nbsp;their story with others. 
 &quot;People tell me they get goose bumps&nbsp;when we tell them we bumped into each other 11 years later,&quot; Josephs said. 
 Chalker, for his part,&nbsp;said, &quot;It's one of the few positive stories about 9/11.&quot;

Long Island

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Brief encounter after 9/11 brews friendship after two men meet 11 years later at a Port Washington diner

Two men become friends after meeting at Port Washington diner 11 years after brief encounter post-9/11

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A chance encounter becomes a silver lining to a horrific day.&nbsp;Milton Josephs and&nbsp;John Chalker met days after 9/11 when Chalker helped&nbsp;Josephs to his Manhattan apartment. Eleven years later they bumped into one another at a Port Washington diner and realized they now lived in the same community.&nbsp;

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A silver lining to a horrific day

Port Washington

North Hempstead Town

Newsday

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David Olson

Six days after the 21st anniversary of 9/11, hundreds gathered Saturday&nbsp;in Nesconset for a ceremony that underscored how the terrorist attacks&nbsp;continue to quietly kill, in hospital rooms and bedrooms, of diseases that rob lives over years. 
 The annual ceremony honored the 384 people whose names were engraved&nbsp;over the past several days in the three large granite walls of 9/11 Responders Remembered Park, which memorializes&nbsp;responders&nbsp;who died of 9/11-related diseases, bringing the total to 1,990, said Judi Simmons, president of the nonprofit that oversees the monument. Most of the 384 had died over the past year. 
 “It took 11 years to fill the other side of the wall,” said John Feal, who helped create the memorial in 2011. &quot;It’s going to take four years to fill this side. The fatalities are coming quicker.” 
 The nonprofit plans to add two more walls, he said.&nbsp; 
 The increasing pace of deaths is because some diseases — especially cancers —&nbsp;caused by Ground Zero toxins take many years to develop, said doctors with the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides care and screenings for people with 9/11-related diseases.&nbsp; 
<h3> Names read at ceremony </h3> 
 The ceremony's centerpiece&nbsp;was the reciting of the 384 names.&nbsp;A bell rang after each name was read, as onlookers sat and stood silently, some&nbsp;weeping at times. 
 The responder’s occupation or affiliation also was read: police officer, firefighter, construction worker, sanitation employee, National Guard member. Some were simply identified as “volunteer.” 
 Edmonde Eades, 59, was one of them. His widow, Denise Eades, 65, said her husband was a ham radio operator and Red Cross volunteer, and he left their&nbsp;home, in Coeymans Hollow, near Albany, for Manhattan to help responders communicate. He died on Nov. 11 of lung and respiratory illnesses, said Eades, who traveled from her current home in Ocala, Florida, for the ceremony. 
 “He was just one of those guys who wanted to help,” she said. “Even after he got sick and had all those illnesses, he said he’d go back in a heartbeat.” 
 Debbie Slavin, 64, of Rockville Centre, said her husband, NYPD Lt. Zachary Slavin, had just returned home from an overnight shift when he heard about the attacks. After the second plane hit the south tower, he told her, “I’ve got to go in,” she recalled. 
 “No one called him in,” Slavin said. “He just knew this was a moment when the community, the people, the city, everybody, needed help. He knew he had to be there. He personally recovered two bodies. We have to remember, these people run to danger when everybody else runs from it.” 
<h3> Making impressions of names </h3> 
 Slavin was one of many family members and friends of responders who, after the ceremony, looked for loved ones’ engraved names and pressed wax paper against them, rubbing crayon or pencil to create an impression. 
 Ron Vega made impressions of his friend and co-worker Charles Kaczorowski,&nbsp;of Hempstead. The two worked together in the New York City Department of Design and Construction and then, in separate shifts, spent months at Ground Zero. Kaczorowski died in December of heart failure and&nbsp;had other diseases,&nbsp;including&nbsp;stomach and colon cancer,&nbsp;Vega said. 
 Vega, 64, of Long Island City, Queens, who was director of design and construction for the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan, has several 9/11-related illnesses as well, including post-traumatic stress disorder, asthma and gastroesophageal reflux disease. 
 He recalled how initially he and other responders didn’t want to talk about their illnesses. 
 “In my mind, it was an admission that the terrorists continued to win,” he said. 
 But as time went on, they began to discuss them more openly, Vega said. The wall is an important way to remember those like his friend Charles Kaczorowski who died years after the attacks, he said. 
 “None of these folks are on the 9/11 Memorial, but they’re here,” Vega said. “They have a place.”

Suffolk

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Wall in Nesconset adds nearly 400 names of people who've died of 9/11-related diseases over a year

Nearly 400 more names etched into memorial wall of people who've died of 9/11-related diseases

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More than two decades after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks,&nbsp;almost 400 names were added&nbsp;to the wall at the&nbsp;9/11 Responders Remembered Park in Nesconset on Saturday.&nbsp;John Feal, founder of the&nbsp;FealGood Foundation, hopes the park will be a lasting legacy to honor the victims of that day.&nbsp;

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Etched into history, names added to 9/11 remembrance wall in Nesconset 

Nesconset

Smithtown Town

Etched into history, names added to 9/11 remembrance wall in Nesconset

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Newsday Staff

Long Islanders paid&nbsp;tribute Sunday to the&nbsp;3,000 lost on 9/11&nbsp;but also remembered those who had answered the call to help, only to suffer and die later from poisons&nbsp;unleashed&nbsp;in&nbsp;the terror attacks. 
 They also&nbsp;pondered how to teach those born after&nbsp;Sept. 11, 2001, about an unfathomable tragedy that devastated families across the Island and throughout the region. 
 Militants from al-Qaida flew two planes into the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, killing 2,753 people, including 497 Long Islanders. Another 224 died in crashes of hijacked planes at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 
 Iron worker Kenny Brown, 49, spent two weeks at Ground Zero after the attacks.&nbsp;Before a ceremony on Sunday morning in Point Lookout, he noticed that there was plenty of blank space on a memorial wall. 
 “There’s still room for a lot more names,” he said. “And that's what I think about today. I think about the people that are still dying, not only the suffering back in the day, but the people who are still suffering today. It doesn't just go away.” 
 Brown, of Massapequa, said he is part of the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides free care and testing for those exposed to toxins on and after 9/11. 
 Tens of thousands of people who initially survived 9/11 either have died of diseases linked to Ground Zero or are battling them now. 
<h2> 'Our names could be on this wall one day' </h2> 
 At the 9/11 Responders Remembered Park in Nesconset, which is dedicated to responders who died of 9/11-related illnesses, 382 will be formally added to a memorial wall during a ceremony on Saturday. That will bring&nbsp;the total to more than 2,500, said John Feal, head of the nonprofit that runs the park. 
 Ed Braun, a retired FDNY sergeant who was at Ground Zero, stood with former colleagues in front of the wall Sunday afternoon. 
 “It’s a thought we have that our names could be on this wall one day,&quot; Braun said. 
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 Carrell Johnson, another retired fire patrolman, said he suffers from neuropathy, a nervous system disorder, which his doctor suspects is related to his time at Ground Zero. The thought of developing illness is always on the minds of 9/11 first responders, he said. 
 The children of FDNY firefighter Matthew Scalise and his wife Christine Scalise were each born more than a decade after 9/11. The couple drove from their Farmingville home to Eisenhower Park in East Meadow to show their 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son the 9/11 memorial wall there. 
 When his kids have asked him questions about 9/11, Matthew Scalise, 41, has found it hard to convey the gravity of the tragedy. And to do it in an age-appropriate way. 
 &quot;I tried to tell them a lot of people passed away that day. But what do you mean a lot of people? 'A lot' to an 8-year-old means like 7,&quot; Scalise said. &quot;So I wanted to show them the names.&quot; 
 Standing in light rain, the Scalises pointed out the names etched on the wall and explained that their grandfather, Christine’s father, Gary Gersitz, was one of the first responders who rushed to the site after the first plane hit. The kids had asked why grandpa, who now lives in Florida, is sad on Sept. 11. 
 Scalise said he tries to be sensitive when he speaks of the first responders who died that day. 
 &quot;I don't want them to be scared of 9/11 because of my job and what I do,&quot; he said. &quot;Hopefully they'll start to remember, and as they get older, they'll take it upon themselves to go pay respect.&quot; 
<h2> A place that holds special meaning </h2> 
 In Point Lookout, hundreds gathered&nbsp;on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean&nbsp;for the annual ceremony.&nbsp;Donna Steckman was one of them. For her, the Point Lookout beach holds a special meaning. It's where her father, William V. Steckman, took his family for a walk or swim before he was killed on 9/11. 
 Donna Steckman, 55, of Massapequa, said she prefers the annual ceremony on the beach to the commemorations in lower Manhattan, which she views as too &quot;overwhelming.&quot;&nbsp; 
 &quot;This is more peaceful because this is the beach we came to,&quot;&nbsp;she said, donning a black sweatshirt with a photo of her father. 
 Steckman, 56, of West Hempstead, was a transmitter engineer for NBC on the 104th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center. 
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 Many at Point Lookout held a long-stemmed white carnation and a miniature American flag as they listened to speakers. 
 One of the speakers was Phil Alvarez, a retired Suffolk County police detective whose brother, former NYPD Det. Luis Alvarez, of Oceanside, died of 9/11-related colorectal cancer in 2019. 
 &quot;Not a year goes by since losing Lou that the hurt gets easier,&quot;&nbsp;Phil Alvarez said. &quot; … Not a year goes by that I don't remember the courageous life that he led. I miss you, little brother. But as you used to say,&nbsp;I know you're still here, still breathing, still fighting within the lives and souls you inspired by your suffering.&quot; 
 Before he died, Luis Alvarez was a leading advocate in the fight for an extension of federal funding for 9/11 survivors.&nbsp; 
 Other 9/11 ceremonies took place throughout the Island, from Hempstead to West Babylon. In Islip Town’s Veterans Memorial Park, 90 flags were placed around a piece of World Trade Center steel. Each represented a town resident killed on 9/11. 
 A bell rang out as each name was called. 
 &quot;You think of what they’ve missed in all these 21 years,&quot;&nbsp;Elaine Schill Kurka, a retired registered nurse from Islip, said of the victims, which included the husband of a friend. &quot;Their family, their friends, their life, celebration, children, grandchildren.&quot; 
 Barbara Gathard, who was living in Battery Park in lower Manhattan at the time of the attacks, witnessed the horror of those falling from the burning buildings and later survived 9/11-related breast cancer. 
 Gathard, 75, and now a Bay Shore resident, said she sobbed while the names of victims were read on television Sunday morning. 
 &quot;I said, 'I really shouldn't be watching this,'&quot;&nbsp;she said. &quot;Then I said, 'No, you need to be watching this. You need to remember these people.'&quot; 
<h2> It doesn't get any easier </h2> 
 At Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, families and friends of people killed on 9/11 visited a monument that features the names of more than 400 victims. Near the monument are some of the graves of those lost. 
 Through a light drizzle, people paid homage by placing flowers or other cherished items around their loved ones’ tombstones. 
 Ralph Licciardi, 23, of Franklin Square, said members of his family laid gloves, wires and other tools on his father’s cemetery stone to commemorate his profession as an electrician. Licciardi’s father, also Ralph, was working in one of the towers when planes crashed into the buildings. Licciardi, who was only 2 when his father was killed, said he visits the site often. 
 “People always tell me he was very nice and that he was the funny one in the family,” Licciardi said. 
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 Joan York, of Massapequa, joined by her family, visited the grave of her late husband, FDNY firefighter Raymond York. She described him as a man who loved his family, country and the Yankees. 
 “He was just an amazing man, and I was never surprised that he was there,” she said. “Like most firemen, it’s just what they do. It's in their blood.” 
 Their son, Rob Szendrey, of Massapequa, was 11 when his father died. He is now an FDNY firefighter stationed in Astoria, Queens. Szendrey, now 32,&nbsp;said joining “the fire department for me was a way to keep his memory alive and keep it close to me.” 
 Raymond York was a few months away from retiring when he was killed, his family said. 
 Paul Buckheit, 71, of Bellmore, wore a shirt bearing the names of friends he lost that day. Standing in front of the grave of his longtime friend, Bruce Gary, a firefighter who lost his life on Sept. 11, Buckheit described him as a loving and strong man. 
 “Me and Bruce Gary, we raised our children together, we ran the little league for 20-some-odd years together,” he said. 
 Buckheit said the loss doesn’t get easier. 
 “Till this day I can’t watch film of the towers,” Buckheit said. “It’s hard to think about.” 
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9/11 ceremonies on Long Island remember the dead and those suffering today

'Still room for a lot more names': LI remembers 9/11 and those suffering today

Thousands gathered at ceremonies around Long Island on Sunday&nbsp;to keep memories alive and pay tribute to first responders on the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11,&nbsp;2001 World Trade Center attacks.&nbsp;NewsdayTV&rsquo;s Steve Langford reports.

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Remembering Sept. 11 at ceremonies across LI

Farmingdale

Islip Town

Point Lookout

Hempstead Town

East Meadow

Westbury

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Descendants of those lost on 9/11&nbsp;— some infants and toddlers, some not even born on the day of the deadliest terror attacks on U.S. soil&nbsp;— answered the&nbsp;plea to&nbsp;“never forget” Sunday, delivering&nbsp;some of the most powerful remarks during the&nbsp;ceremony in lower Manhattan to honor those killed 21 years ago. 
 The children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews of people killed on that awful day joined thousands of other mourners and dignitaries on a damp and gray September morning to remember the nearly 3,000 people killed&nbsp;on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 
 “Uncle Joey, although I never got to meet you, I’ve heard stories about your great sense of humor and how we would have had many laughs with you as our uncle,” Megan Henry said of firefighter&nbsp;Joseph Patrick Henry, after reading the names of some of those lost in the attacks. “We know you are always looking over us. Thank you for being our guardian angel and hero.” 
 Jimmy Riches, named after his FDNY firefighter uncle, said he wasn’t born when Riches died but feels his presence. 
 “You are always in my heart,” the boy said, “and I know that you are watching me.” 
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 The event was kicked off by vocalist Maya Chaterjee, a rising senior at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn who performed an operatic version of &quot;The Star-Spangled Banner.&quot; She was joined at Sunday’s ceremony at the National Sept. 11 Memorial &amp; Museum by past and present political leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. 
 Andrew Colabella, who said his cousin died in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, looked directly at the elected officials and criticized them for the divisive politics that have left the nation fractured. 
 “It took a tragedy to unite our country,” he said, sparking cheers from the crowd. “Back then, nobody cared if you were a Republican, Democrat, age, race, ethnicity — we were united. It took a tragedy to unite us. I want to remind all of you there — it should not take another tragedy to unite our nation.” 
 Blakeman attended Sunday’s ceremony to represent a community that was hard hit by 9/11 — nearly 500 Long Island residents were killed in the attacks — but also to <a href="https://www.newsday.com/911-anniversary/9-11-memory-fading-f3vcu98p">honor his nephew</a> and colleagues lost when the towers fell. 
 Blakeman was Port Authority commissioner in 2001; the agency lost 37 cops and dozens of other employees during the attack on the Trade Center. Blakeman’s nephew, Sgt. Thomas Jurgens, was a New York State courts officer providing aid to a badly burned woman in the south tower&nbsp;when the building collapsed. 
 &quot;It's always a tough day, a very tough day,&quot; Blakeman said. &quot;But it is also a day of reunion for my family and friends.” 
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 Jeh Johnson, one of former President Barack Obama's homeland security secretaries, said in an interview at a ceremony checkpoint that the United States &quot;is safer against foreign-inspired, foreign-directed terrorist organizations here in the homeland.&quot; Other challenges remain, the former secretary said, including domestic extremism, domestic terrorism and climate change. 
 &quot;I used to tell my people at DHS, ‘We have to try to stay one step before the problems, not always be one step behind,'&quot; he said. 
 Grieving family members placed flowers in the grooves between the etched names of the victims as water cascaded inside the twin memorials where the Twin Towers once stood. Many victims’ relatives clutched photos of their loved ones who died in the terror attacks, while others wore shirts bearing the victims’ names and faces. 
 Anthoula Katsimatides of Astoria came with a photo of her brother, John Katsimatides. John — aka &quot;Johnny Bodacious&quot; — worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and was on the 104th floor of the north tower when the building was hit, she said. He was 31 years old. 
 &quot;He was really fun, he was the wild man in the room,&quot; Katsimatides said. &quot;He was the first one on the dance floor and the last to leave. He lived to dance. We called him 'John Travolta.'&nbsp;He was loving and kind and so sweet.&quot; 
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 Jay Saloman wore a shirt embroidered with the name of his brother Wayne, 43, of Seaford. The only day he wore the shirt, Saloman said, was on 9/11. 
 “One day he went to work and didn’t come home,” he said. “I can’t believe it’s 21 years, put it that way … It’s just something you begin to live with. You always still somewhat expect that you’re going to see — that he’s going to appear one day.” 
 Saloman was there with his son, Jonathan, 21. The last photo the family has of Wayne, who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, is of him cradling Jonathan after his christening in Hicksville. 
 At 8:46 a.m., an FDNY firefighter rang a bell to commemorate when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north tower. The FDNY bell chimed at 9:03 a.m. to begin the second moment of silence, commemorating when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the south tower, and again at 9:37 a.m. to mark the moment American Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. 
 The bell chimed again at 9:59 a.m., when the south tower of the World Trade Center fell. Four minutes later, it clanged once more, this time to mark 10:03 a.m., when United Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 
 About a half-hour later the reading of names fell silent. It was 10:28 a.m., the time of the north tower's collapse, and an FDNY firefighter rang the bell again. 
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 Lourdes Melendez of Queens attended the ceremony with a framed photo of her cousin, FDNY firefighter Ruben “Dave” Correa. They were born two weeks apart and were close throughout their lives. He died on 9/11. 
 “He had a big mouth like me,&quot; Melendez said of Correa, who was with Engine 74 in Manhattan. &quot;He was a Marine and had three daughters and I miss him.” 
 Twenty-four minutes before the tolling of the first bell, Tom O’Gara, 38, of Kings Park, was queuing at one of several checkpoints to attend the ceremony, where his grandfather Philip Hayes, of East Northport, would be memorialized. 
 “Still the same emotions going on. Still very sad to come down here. It’s just something that brings the family together — which is nice — but we just cherish every moment together and try to remember him the best that we can,” O’Gara said. 
 “It’s always sad, but after 21 years it’s just a nice way to remember him: going to the museum, visiting his name every year on the memorial, we really just try to get together as a family,&quot; O'Gara added.&nbsp;&quot;It’s sad, but it’s still a nice way for us to get together as a family.” 
 And they still have memories of Hayes. Lots of them. 
 “Oh, man, I mean, he was just a great guy. Loved his family. Loved my grandmother. We used to have dance competitions. He used to have dance parties with me.” 
 Hayes, a retired FDNY firefighter, had been working as a fire safety inspector in the World Trade Center. 
 Saloman said that while many people stop and remember the grief and loss from 9/11, too many others appear to have moved on. 
 “Not that they’re supposed to remember, but there was a terrorist attack against our country that day,&quot; he said. &quot;Theoretically everybody should remember it, and take precautions and watch out and hope it never happens again.&quot;

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Mourners across the region gathered Sunday morning to mark the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and to honor the nearly 3,000 people who died. See photos from ceremonies in&nbsp;New York City and on Long Island.

See photos from ceremonies honoring those lost on Sept. 11, 21 years later

Photos: Remembering those lost on 9/11, 21 years later

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9/11 victims remembered 21 years later by the next generation

Those lost on 9/11 remembered 21 years later by the next generation 

Tom Brune

WASHINGTON — A group of children and spouses&nbsp;of the victims killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks 21 years ago said they will go to Washington Tuesday&nbsp;as the House returns to urge lawmakers to approve billions of dollars in compensation for their losses. 
 The visit to Washington by the group, with members from Long Island and across the nation,&nbsp;comes shortly after the annual commemoration of the worst attack on the United States conducted by al-Qaida terrorists that killed 2,977 people, including 2,753 at the World Trade Center and in lower Manhattan. 
 “We are coming there to mark the anniversary,” said Angela Mistrulli, 37, who grew up in Wantagh and lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. 
 Her&nbsp;father Joseph Mistrulli, a union carpenter,&nbsp;died while working at the Windows on&nbsp;the World restaurant in the north tower on Sept. 11, 2001.&nbsp; 
 Efforts in Congress to provide the funding have been caught in “a game of chess” between Republicans and Democrats, Angela Mistrulli said, squeezed out by a lack of Republican support of the National Defense Authorization Act and the year-end omnibus spending bill. 
 “Nine-eleven didn't discriminate between Republicans or Democrats, you know. Those were innocent Americans murdered,” she told Newsday. “We're asking them to come together and stand with the families that they left behind and do what's right now.” 
 The group of 18 family members — known as &quot;9/11 kids&quot; because of their ages at the time of the terrorist attacks&nbsp;— will meet with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other lawmakers, as well as officials at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, according to Mistrulli. 
 The group will urge lawmakers and policy officials to back a House bill that authorizes and provides funding for payments from the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund to 9/11 victims, spouses and dependents. 
 Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island) introduced the bill. Long Island Reps. Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City) and Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) co-sponsor it.&nbsp;Schumer, who supports the push, has arranged a meeting with the group that will include representatives from&nbsp;other Senate offices, an aide said. 
 Possible use of the Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, which uses money seized from terrorist states, has created an agonizing struggle among U.S. victims of terrorism across the world and from the 9/11 attack sites as they argue over who should be compensated and by how much. 
 And after Congress created that fund in 2015, a ruling by its special master resulted in&nbsp;family divisions by allowing payments to 9/11 victims’ parents and siblings —&nbsp;but not for 9/11 children and spouses because the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 had compensated them.&nbsp; 
 The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund final report said the median award stood at $1.7 million. Mistrulli said after deductions of pensions, insurance and Social Security death benefits, the fund paid on average only about $100,000 to each child of a 9/11 victim. 
 The Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund did make partial payments, some in the millions of dollars, for claims by parents and siblings of those killed in the 9/11 attack. 
 “I'm not saying the other families didn't have a loss. They absolutely did. I love my in-laws. They're magnificent, but they weren't financially dependent on my husband. My children are, I was,” said Janlyn Scauso, of Melville, whose husband, FDNY firefighter Dennis Scauso, died in the 9/11 attacks when their children were aged 13, 11, 6 and 4. 
 “Children of 9/11 struggle,&quot; said Scauso, who said she will be on the trip to Washington Tuesday. &quot;You know, this doesn't go away, the loss. Every year, you see the planes hitting the towers. Every year you have another milestone without your father,” 
 In 2019, Congress passed an act that overrode the special master’s ruling and allowed payments to spouses and dependents, and ordered the U.S. General Accountability Office to estimate the fund’s payouts to victims and the cost of compensating 9/11 spouses and children. 
 In February, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that evenly splits the $7 billion in Afghan funds seized by the United States between funding for humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan and paying claims of family members of 9/11 victims. 
 The fund already had paid about $3.3 billion to victims of international terrorism, such as those harmed by the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia in 1996 as well as siblings and parents of Americans killed on Sept. 11, 2001, the GAO said in an August 2021 report. 
 The agency&nbsp;also estimated it would cost about $2.7 billion to pay 5,364 spouses and children of 9/11 victims in lump sum amounts&nbsp;to catch them up with the payments in past rounds to the parents and siblings of those killed in the attacks.&nbsp; 
 The would mean the fund would pay about 5.9% of the claimed damages. 
 But 9/11&nbsp;spouses and children said that amount still would shortchange them compared with the percentage paid to 9/11 parents and siblings. 
 Juliette Scauso, who was 4 years old when her father died and now attends medical school in Dublin, said her mother really did not have a choice but to agree to take compensation from the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund with all its deductions. 
 “She was a single parent and a mother of four children. She needed the little amount of compensation that there was,” Juliette Scauso&nbsp;said. 
 “You know, people hear 9/11 and they think 9/11 families have been compensated&nbsp;millions and millions of dollars, and that's just so not the reality,” she said. 
 “I'm up to my neck in student loans,&quot; she said. &quot;My sister's a single parent —&nbsp;she lives with my mom still, and she's got an 11-year-old son. And my other sister's a teacher, and she's also paying off student loans.”&nbsp;

Politics

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'9/11 kids' travel to D.C. to press for billions in compensation for losses

'9/11 kids' travel to D.C. to press for compensation for losses

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A group of &ldquo;9/11 kids&rdquo; whose parents were killed in the WTC attacks will travel to D.C. Tuesday to lobby Congress to back legislation that would fund payments to 9/11 victims, spouses and dependents. Steve Langford reports for Newsday TV.

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Children whose parents were killed in the 9/11 attacks want Congress to release a portion of the $3 billion for losses

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CDC: Number of 9/11-related cancers have doubled in past three years

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Anthony M. DeStefano and Michael O'Keeffe

The unidentified remains of more than 1,000 victims found at&nbsp;the World Trade Center after the&nbsp;2001 terror attacks may never be identified through DNA, the findings of a&nbsp;new study by the New York City Medical Examiner's Office has&nbsp;concluded. 
 While officials in the office&nbsp;believe that advances in DNA analysis may make new identifications imminent,&nbsp;a statistical modeling study expected to be published&nbsp;in the journal Forensic Science International and prepared by OCME staff&nbsp;estimates that of the 1,106 still-unidentified victims, about 90% may never be identified, officials said. 
 “Regardless of the DNA testing we do, we will never [identify] all of the victims,”&nbsp;OCME forensic anthropologist Bradley Adams told Newsday. 
 Victims' families had a range of reactions to the study, just as many of them&nbsp;were getting ready to mark the 21st anniversary of the attacks on Sunday. 
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 Anthony Romagnolo, 28, of Miller Place, lost his father, Joseph Michael Romagnolo, an electrician under contract with Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the north tower when a plane flew into it. 
 He said it would be traumatic for his mother if remains were found and identified. &quot;It would bring up old wounds,&quot; he said. &quot;I've moved on. The bottom line was he didn't come home that day.&quot; 
 But he said his paternal grandmother&nbsp;would appreciate it because she's &quot;old school&quot; and it would be important to bury whatever was recovered.&nbsp; 
 The family had a memorial&nbsp;in Rocky Point without a body or remains.&nbsp;His father's&nbsp;1999 Harley-Davidson was front and center, where the casket would be. It was surrounded by photos and mementos&nbsp;from his father's life. &quot;We did as much as you could do for someone who was not there.&quot;&nbsp; 
 Mark Herencia, who lives in Washington, D.C., and lost his mother,&nbsp;said he had &quot;mixed emotions&quot; about the fact that no remains of his mother were ever found or identified. &quot;I know she was there,&quot; the former New York City resident&nbsp;said, &quot;and I know that she is gone.&quot;&nbsp; 
 Herencia's mother, Mary Herencia, was an insurance broker with Aon and worked in the south tower. Herencia said his mother's co-workers told him that they last saw her in the sky lobby,&nbsp;waiting for an express elevator on the 95th&nbsp;floor. She would have turned 47 years old on Sept. 19, 2001. &quot;I miss my mother every day,&quot; he said. 
 Herencia said he goes to the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial &amp; Museum every year.&nbsp;&quot;I figure that is her grave site. It's better than a cemetery,&quot; he said. 
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 Thomas Smith, a firefighter in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, lost his father, Kevin, who was an FDNY member with Hazmat Company&nbsp;1, Squad 288, based in Queens. Kevin&nbsp;Smith was supposed to be off on 9/11 but picked up a shift for a colleague. He was last seen alive in the north tower that morning, his son said. The unit was on a call in Manhattan when&nbsp;the planes hit and was one of the first units on the scene. The unit lost 19 firefighters.&nbsp; 
 The son said he spent about three weeks on the pile looking for his father and others, often sleeping at his father's firehouse. But remains were never found or identified. 
 &quot;There's no closure,&quot; Thomas Smith said. &quot;That has been the hardest thing for my family.&quot;&nbsp; 
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 He said he feels like the lockers containing unidentified remains at the memorial site in lower Manhattan are his father's grave. 
 The main problem is that scientists still face great difficulty in extracting usable DNA from the human fragments,&nbsp;which are being held in a special private repository at the National September 11 Museum complex in Manhattan. 
 Some fragments have no usable DNA because of the fires that burned for months at Ground Zero, the massive recovery and shifting operations that&nbsp;took place at the Staten Island landfill, as well as the destructive kinetic forces involved in the crash of the two aircraft and the collapse of the towers, Adams said. 
 The projections estimate that up to 75 new identifications will be made if viable DNA can be obtained from the remains, said Adams, who added those&nbsp;projections&nbsp;don’t take into account future advances in DNA technology that could improve the odds of identification.&nbsp; 
 The remains of 40% of the 2,753 victims who died at the World Trade Center&nbsp;have yet to be identified, officials said. It has been a percentage that&nbsp;has barely moved in recent years. 
 The last new public identification occurred in September of last year&nbsp;when the remains of Dorothy Morgan, a 47-year-old grandmother from Hempstead&nbsp;who died in the north tower, were identified. 
 Already in the past year, an updated method of preparing bone samples for testing allowed OCME scientists to identify 15 previously unknown World Trade Center samples and match them with victims who had already been linked to other remains, said Mark Desire, head of OCME’s missing persons and body identification unit. 
 But the big breakthrough looming in DNA analysis involves a system called Next Generation Sequencing or NGS, which the Department of Defense perfected, Desire told Newsday last month.&nbsp;Desire believes OCME is on the verge of a breakthrough in identifications with NGS. 
 “It is only a matter of time,” Desire said. 
 NGS&nbsp;is an advanced method of testing DNA samples, which, among other things, allows scientists to retrieve genetic materials from small areas of a cell known as the mitochondria. 
 OCME had some success this year in using NGS to identify remains of 10&nbsp;missing persons who were found in the city over the years. 
 Another study by OCME officials found that for World Trade Center victims —&nbsp;including firefighters and other first responders — the place where they died in the towers appear to&nbsp;have little bearing on the chance of&nbsp;having their remains identified. Of the 1,673 victims whose remains were partially or fully identified, there was only slightly higher rates of identification for victims who were below the impact zones of the hijacked aircrafts in both towers, compared with&nbsp;those who were at the jet impact areas or above.&nbsp; 
 “There was always the assumption that you had lower levels of identification at the [aircraft] impact zones,” Adams said. “The study showed this wasn’t true.” 
 But for those victims on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane that&nbsp;struck the north tower, and United Airlines Flight 175, which hit the south tower less than 20&nbsp;minutes later, the success rates for body identification were significantly different, the study found. Some 76% of the victims on Flight 11 [excluding the terrorists] had remains identified, but&nbsp;just 47%&nbsp;for Flight 175, according to the analysis, which was recently published in Forensic Science International.&nbsp; 
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 The Sept.&nbsp;11 families have been briefed by Adams and others from the OCME in an effort to explain the identification process and what the future might hold. 
 Mary Fetchet, who heads “Voices: Center For Resilience,” a support and advocacy organization for families of those lost on Sept.&nbsp;11, said the briefing&nbsp;shed light for the families on the fact that it will always be unclear exactly where the victims were when the towers collapsed around them. 
 &nbsp;“You don’t know if they went up, if they went down,” said Fetchet, of Connecticut,&nbsp;whose 24-year-old son Brad was killed in the south tower. 
 The recovery of remains presents families with the need to choose what they want to do next. In Fetchet’s case, she has received about a half a dozen of her son’s remains and is waiting to decide what their&nbsp;final disposition will be. 
 Some families have said they don’t want to be notified when there are additional identifications made of their loved one’s remains. Others want to know but ask for privacy and no publicity. 
 For Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, whose 35-year-old FDNY firefighter son George died at Ground Zero, she has received additional remains of his over the years and will continue to want whatever might be found. When George’s remains were recovered, Cain said, she buried them at St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale. 
 “It was probably the most important thing we thought about after the attacks and coming to reality that George was a victim,” Cain said this week about the cemetery burial. “It does bring peace and comfort.” 
 Former FDNY Chief Jim Riches of Brooklyn lost his firefighter son — known as Jimmy — and was part of a recovery team that&nbsp;retrieved his body for later burial at St. John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens.&nbsp;Riches said this week he feels lucky to have recovered his son but feels that other families will not be as lucky. 
 “I think the day is going to come when they will close the book on this [process],”&nbsp;Cain said. “I think after 21 years most people have come to accept it.” 
 Families often ask how much of a body was recovered and Adams said the OCME compiled body charts to come up with percentages of “body completeness” to answer such questions. 
 “The lower you were [in the towers], the more complete you were,” Adams noted.&nbsp;“The people at [plane] impact zones and above tend to have lower body completeness scores.” 
 The body fragmentation was a grim testament to the severe traumatic injuries the victims suffered. The bodies of only 20%&nbsp;of the victims from the towers were virtually intact, according to the OCME.&nbsp;One of the victims in the south tower whose body was found in a state of near completeness was Welles Remy Crowther, the fabled “man in the bandanna” whose exploits of helping people out of the tower — while wearing the bandanna — have been told in documentaries and countless stories. 
 Crowther, 24,&nbsp;died in the tower as he was helping others and several weeks later his body was recovered, recalled his mother, Alison Crowther, 72, of Nyack. 
 “It was somehow settling and centering that we know we were able to bring him back home and complete the circle,” Alison Crowther said in a telephone interview. “To have his body brought back to us was a closure of sorts.” 
 Crowther’s family had him cremated, and his ashes are in a special repository for such remains at the Grace Episcopal Church in Nyack, Alison Crowther&nbsp;said.&nbsp;It is a place she said she and her late husband, Jefferson, would go to spend time for reflection.&nbsp;Other families whose loved ones haven’t been identified don’t have that opportunity. 
 “My heart really goes out to families who never were able to receive remains.&nbsp;I know how cold it is not to have a place&nbsp;[to memorialize],” she said. 
 About the continuing effort to push the boundaries of science to identify the World Trade Center victims: “Bless them for keeping trying,” Crowther said.

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Report: Unidentified remains of 9/11 victims may never be identified

There isn&#39;t a day that goes by where Anthony Romagnolo doesn&#39;t think of his father, who died in the&nbsp;9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. After more than two&nbsp;decades, the remains of his father have not been identified.

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Father's remains still unidentified after 9/11 attacks 

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Matthew Chayes

Nowadays, fewer bells toll to commemorate&nbsp;9/11.&nbsp; 
 Fewer people muster at public ceremonies, and fewer of those ceremonies are being held.&nbsp;There have been so many deaths from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newsday.com/911-anniversary/health-care-issues-9-11-1.50351846">9/11-related ailments</a>&nbsp;linked to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/wtc/exhibition/toxins-and-health-impacts.html">Ground Zero toxin exposure</a>&nbsp;that the toll now eclipses the number killed the day of the attack. There are thousands fewer eyewitnesses to bear witness. 
 The call to “never forget” — the post-9/11 slogan that is at once command, cope, plea and hope — is being put to the test as that terrible Tuesday and its aftermath recede into history. 
 Sunday is the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — when terrorists conspiring with <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/al-Qaeda">the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida</a>&nbsp;flew two hijacked jetliners into the Twin Towers, killing 2,753 people. 
 <a href="https://projects.newsday.com/feature-grid/long-island/911-victims-memorial/">Nearly 1 in 5 of those who died were Long Islanders</a> — two-thirds from Nassau and a third from Suffolk. Hundreds more people died when a third plane crashed into the Pentagon, outside Washington, D.C., and a&nbsp;fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. 
 “Towns throughout the country used to hold moments of silence on 9/11, every single year like clockwork,” said Matthew Warshauer, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. 
 Some have announced those moments are being discontinued; some have ceased doing so without announcement. 
 “The idea of ‘we will never forget’ is simply an impossibility as memory fades — or memory never forms — of an event, because the next generation comes along,” he said. 
<h3> Fewer attend commemorations </h3> 
 “Never forget” is unlikely to mean perpetual commemoration, according to William Hirst, a psychology professor at&nbsp;Manhattan's New School for Social Research&nbsp;who studies memory. 
 He predicted that attendance at memorial ceremonies, such as those happening across the region Sunday for the anniversary, would continue to decline. 
 “We will probably end up stopping commemorating 9/11 at some point,” Hirst said. 
 For the families of those killed in the attacks, remembrance and grief evolve but do not end. 
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 Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, describing how his eyes were welling up in tears, still alternates between the present and past tense when recounting how his nephew, a court officer named Thomas Jurgens, 26, of&nbsp;Meadowmere Park in the Five Towns, was killed while trying to help evacuate Tower Two. 
 Jurgens’ badge and pistol were later found, but like <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/09/us/world-trade-center-victims-9-11-identified/index.html">about 40% of those who died at Ground Zero</a>, his remains have not been recovered and identified. 
 “It really doesn’t get any easier. It’s always a day that we dread, September 11th, because it brings back so many horrible memories,” Blakeman, back then a commissioner of the Port Authority, which owns the Trade Center site, said Thursday. 
 Fewer people than years ago attend the annual recitation of victims’ names at Ground Zero each Sept. 11 morning. Fewer also attend other ceremonies, such as the long-running tribute in Nassau at Eisenhower Park, where Blakeman plans Sunday evening to memorialize his nephew, spokesman Christopher Boyle said. 
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<h3> Few&nbsp;memories of slain&nbsp;fathers </h3> 
 For Rob Schardt, now 24, his memories of his FDNY firefighter dad, <a href="https://www.silive.com/september-11/2010/09/john_schardt_34_firefighter_ha.html">John, 34</a>, never returning home after rushing to Ground Zero are secondhand, vicariously through his mom. The boy was 3 that Tuesday, his first day of preschool. 
 “I don’t remember that vivid thing of her telling me, but over the years I asked, like, how I found out, and she said, ‘you kept asking me, and eventually I had to break the news to you that he wasn’t coming home anymore,’” Schardt said, adding: “I know she told me I cried and I was very upset for a long time, then I eventually grew to terms with it.” 
 Weeks before the attack, Rob was sitting on his dad’s back in Montauk at Gin Beach. 
 Schardt, who attends an FDNY luncheon on 9/11, says&nbsp;the shrinking of public remembrances doesn't&nbsp;faze him. 
 “It really doesn’t affect me too much. I really don’t think about it at all. I’m just really happy to be around my loved ones — be around my mom, be around my brothers, be around everyone in my family, really. It’s the coming of everyone together to honor his legacy is what matters to me the most.” 
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 <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/losing-parent-9-11-terror-attacks">Shay Mahon</a>, now 22, who grew up in Locust Valley and just moved to the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, has only photos and stories of her dad, 37-year-old Thomas Mahon, who worked on the 105th floor of Tower 1 at the stock and bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 employees in the attacks.&nbsp; 
 “I was so young. I was 21 months old. I have absolutely no memory of my dad,” she said. 
 She feels her father’s memory as she looks out&nbsp;into the Manhattan skyline and sees the newly built One World Trade Center complex or along&nbsp;MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village&nbsp;near her apartment and sees where her dad once lived, she said. His memory is both an inspiration — and a challenge. 
 “For me,” she said, “9/11 now is more of a day to honor him rather than grieve his death.” 
<h3> Legacy of 9/11 still ripples </h3> 
 <a href="https://www.sju.edu/news/20-years-later-ensuring-we-never-forget-911">Jeffrey Hyson</a>, an assistant professor of history at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia who has taught courses on public history and memory, said that for the victims and their families, there was&nbsp;a desire to “personalize those traumas to make clear that these people were not statistics, they were not merely part of some broad political or social cataclysm, but they had lives, they had families, they had stories.” 
 “But I think there’s also an understandable desire,” he said, “to go beyond that and to make sure that there are broader lessons learned and remembered from those, and that’s of course where things can get political: What are those lessons? Who are those lessons for?” 
 Even as memories fade, and fewer people are alive to remember that day and the dead, the geopolitical legacy continues to ripple across the United States and the world — in two American wars, in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Iraq-War">Iraq</a> and in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Afghanistan-War">Afghanistan</a>, that have&nbsp;killed hundreds of thousands,&nbsp;at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2021/09/07/air-safety-flight-9-11-anniversary/">strengthened airport checkpoints and restrictions</a>, in <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/long-term-effects-law-enforcements-post-911-focus-counterterrorism">constricted civil liberties</a>, in <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/long-term-effects-law-enforcements-post-911-focus-counterterrorism">a&nbsp;ballooned security state</a>, and in <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-09-09/us-politicians-reflect-on-how-911-affected-their-lives">a reordering of American politics</a>. 
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 Human memory — including of 9/11 — is not infallible. 
 Researchers looking at how 9/11 memories change over time surveyed&nbsp;people right after, a year later, three years later, and a decade later, according to one of those who did <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2925254/">the study</a>, Elizabeth Phelps, a psychology professor at Harvard. 
 “Most people who experienced 9/11,” she said, “they will tell you, ‘this is where I was, this is what I was doing, I remember exactly what happened.'” 
 But what the study found is that about 40% to 50% of those personal details change after a year, “even though people are highly, highly confident that they know exactly what happened.” 
 Past national traumas have faded from public memory — the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Pearl-Harbor-attack">Pearl Harbor attack</a>, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I">world</a> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II">wars</a>, the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm">Spanish flu pandemic</a>, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/04/kennedy-family-deaths-curse-history/">assassinations of the Kennedy brothers</a> and of <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr">Martin Luther King</a>. 
 The Civil War was the beginning of memorialization in the United States, and there are more monuments — tens of thousands nationwide — to that conflict than to any other event in American history, said&nbsp;Warshauer, the history professor at Central Connecticut State University. He noted that the proliferation of Civil War monuments, north and south,&nbsp;often&nbsp;go unnoticed. 
 “We probably pass by Civil War monuments, many of us on a drive-by on a daily basis. Yet we don’t even know what they are, because they become white noise. We’re too far out generationally from them — until something else causes us to see them in a different light.”

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Fewer 9/11 commemorations as distance grows from Sept. 11, 2001

Call to 'never forget' tested as 9/11 recedes into history

Edward J. Mardovich III, whose father was killed&nbsp;in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had mixed emotions as he attended the Town of Huntington’s 9/11 ceremony Saturday&nbsp;in Heckscher Park. 
 “We always said we should never forget, and it’s nice that people haven’t,” said Mardovich, 33, of Huntington Bay. “But it’s just the same flood of emotions every year. They always say time heals everything, but not when you have to relive it year after year.” 
 About 150 people gathered under the bright&nbsp;sunlight&nbsp;to honor the 43 Huntington residents who were among the 2,753 people who perished in lower Manhattan. 
 The centerpiece of the ceremony was the reading of the 43 names. Veterans placed 43 roses, representing every man and woman killed, at the foot of the podium. Terrence Farrell, 35, of Huntington, rang a bronze bell as each name was recited — including that&nbsp;of his father, Terrence P. Farrell, an FDNY firefighter who was 45 when he was killed. 
 “Every year, of course it is difficult,” Farrell said. “But I also think it’s important to remember those who are lost. My story is just one of thousands of stories of thousands of families that were affected that day.” 
 Farrell, third assistant chief of the Dix Hills Fire Department, where his father also was a firefighter, was 14 at the time. The memories of that day remain imprinted in his mind. 
 He recalled getting the announcement of the attacks while sitting in homeroom at St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington and initially thinking his father probably was unhurt, because his fire company, Rescue 4, was based in Woodside, Queens. 
 “As the night gets on, it’s, ‘Why hasn’t he called yet? Is he OK?’” Farrell said. 
 His father’s remains were found in the rubble on Oct. 26, 2001. 
 “We were able to find my father,” he said. “There are so many families out there who still haven’t been able to get a piece of their family members back. Those people went to work and never came home.” 
 Farrell is a high school history teacher. His students weren’t born when the attacks occurred, so he believes it’s especially important that “they can see the sacrifices the men and women made that day and how we all came together as a country afterwards.” 
 The nation’s unity after&nbsp;the attacks was on others’ minds as well, including that of Huntington Town Supervisor Ed Smyth. 
 “We should think back to those times and harness that unity in the times that we see now, [when] there’s so much division,” he told the crowd. “We can think back to the days following September 11 for inspiration.” 
 Mardovich was 12 years old when his father, then 42 and of Lloyd Harbor, was killed. Edward J. Mardovich II had been&nbsp;an executive with the brokerage firm Euro Brokers and worked on the 84th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. 
 Mardovich thinks of how much of his life his father missed, how he never was&nbsp;a grandfather to his three children. 
 The days surrounding Sept. 11 are&nbsp;— along with Christmas and his father’s Feb. 11 birthday — the most difficult of the year,&nbsp;Mardovich said. 
 “It definitely brings back all the memories and all the pain and horror of that day,” he said.

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Among the 43 names read at the Huntington Sept. 11 memorial service are the fathers of Edward J. Mardovich III and Terrence Farrell

At Sept. 11 memorial service in Huntington, reading the names of 43 residents who were killed that day

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Terrence Farrell, a third&nbsp;assistant chief&nbsp;of the Dix Hills Fire Department&nbsp;whose father died in the 9/11 attacks, rang the bell for each name read at a&nbsp;memorial service in&nbsp;Heckscher Park in Huntington on Saturday.&nbsp;

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Names of 9/11 victims read at Huntington memorial service

Huntington Town

Huntington

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When Robert Saleh walks onto the MetLife Stadium field on Sunday, he may look up and give thanks, &nbsp;find his parents and brother in the crowd and give them a big smile and nod,&nbsp;look down in remembrance of those lost, or he may just reflect on his life and shed some tears. 
 The Jets open the regular season at home -- on Sept. 11, a day filled with a range of emotions for everyone. Saleh may have to manage his emotions on an afternoon when he already has so much to manage. 
 Saleh, 43, would not be in the NFL nor in his second season as the head coach of the Jets if not for the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. 
 “It is full circle because 9-11 triggered a life-changing thought for me in terms of pursuing what I love rather than chasing money,” Saleh told Newsday this week. 
 He was a finance major and just accepted a job as a credit analyst in his native Michigan. Then his life, like so many others on that day, took a dramatic turn. 
 Saleh’s older brother, David, was on the 61st floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in his second day of training for Morgan Stanley. 
 After terrorists &nbsp;hijacked a commercial jetliner and flew it into the North Tower, David evacuated his building. He made it out, but it was hours before he was able to reach his family to tell them he was safe. David will be in attendance for Sunday’s game against the Ravens. 
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 The thought of nearly losing his brother made Saleh, then 22, re-evaluate what he was doing. He did a lot of soul-searching in the days and weeks following the Sept. 11 attack. Saleh decided that life is too short to not do what he loves, and he left corporate America for football. He hunted down that career the way he asks his defensive linemen to hunt quarterbacks. 
 “Through tragedy it was an opportunity to self-reflect,” Saleh said, “and really with the support of my family I was afforded the opportunity to chase something that a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford to even attempt. 
 “Won a world championship with Seattle and now here we are ...&nbsp; I’m fortunate to be one of 32 [NFL head coaches] in New York. I’m not sure how it’s going to hit on Sunday, but it is full circle.” 
<h3> Back in Michigan </h3> 
 Saleh attended Northern Michigan where he played tight end and studied finance. He was set to begin his &nbsp;financial career with Comerica Bank in Detroit when the &nbsp;United States came under attack 21 years ago. 
 That morning when he walked into his parents’ home in Dearborn, Michigan, Saleh didn’t know yet what happened some 600-plus miles East. 
 He &nbsp;went into the TV room and saw his parents, Sam and Fatin, watching in fear and horror. 
 “My mom is crying and &nbsp;my dad is pale-faced,” Saleh said. “I still had no clue what happened. I looked at the TV and my dad explains to me what’s happening. Within 20 minutes, the second tower gets hit and my mom just goes berserk. 
 “If I wanted to see what it would look like if my mom lost one of us, that was that moment. Thankfully my brother got out, he got home.” 
 Saleh eventually &nbsp;joined Comerica's commercial lending department -- his first job. His family is in the real estate industry, so those connections led to their clients going to Saleh &nbsp;to seek a loan. 
 The &nbsp;salary was good, and Saleh was putting his degree to use. &nbsp;But he wasn’t happy. Something was missing. Football. 
 As &nbsp;the college and pro football seasons progressed, Saleh grew more and more uneasy about the path he was on, and his&nbsp;soul-searching was at an all-time high. 
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 “It was the first time I had been away from football since I was 5 years old,” Saleh said. “I just questioned whether or not I was where I was supposed to be. Was I pursuing money? Did I chase what I wanted? What I wanted was to try to coach football.” 
 Finally, Saleh broke down and broke away from the banking world. 
 It happened not long after Tom Brady led the Patriots to the Super Bowl victory over the Rams in 2002. Saleh was in his cubicle at Comerica and called his brother, David, and was sobbing. He made his decision to turn to football. 
 “Remember when your mom used to hit you when you were younger and you’d get hiccups because you were crying so hard -- that’s what happened,” Saleh said. “I just had a breakdown at my cubicle and that’s the type of crying I was having.” 
 Saleh called his high school coach Jeff Stergalas, who always figured Saleh would be a high school teacher and football coach. 
 Stergalas introduced him to Mike Vollmer, director of football operations at Michigan State. He hired Saleh as a grad assistant, opening the door for a career in football. 
 Saleh barely made enough to pay the rent early on, but he kept grinding --&nbsp; all gas no brake in his chase of a life in football. &nbsp; 
 “If you do what you love it will love you back,” Saleh said. “People sometimes confuse the pursuit of money versus the pursuit of passion. If you pursue what you’re passionate in, then the money usually follows.” 
<h3> The road to the NFL </h3> 
 Saleh spent two years at Michigan State, another at Central Michigan and one more at Georgia as a grad assistant. He made a $600-a-month stipend at Michigan State. That grew to $900 at Central Michigan and $1,100 at Georgia. 
 “I go to Georgia,” Saleh said. “I thought I was rolling.” 
 Then, a big offer came for Saleh, who ended up getting a masters in kinesiology. An NFL team was interested. 
 Texans head coach Dom Capers hired Saleh as a defensive intern in 2005. He got paid $5 an hour. He logged more than 100 hours per week and earned time-and-a-half for overtime. 
 “I was rich,” he said with a chuckle. “It came out to be like $20,000 a year and I was just throwing money away in my single days. Going from $1,100 a month to $5 an hour was actually a big pay raise for me.” 
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 The following year, new Texans coach Gary Kubiak gave Saleh his first NFL contract and made him defensive quality control coach. Saleh couldn’t exhale, though. The defensive staff was fired following the 2010 season. 
 Saleh and his wife, Sanaa, had a 3-month-old baby. Saleh was just shy of his 32nd birthday and always told himself he would give himself until he was 30 to establish a coaching career. Saleh was nervous that he’d have to turn to his finance degree again. 
 “I have no job, no contract and a 3-month old,” Saleh said. “My wife’s nervous. I’m trying to be strong, but I’m like, ‘God, I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do.’ ” 
 Then Saleh got a “lucky, lucky phone call” from Seahawks defensive coordinator Gus Bradley. Saleh was hired on Pete Carroll’s staff as a defensive quality control coach and was a part of Seattle’s Super Bowl XLVIII winning team. 
 That was another life-changing moment for Saleh, now a father of seven with Sanaa. 
 “For a guy in his early 30s to be on that staff was a blessing,” Saleh said. “That’s the staff that kind of molded me into the person I am today in terms of being a father, a son, a friend, a dad, just overall aside from football, just as a person.” 
 Saleh joined Jacksonville in 2014 &nbsp;as linebackers coach under Bradley. Three years later, the 49ers hired Saleh &nbsp;as defensive coordinator. 
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 He became a hot head coaching candidate for his passion, fire and the way his defense performed. The Jets grabbed him last year, making him the first Muslim head coach in the NFL. 
 Jets offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur was a junior in high school when he met Saleh. LaFleur’s brother, Matt, the Packers head coach, was also a grad assistant at Central Michigan when Saleh was there. 
 Mike LaFleur believes Saleh would have been successful had he stayed in banking, but he believes he made the right career choice. 
 “He loves the game,” said LaFleur, who also worked with Saleh in San Francisco. “He loved the game and missed it when he was doing his banking stuff. If he wanted to do it tomorrow, he probably would be pretty good at it. I think he’s found a pretty good career here too.” 
<h3> Coming full circle </h3> 
 The Jets had their annual kickoff luncheon on Sept. 1 in New York, benefitting the Lupus Research Alliance and the New York Jets Foundation. Saleh said while he was on the bus, he flashed back to his previous life in corporate America. 
 “As we’re driving, it was right around lunch and I see people walking in suits,” Saleh said, “and I swear I had a flashback of me being in the bank in downtown Detroit and leaving and going to Pita Pit and having lunch with all the other credit analysts and just remembering 'God, it just wasn’t me.' 
 “God works in mysterious ways. I’m very fortunate to be where I am. I just remember those days like it was yesterday.” 
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 Saleh said he doesn’t often think of what his life would have been. He knows he made the right decision, is enjoying where he is and feels fortunate to be in his position. 
 “We’re very blessed,” Saleh said. “Every day you don’t show appreciation for where you are in life it can get taken away from you in a heartbeat. So thank our lucky stars, work our tail off and try to hold onto it for dear life.” 
 Saleh respects what Sept. 11 means for so many, especially people in &nbsp;New York City. His focus has been on getting the Jets off to a good start this season. 
 But Saleh may feel something extra Sunday, since many who have played major roles in his journey to the NFL will be inside &nbsp;MetLife Stadium, whichs&nbsp;&nbsp;stands in the foreground of where the World Trade Center stood. 
 “My whole family is coming,” Saleh said. “My brother, my dad, my mom, all my roommates from college. It’s going to be a fun weekend. Hopefully we can put the exclamation point on it. 
 “Maybe something will hit me, maybe not. I do respect and honor the situation that it’s in and I’m very thankful that we get the opportunity to share it with New York.”

Sports

Football

New York Jets

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Minority Candidates Football

How Sept. 11 attacks led Jets' Robert Saleh back to football

How Sept. 11 attacks led Jets' Saleh back to football

Jets Patriots Football

Life seemed to just be beginning for Massapequa Park resident Melissa Pascuma-Gangi 13 years ago. 
She was 23 years old, engaged with her wedding date 10 months away and only four days into her teaching career on Sept. 11, 2001, when she received news that shattered her world. 
Her father, Michael Pascuma Jr., was trapped in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He had been having breakfast at Windows on the World, his Tuesday ritual, before heading to work at the New York Stock Exchange. 
Pascuma-Gangi said her brother had spoken with their father briefly over the phone. He said, “There’s a fire. I’m trying to get out. I have to go.” That was the last time the family heard from him. 
“It’s very hard for me to talk about my dad without getting emotional even on a daily basis with my kids,” said Pascuma-Gangi, who is now 36 and has two daughters. “Thirteen years later, it’s still hard.” 
Pascuma-Gangi did speak about her father publicly Tuesday night at the Town of Oyster Bay’s Sept. 11 memorial ceremony at Tobay Beach in Massapequa. About 150 people attended the service near the town’s 9/11 memorial, which features a piece of steel recovered from Ground Zero and a wall containing the names of town residents killed in the attacks. 
The ceremony included prayers, music, a candlelight vigil and a reading of the 90 names. Afterward, Town Supervisor John Venditto opened up the microphone to anyone in the crowd who wished to speak. 
“As a teacher and mom, I hold it in almost every single day of the year, you have to to get through your life,” she said. “But this is the one opportunity I give myself to write something down and not hold everything in.” 
Pascuma-Gangi’s oldest daughter, Madison, 9, also shared a poem she wrote to her mother last year on the 12th anniversary of the attacks. It concluded with the words: “Don’t be sad, he’s always watching you.” 
Donna Hickey, the widow of FDNY captain Brian Christopher Hickey, also spoke to the crowd. 
In the last 13 years, Hickey, 60, of Bethpage, said she’s lost a child, watched two others get married, and became a grandmother of four without her husband — her “high school sweetheart” -- by her side. Their oldest son, Danny, inspired by his father, has since become a New York City firefighter. 
“There’s a lot of milestones you have to go through without them,” she said. “It’s bittersweet; you hope the day will come when you can be as happy, but I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen.” 
Hickey said she keeps her husband’s memory alive by sharing stories and photos of him with her grandchildren. 
“I’m constantly talking about him all day, every day to whoever wants to listen,” she said. 
She also visits the town’s 9/11 memorial often, finding the setting at the beach very peaceful. 
She said she prefers the town’s intimate Sept. 11 memorial to the one in Manhattan. 
“It makes you feel like you’re not alone, we are like a family,” she said. 
Venditto said the town is committed to holding the ceremony every year for as long as necessary. 
“I’ve learned since Sept. 11,” he said. “Time doesn’t heal all wounds.”

News

9/11 families find solace at Tobay Beach

Families of 9/11 victims find solace at Tobay Beach

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“343,” the number of FDNY personnel killed on 9/11, has been seared into the collective memory of the department for 21 years — sewn onto patches, stenciled on firetrucks, silk-screened onto T-shirts, printed on memorial cards, carved onto firefighter helmets. 
 On Sunday morning, the 21st anniversary, FDNY firefighter Etan Blatt is running 34.3 miles — from Long Beach&nbsp;to the Ground Zero site. The run is a&nbsp;memorial as well as a fundraiser for&nbsp;firehouses of firefighters who die in the line of duty and their families. 
 It’s the inaugural run for Blatt’s nascent charity, the 34.3 Foundation, which he’s in the process of registering with the government as an official nonprofit. For his run on Sunday, he’ll be joined by fellow firefighters Kelly Coyle,&nbsp;Kevin Schaaf&nbsp;and Greg Benisatto, from his firehouse. 
 “Running 34 miles is far from easy; it’s very daunting and it takes a lot of training. But it is much less daunting then what those 343 firefighters saw when [they]&nbsp;pulled up to the chaotic scene at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th, 2001,” Blatt wrote on his website. 
 Blatt did not lose family in the attack, “but I do have close friends that I work with in the fire department that lost their fathers, that lost their brothers.” 
 In a small way, the difficulty of completing the run — the route is 30% longer than a marathon — is a physical reminder of the suffering of firefighters who perished that day and the families who were left to mourn, he said. 
 “34 miles — it’s not easy. So as we’re suffering those last 10, 15 miles, it kind of reminds us of the pain and suffering that those men went through that day and their families for their future after that,” he said, adding: “As we head into the next 20 years, it’s important to keep the awareness of the selflessness and bravery that was displayed that day.” 
 The route, which he mapped on his iPhone, begins on Riverside Boulevard on the boardwalk in Long Beach, over the Atlantic Beach Bridge, then into Queens and the Rockaway Boardwalk to 126th Street, continuing into Belle Harbor, Neponsit, Riis Park, over the Marine Parkway Bridge, then Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to the Manhattan Bridge, passing FDNY headquarters along the way. 
 Once in Manhattan, the route goes north and then west and south to stop at several firehouses that sustained 9/11 casualties, and then onward to the Trade Center site. 
 Blatt came up with the idea last year, just before the 20th anniversary of the attacks. He decided to go for a run in memoriam, with no intention, yet, of raising money for charity. His friend Ryan Mack tagged along — on a bike — taking photos, and put up a post on Instagram that garnered nearly 25,000 views. 
 About a month later, Blatt decided that for the 21st anniversary, he’d make the run into a charity. As of earlier this week, he’s raised $7,000.&nbsp;Donors can give — including by buying T-shirts available on the charity website, 343foundation.com. The money will help families in the aftermath of a line-of-duty death. 
 “Any way I can help at all, with just a couple of thousand dollars, just to say, ‘I’m here for you guys,’” he said. 
 Blatt, 39, who is originally from West Hartford, Connecticut, now lives just west of Long Beach in East Atlantic Beach, on Malone Avenue, with his wife, Patricia Hennessy. “I was a summer Long Beach kid, and I made it full time when I was about 19, so I actually bought my father’s summer house here,” he said from his basement. 
 It was in Boston where Blatt started running, first a few miles a day, then 8 or 9 miles, a hobby that grew into long-distance running. He’s done four marathons, all in New York City, with the FDNY. 
 After working for a few years as a sound engineer in the city, Blatt started with the FDNY in 2008 — as an emergency medical technician, hoping to become a firefighter — and went to the fire academy in 2013. 
 He was first assigned to Engine 14, on East 18th Street and Broadway in Manhattan’s Union Square, did a rotation in Ladder 3 on 13th Street, went back to Engine 14 briefly, and later transferred to Ladder 134 in Far Rockaway, Queens, where he’s assigned now. 
 On 9/11, Blatt was 18 and living in Boston for school. (He went to college for music engineering.) That Tuesday morning, he got a call from his then-girlfriend, minutes after the first plane struck the north tower, at 8:46 a.m. 
 &quot;My roommate and I turned on the TV and watched in horror as the second plane hit,&quot; Blatt said. 
 Years later, he’d hear firsthand stories as a junior firefighter from senior firefighters who lived through that day — and stories about those who didn’t.&nbsp;

Nassau

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FDNY firefighter runs 34.3 miles in tribute to comrades lost on 9/11

FDNY firefighter runs 34.3 miles in tribute to comrades lost on 9/11

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Robert Brodsky

Former FDNY firefighter Joe Napoli can still recall&nbsp;the desperate faces staring back at him through the fencing surrounding Ground Zero as they held pictures of their loved ones who never came home that September&nbsp;morning. 
 The streetscape of a city torn apart&nbsp;by tragedy and despair would come to haunt Napoli, 60, of Brooklyn. 
 On Wednesday — days before the 21st anniversary of the nation's worst terror attack — Napoli&nbsp;unveiled a Sept. 11 memorial that&nbsp;will go on permanent display at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage&nbsp;recreating those haunting images.&nbsp; 
 &quot;I walked past it for six months,&quot; Napoli said.&nbsp;&quot;And the sad thing is that on the other side of that fence&nbsp;were family members. And they were holding up signs. And every day they asked me, 'please look for them.' But deep down in my heart I knew. We all knew.&quot; 
 The memorial recreates two interconnected scenes. One half features the fencing&nbsp;dotted by pictures of four friends and colleagues who died in the attack, along with flowers, candles, flags, first responder badges and an authentic city sewer cap. The other side of the display illustrates combat in Afghanistan&nbsp;with a weapon, artillery, and combat boots and soldier's helmet worn in battle. 
 A separate display features&nbsp;twisted steel from the fallen towers, along with Napoli's FDNY helmet, shovel and safety harness used during the recovery operation.&nbsp; 
 Napoli, who served in Hazmat Company 1 in Maspeth, Queens,&nbsp;was off work on 9/11 but raced to the city after he and several&nbsp;firefighters commandeered a&nbsp;city bus empty of civilian passengers.&nbsp;&quot;It was surreal,&quot; Napoli said of the scene at Ground Zero.&nbsp;&quot;I remember smoke. I remember papers being all over the place. It was raining paper. You couldn't breathe. Getting our eyes washed out three or four times. Being on bucket brigades … Every time they thought they found somebody we would run over and start digging.&quot; 
 The project&nbsp;took Napoli and combat veteran Bob Inslee, 59, of Massapequa Park, two-and-a-half weeks to complete.&nbsp;During that time, Napoli said he had vivid dreams in which he was visited by his FDNY brethren who died in the collapse. 
 &quot;It brought back a lot of memories. It brought back a lot of feelings. It brought back a lot emotion,&quot; he said. &quot;… My impact with Ground Zero was that fence and the people looking at me. And that's what I would dream. That was my nightmare. This fence with eyes behind it. Hopeless eyes that I couldn't do anything with.&quot; 
 Retired Marine Sgt. John O'Dougherty, 59, of Valley Stream,&nbsp;who consulted on the project for the museum, was&nbsp;13 years removed from his retirement from the&nbsp;Marine Corps at the time of the attacks and running a small construction company. The attacks motivated O'Dougherty to re-enlist&nbsp;in 2006, and he served another tour in Afghanistan in 2008 before retiring from the military&nbsp;earlier this year. 
 &quot;I lost a lot of friends in Afghanistan and a lot of guys are still bearing scars from Afghanistan, myself included,&quot; said O'Dougherty, who works as chief inspector for Nassau's Department of Public Works. &quot;So remember that. These guys gave up everything.&quot; 
 With the anniversary of the attacks&nbsp;days away, Napoli hopes his piece evokes strong emotions.&nbsp;&quot;I hope they walk away feeling the sadness and the darkness of that day,&quot; he said. &quot;You have to pass this on to the next generation. And you can't forget.&quot;

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Sept. 11 exhibit at Old Bethpage museum evokes haunting images of Ground Zero

Sept. 11 exhibit at Old Bethpage museum evokes haunting images of Ground Zero

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Former FDNY firefighter Joseph Napoli is haunted by the memories of those who hung pictures of their loved ones on the fences surrounding&nbsp;Ground Zero. On Wednesday,&nbsp;Napoli unveiled a new&nbsp;Sept. 11 memorial that he helped create, which will be on&nbsp;permanent display at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage.&nbsp;

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Old Bethpage

Oyster Bay Town

First responder's haunting memories inspire 9/11 memorial

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Brinley Hineman

Each year around Sept. 11, Frank Musto takes his art students outside their Commack High School classroom to a memorial made of steel.&nbsp; 
 The students observe, reflect on and sketch the memorial, which&nbsp;was erected in 2012 and is made of steel from the Twin Towers.&nbsp; 
 For most adults, Sept. 11, 2001, was a defining moment of their lives&nbsp;—&nbsp;one that Americans swore they would never forget. For children and teenagers across Long Island, some of whom lost relatives&nbsp;in the terrorist attacks, what they know of those family members, and anything else connected to that day nearly 21 years ago, has been gleaned from parents, classroom lessons, books or television. 
 Valuable lessons&nbsp;— about history, about loss&nbsp;— live within&nbsp;the chunk of steel sitting on the Commack High campus, Musto said. 
 &quot;Now, I'm teaching kids that were [not] alive [then],&quot; Musto said. &quot;They don't have any memories of it, obviously, and that's why it's important to keep the story alive … When you see that piece of metal that was there and the way it changed the world and the way we see everything, it [becomes] emotional.&quot; 
 Several other Long Island schools have memorials dedicated to 9/11 victims. 
 Campus tributes can deepen students'&nbsp;connection to the attacks and bolster their understanding of what happened, said Alan Singer, the director of secondary education social studies at Hofstra University. 
 It is important for students to have symbols to represent a complex idea, he said. Memorials, which encourage the act of remembering, can be those symbols and also&nbsp;preserve memories that might otherwise fade over time. 
 &quot;It's ancient history for them,&quot; said Singer of children in a post-9/11&nbsp;world, where tighter&nbsp;airport security and the fear of terrorism is&nbsp;a way of life. 
 &quot;9/11 is not part of their lived experience.&quot; 
 For Garden City High School students Liam Brennan, 16, and Brooke Hopkins, 15, their campus memorial provides a way to strengthen an emotional connection to the collapse of the Twin Towers, which took the life&nbsp;of Brennan's&nbsp;uncle, who worked in one of the towers. 
 Hopkins' father worked near the World Trade Center&nbsp;and was forced to evacuate. He previously worked in one of the towers and had many friends still there on Sept. 11, 2001. Hopkins' uncle,&nbsp;a&nbsp;firefighter,&nbsp;responded to Ground Zero and lost colleagues.&nbsp; 
 &quot;When you see it, it just makes it more real,&quot; Brennan said. &quot;That is part of the Trade Center. It's not any video or article you're reading, it's really there. It was a little surreal and eye-opening.&quot; 
 The Garden City memorial embodies the personal stories of 9/11 first responders, victims, witnesses and survivors, said Jeannette Balantic, the Garden City High social studies coordinator. Michele De Collibus, a social studies teacher at the school, required students to complete a 9/11 oral history project to commemorate the 20th anniversary, where they interviewed adults about that day. Students honoring and remembering the personal accounts of the tragedy is what will keep it alive both inside and outside the classroom, according to Balantic and De Collibus.&nbsp; 
 Hopkins said that she and fellow students have no personal connection to other life-altering events for previous generations, like the attack on&nbsp;Pearl Harbor. She hopes that future generations will&nbsp;remember&nbsp;9/11.&nbsp; 
 &quot;It's scary to think that in a few generations to come that they’re going to forget about it,&quot;&nbsp;Hopkins said. 
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 Bay Shore Middle School also has a piece of World Trade Center steel dedicated to locals who died in the attacks. Like Musto,&nbsp;social studies teacher Greg D'Antoni takes his students&nbsp;to view the memorial each September.&nbsp; 
 &quot;It just makes it more of a real event,&quot;&nbsp;D'Antoni said. &quot;As an educator, you always want to make the kids emotionally aware, which is kind of tough to do. But when you look at the piece of steel,&nbsp;it's got a dent in it … It’s quite a tremendous teaching tool.&quot; 
 While 9/11 is a curriculum staple, D'Antoni said the way he presents it changes based on current events and the connections that can be drawn. With the pandemic, he said his students better understood the ways an event can spur shared grief and trauma —&nbsp;and the ways communities come together.&nbsp; 
 Students learn about the heartbreak and events that unfolded in the aftermath of 9/11, but&nbsp;Bay Shore teachers also focus on the &quot;compassion and generosity demonstrated in the wake of the attacks,&quot;&nbsp;said Superintendent Steven Maloney, who was on his third day as middle school&nbsp;principal on the day of the attacks. 
 &quot;It is our responsibility as educators to help young adults understand the tragedy in the same way we helped previous generations understand Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President Kennedy,&quot;&nbsp;he said.&nbsp; 
 The best way to do that, students and teachers said, is to continue discussing it in the classroom, even outside of September, and despite the pain and sensitivity surrounding the attacks.&nbsp; 
 &quot;If we stop talking about it and sharing personal stories,&quot;&nbsp;Brennan said, &quot;it’s just going to become another event in history.&quot;

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Long Island school tributes a lesson on 9/11 for students

'9/11 is not part of their lived experience:' School memorials help teach students about tragic day

First responders who participated in the&nbsp;rescue, recovery and cleanup of the World Trade Center&nbsp;have until Sunday to <a href="http://www.wcb.ny.gov/WTC/wtc-assistance-programs.jsp#wtc12">register </a>with the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board to preserve their right to receive benefits such as lost wages — even if they are&nbsp;not yet sick. 
 Registration could&nbsp;help an individual who responded to the terror attacks and becomes&nbsp;permanently disabled due to illness linked to the toxic air at Ground Zero&nbsp;to qualify for a World Trade Center accidental disability presumption, officials said. 
 Signing up also can help&nbsp;beneficiaries become eligible for an accidental death benefit if the applicant dies. Individuals who applied previously, and were denied benefits, would also have an opportunity to have their claims reconsidered. 
 Initially, individuals who participated in the rescue, recovery&nbsp;or cleanup operations had until Sept.&nbsp;11, 2010, to file a notice of participation. This is the third extension of the deadline. 
 The&nbsp;board has received 48,255 World Trade Center filings to date, a state spokesman said. 
 Both chambers of the State Legislature have passed a measure that would extend the filing deadline to 2026. Gov. Kathy Hochul is reviewing the legislation, the spokesman said. 
 State officials said individuals should register with the board whether they are sick or not and if they were paid or volunteered to work at either Ground Zero, the Fresh Kills landfill, area piers, barges or morgues between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 12, 2002. 
 Filing with the state board does not preclude individuals from filing a claim with the federal Victims Compensation Fund,&nbsp;which provides financial assistance with medical monitoring, treatment and medication, and helps compensate victims for the financial impact of 9/11-related illnesses.&nbsp;People receiving&nbsp;lost wages from the fund, however, would not receive similar&nbsp;funds from the state&nbsp;board, experts said.

New York

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Deadline looms for Ground Zero first responders to register for disability benefits

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Michael O'Keeffe

So much energy and emotion was spent last year on commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack on lower Manhattan, John Feal of Commack said, that he fears Americans have forgotten the grief, loss and sacrifice that resulted from the worst attack on U.S. soil as the 21st anniversary of that awful day approaches. 
 Feal, a demolition supervisor who was seriously injured in the rescue effort at Ground Zero, said depression and post-traumatic stress kicked&nbsp;in every year as summer turned&nbsp;to fall. He fears this year might be even worse as the number of 9/11-related deaths climbs ever higher.&nbsp; 
 “Twenty-one is not as sexy a number as 20 and everybody put their eggs in the 20th anniversary basket last year,” said Feal, now the leader of the Nesconset-based FealGood Foundation, which advocates for Ground Zero first responders. “I’m afraid this [9/11 commemorations]&nbsp;will take a back seat to everything else going on in the world.” 
 Dozens of events will be held across Nassau, Suffolk and in&nbsp;New York City during the next week to honor the thousands of people — including nearly 500 from Long Island — killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, 21 years ago.&nbsp; 
<h2> Long-term support needed </h2> 
 Mary Fetchet, executive director for Voices Center for Resilience, said many 9/11 victims, first responders and families did&nbsp;not get the long-term support, mental health care and wellness they needed. Fetchet, whose organization was originally called the Voices of September11th but now helps communities that have undergone traumatic events, lost her 24-year-old son, Brad Fetchet, in the attack. 
 “The thing that strikes me about the anniversary is that we’ve gotten to know so many of the families over the course of the years, and those relationships are so important,” Fetchet said.&nbsp; 
 Frank Siller, the chief executive of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, said he also feared&nbsp;the sacrifices made by people like his brother, FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller, were also starting to fade from America’s national memory. But he is encouraged by the fact that more people already have registered&nbsp;for the annual Tunnel to Towers 5K fundraiser this&nbsp;year than last year. The run is scheduled for Sept. 25.&nbsp; 
 Tunnel to Towers, which support programs for first responders and catastrophically injured military members, will formally announce later this week the creation of the Tunnel to Towers Institute that will help develop a 9/11 curriculum and provide eyewitness speakers — police officers, firefighters and others at Ground Zero during and after the attack — to schools.&nbsp; 
 This Friday, Tunnel to Towers also will pay off the mortgages for the families of 21 first responders and Gold Star veterans. The organization has paid off about 200 mortgages so far this year, Siller said. 
 “It was inspiring to us as a nation and we don’t want to forget their stories,” Siller said. “We can’t let our guard down and we can’t let it happen again.”&nbsp; 
 The National September 11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan will host a 21st anniversary commemoration on Sunday morning for family members of 9/11 victims that will include a reading of the names of those killed during the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville.&nbsp; 
 Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is hosting a 9/11 remembrance ceremony and musical tribute at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow on Sunday evening. The event will include a performance by opera singer Christopher Macchio, who grew up in Holbrook.&nbsp; 
 Among the many others on Long Island, Suffolk County and the Town of Babylon also will hold ceremonies on Sunday.

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As 21st anniversary nears, advocates keep telling the stories of 9/11 victims, first responders, families

21 years later, advocates keep telling stories of 9/11 victims, responders, families

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Anthony M. DeStefano

World Trade Center first responders suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder could be at risk for a new form of dementia, according to results of a study led by Stony Brook University researchers and made available Monday to Newsday. 
 The study&nbsp;by researchers at Stony Brook’s WTC Health and Wellness Program used 3D imaging techniques to assess the brains of 99 living first responders who worked at Ground Zero&nbsp;after the Sept. 11,&nbsp;2001, terrorist attacks. Researchers&nbsp;observed that those suffering from cognitive impairment and PTSD showed signs suggesting a unique form of dementia. 
 First responders who had cognitive impairment — such as&nbsp;mild memory loss and problems finding directions — but didn’t suffer from PTSD, appeared to have a different form of dementia, according to a&nbsp;statement from Stony Brook. The average age of the subjects studied was 56. 
 The findings suggest the possibility that there might be two new forms of dementia affecting those first responders studied, said&nbsp;Sean Clouston, one of the authors of the study and an associate professor in the&nbsp;Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook, in an interview, adding that&nbsp;more research is needed. 
 In a statement accompanying release of the results, Clouston said that &quot;overall, the study supports the view that responders with CI [cognitive impairment] have neurological changes consistent with neurodegenerative disease, that they are inconclusive as to the type of disease.” 
 Clouston told Newsday that first responders with cognitive impairment were found to have certain kinds of changes in the white matter of their brains. Those with cognitive impairment and PSTD had further changes in the part of the corpus callosum, the part of the brain anatomy that connects&nbsp;its two hemispheres,&nbsp;Clouston said.&nbsp;None of those studied, he said,&nbsp;showed signs of Alzheimer’s disease, a common form of dementia. 
 In his statement, Clouston said: “Our findings do show that dementia due to PTSD is clearly different from non-PTSD dementia in this responder population.&quot; 
 For John Feal, head of the Nesconset-based FealGood Foundation, which helps Ground Zero first responders, the results&nbsp;of the Stony Brook study are&nbsp;what he anticipated. While cancer is one of the main illnesses known to affect first responders, cognitive disorders are leading some of them to what Feal said is a “slow, painful death.” 
 “To see them deteriorated has been painful to witness,” Feal said of the cognitive decline among responders. “It is sad to see people become a shell of what they were.” 
 Feal, of Commack, was injured doing demolition work at Ground Zero in the days after the attacks&nbsp;and, as result,&nbsp;became a national advocate for first responders. Feal said that he takes part in the Stony Brook wellness program with annual physicals, including a cognitive test, and tries to keep his mind active. The Stony Brook program monitors the health of between 8.000 to 10,000 responders. 
 “The 9/11 community should take this serious,” Feal said of the cognitive issue. “I think I fear not knowing who I am more than I do cancer.” 
 Stony Brook University said the study was supported in part by the National Institute on Aging — National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

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WTC 1st responders with PTSD at risk for new type of dementia

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More than two decades after&nbsp;Antone Frank, a 44-year veteran of the Greenport Volunteer Fire Department, responded to the smoldering ashes at Ground Zero came the discovery he had hoped would never come. 
 A doctor found a cancerous tumor on Frank's throat. It&nbsp;spread to part of his tongue and mouth — an ailment Frank&nbsp;believes is connected to his&nbsp;rescue and recovery work in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 
 While surgeons last month removed the tumor, along with Frank's tonsils and lymph nodes, the medical scare prompted him&nbsp;to file a claim with the New York State Workers Compensation Board. And he wants other 9/11 first responders to follow suit and <a href="http://www.wcb.ny.gov/content/main/forms/wtc-12.pdf">register with the board</a>&nbsp;before the Sept. 11, 2022, deadline. 
 &quot;I'm hoping that everybody takes this advice and just gets checked out,&quot; said Frank, 62, of Greenport. &quot;You never know what's going to happen. I never knew that this was going&nbsp;happen. And other people need to know this, too.&quot;&nbsp; 
 To preserve the right to receive benefits such as lost wages — even for those not yet sick — anyone who participated in the&nbsp;rescue, recovery and cleanup of the World Trade Center&nbsp;between Sept. 11, 2001, and Sept. 12, 2002, must register with the state compensation board within the next two months.&nbsp; 
 &quot;This deadline is for any first responder who volunteered at the World Trade Center site in any capacity&nbsp;that's not part of a specific pension system like the FDNY or the NYPD,&quot; said Beth Jablon, of the Garden City-based firm of Sullivan Papain Block McGrath Coffinas &amp; Cannavo, which helped Frank file his claim.&nbsp;&quot;This is really for the person, mostly on Long Island and I would say out&nbsp;of the city, that volunteered at the site … So whether you're a volunteer firefighter with New Hyde Park Fire Department&nbsp;or with the American Red Cross, or maybe you're a certified paramedic, and you went down there, these are all the types of people who need to be aware of this deadline.&quot; 
 State officials said&nbsp;they had no&nbsp;information on the number of Long Islanders or volunteer firefighters who have registered to date with the board. 
 Filing with the&nbsp;compensation board also provides individuals who applied previously and were denied benefits the opportunity to have their claims reconsidered. Initially, individuals who participated in the rescue, recovery&nbsp;or cleanup operations had until Sept.&nbsp;11, 2010, to file a notice of participation. This is the third extension of the deadline. 
 Registration could&nbsp;help an individual who becomes permanently disabled and can't work as a result of an illness linked to the toxic air at Ground Zero to qualify for a World Trade Center accidental disability presumption. Signing up also can help&nbsp;beneficiaries become eligible for an accidental death benefit if the applicant dies. 
 Filing with the state board, Jablon said, does not preclude individuals from filing a claim with the federal Victims Compensation Fund,&nbsp;which provides financial assistance with medical monitoring, treatment and medication, and helps compensate victims for the financial impact of 9/11-related illnesses.&nbsp;People receiving&nbsp;lost wages from the fund, however, would not receive similar&nbsp;funds from the state&nbsp;board, she said. 
 To be eligible for&nbsp;the federal compensation fund, applicants must prove they were in the exposure zone, or along the debris-removal route, from the time of the attacks through May 30, 2002. They also must have a 9/11-related illness or injury certified by the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/wtc/">WTC Health Program</a>, including nearly 70 kinds of&nbsp;cancer and a host of respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses 
 The Workers Compensation Board, Jablon said, has some significant differences with the Victims Compensation Fund, including an extended time period that victims spent around Ground Zero and no employer verification or signed affidavits required to prove a claim. 
 &quot;There's no harm in just filling the paperwork out,&quot; she said. &quot;It doesn't take a lot of time. It's all about protecting your rights in the future because there's no guarantee that they're going to extend the deadline again.&quot; 
 Frank, who spent three days volunteering at Ground Zero in 2001, said first responders at the time never worried that the air in lower Manhattan was dangerous, or would cause health ailments 20 years later.&nbsp; 
 &quot;I didn't know and nobody knew,&quot; he said. &quot;We just went down there to do what we had to do.&quot;

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Ailing Ground Zero vet urges other sick 9/11 responders to file NY claim

Ailing Ground Zero vet urges sick responders to file NY claim

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Keldy Ortiz

Ingrid Shea remembers her late husband, Nassau police Lt. Michael P. Shea, crisscrossing between their Oyster Bay residence to home improvement stores, looking to decorate their corner house&nbsp;on School Street. 
 “It was neglected,” said Ingrid Shea, 59, who moved in with her husband Aug. 25, 1997, a day after they married. “The bushes [installed], that was all us. He loved fixing stuff. He was a carpenter.” 
 Although Ingrid and Michael Shea moved out of the home in 2013, the corner of School Street and Berry Hill Road in the hamlet where they lived for 16 years will forever be remembered as “Lieutenant Michael P. Shea Way.” 
 The family of Michael Shea, who died from brain cancer that&nbsp;he contracted while working at the World Trade Center after 9/11, along with town&nbsp;and county officials, gathered Wednesday for the dedication. 
 “By looking at that sign and remembering who he was, it will be an education to all about the meaning of law enforcement and how difficult it is,” said Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino. “So he’ll be schooling people continuously and helping everyone to embrace law enforcement, embrace the men and women who put on the uniform and protect us day in and day out.” 
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 The 52-year-old <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/obituaries/michael-p-shea-dies-of-cancer-ex-nypd-nassau-officer-was-52-t38862">Levittown native, who died April 1, 2017</a>, retired from the Nassau County Police Department in 2015 as a lieutenant. Before joining Nassau police in 1990, the General Douglas MacArthur High School graduate had become&nbsp;a member of&nbsp;the NYPD&nbsp;in 1985, where he worked in the highway division. 
 After&nbsp;the Sept. 11, 2001, terror&nbsp;attacks, Shea was assigned to Ground Zero. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who lost his nephew, a state court officer, on 9/11 and whose remains were never found, said the work Shea did in Manhattan was meaningful. 
 “There were families like us who had nothing to bury, and then there were a lot of families because of Michael and all the people that were serving on that pile, they got to bury something of their loved ones,” said Blakeman, who proclaimed Wednesday “Lt. Michael Shea Day.” 
 The street unveiling Wednesday is among several memorial dedications to Shea and other officers who have died of&nbsp;9/11-related illnesses. 
 In 2018, Nassau police named a 39-foot Safe boat “9/11 Heroes” after seven officers who died, including Shea. The Town of Oyster Bay&nbsp;will add Shea’s name at a memorial in Tobay Beach next year, Saladino said. 
 Nassau County police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said the names of five other officers —&nbsp;three of whom&nbsp;died from 9/11 related illnesses and two of&nbsp;COVID-19 —&nbsp;would&nbsp;be added next year to a memorial wall at police headquarters in Mineola. In 2018, <a href="https://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/nassau-police-memorial-wall-911-m42174">Shea's name was added to the wall</a>&nbsp;for officers who have died of 9/11-related illnesses or COVID-19 
 “Michael, from all of us, we love you, we miss you,” Ryder said. 
 Ricky Frassetti was a union trustee with Shea at the Nassau County Superior Officers Association. Frassetti, who became president of the association in 2020, said the renaming was ”extremely well deserved” because, although&nbsp;officers would&nbsp;not forget Shea, the street would&nbsp;“going forward always allow&nbsp;others to read this sign and know what a great man, neighbor, friend, police officer and first responder Mike was.”

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Street renamed for Lt. Michael P. Shea, who died of a 9/11-related illness

Public officials, family and community members gathered for a&nbsp;street renaming in Oyster Bay in honor of late Nassau police Lt. Michael P. Shea, who&nbsp;died of a 9/11-related illness in 2017 after retiring in 2015.

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Ceremonial street dedication in honor of fallen Nassau police Lt. Michael P. Shea

Oyster Bay

Ceremonial street dedication in honor of fallen Nassau police lieutenant

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John Asbury

Fellow firefighters, family and friends gathered&nbsp;in Nesconset on Thursday&nbsp;for the funeral of a former&nbsp;FDNY&nbsp;fire marshal and Ronkonkoma resident,&nbsp;one of four retired city firefighters to die of 9/11-related illnesses in as many days.&nbsp; 
 In front of an audience of about 200 outside Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, firefighters gave Jack McCauley, 65, a decorated procession, with bagpipes and an FDNY Bureau of Fire Investigation engine leading his hearse to the church. The coffin for McCauley, a 29-year department veteran who died Sunday of cancer, was draped in the FDNY flag and fire officials presented his helmet to his wife. 
 FDNY Deputy Chief Vincent Mandala, of Staten Island,&nbsp;died Tuesday of 9/11-related illnesses.&nbsp;Michael Verzi, 67, who worked for 25 years as an FDNY firefighter in the Bronx, also died Sunday. On Saturday,&nbsp;Robert Reynolds also a 20-year firefighter in the Bronx,&nbsp;died of illnesses from working at Ground Zero. 
 The sudden toll of fallen firefighters has&nbsp;become all too common for the FDNY&nbsp;as it still deals with the health effects of 18-months spent digging through the pile after the Sept. 11, 2001&nbsp;attacks,&nbsp;and recently marked 20 years since the mission ended. 
 &quot;It was just the anniversary of the closing of the rescue and recovery effort, and this week we lost four guys to World Trade Center illnesses,&quot; said FDNY Lt. James McCarthy, who also serves as the Uniformed Fire Officers Association president. 
 &quot;There's still a significant number of our members facing illness and feeling the impact years later,&quot; he said. 
 A total of 287 firefighters&nbsp;have died since 9/11, in addition to the 343 firefighters who lost their lives&nbsp;during the collapse&nbsp;of the Twin Towers, McCarthy said. He said 70% of current FDNY firefighters joined after 9/11, but hundreds of other first responders still face&nbsp;ailments. 
 McCarthy said firefighters will eventually need to return to Congress to ask for an extension of portions of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act that deal&nbsp;with&nbsp;medical benefits, which he added, are&nbsp;scheduled to expire in five years. 
 “Just about every single person has some sort of a malady that goes from a cough to cancer. We don’t know the breadth of this until everybody’s passed away,” McCarthy said. “It hits home right now because there are guys that died this week, 21 years later, and this funding’s going to end, but we’re all still alive.” 
 At McCauley's funeral,&nbsp;sons Daniel and Jack McCauley III&nbsp;eulogized their father, noting he would hate the pomp and circumstances surrounding him. 
 Daniel McCauley said despite his father's gruff exterior as a fire investigator, he loved playing with his grandchildren and being with his family. 
 “He was a mountain of a man packed into a smaller frame,” McCauley said. “He could command a room with the sound of his voice and you’d think he was 7 feet tall.” 
 McCauley said his father was always willing to help out, lending money, learning to be a notary public or fixing things around the house. 
 Jack McCauley III talked about his father’s fight with cancer, his voice quivering as he&nbsp;remembered&nbsp;those final days. He called his father a “hero and a “warrior” for dedicating his life to the fire service and working on 9/11, as well as battling illness for the&nbsp;past two years. 
 “My father was a lover,” Jack McCauley said. “Deep down, was a man, who after having two buildings drop on his head, called me to tell me he was OK because that’s what was important to him.” 
 CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the number of firefighters who lost their lives during the collapse of the Twin Towers.

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Nesconset funeral for another FDNY casualty of 9/11

Members of the FDNY&nbsp;gathered in Nesconset for the funeral of Jack McCauley, 65, of Ronkonkoma. The former supervising fire marshal is&nbsp;one of four retired FDNY firefighters who died of 9/11-related illnesses within four&nbsp;days.

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4 retired FDNY firefighters die from 9/11-related illnesses in 4 days

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John Valenti and Nicholas Grasso

Retired FDNY Capt. Michael J. Lyons, a Dix Hills resident cited many times for heroism during&nbsp;more than 20 years on the job, including for efforts on Sept. 11, 2001,&nbsp;has died&nbsp;of 9/11-related cancer, the FDNY&nbsp;confirmed. He was 53. 
 Born in Brooklyn, Lyons spent most of his youth in Ireland, graduating from University College in Galway, now National University of Ireland-Galway, with a degree in history and English. He joined the FDNY on Nov. 22, 1998, and served as a firefighter with Engine 228 in Sunset Park, Engine 59 in Harlem, Ladder 153 in southern Brooklyn,&nbsp;Ladder 148 in Borough Park,&nbsp;and Ladder 30 in Harlem, as a lieutenant. 
 Lyons was assigned to Division 15 in Brooklyn as a captain before his battle with cancer led to his retirement in 2019. He is&nbsp;the 276th FDNY member to die&nbsp;of 9/11 illnesses, the FDNY said. 
 Lyons wrote about his bout with stage 4 cancer&nbsp;for the FDNY's&nbsp;in-house publication, offering advice and encouragement&nbsp;to fellow department&nbsp;members,&nbsp;the department said. 
 Pasquale Buzzelli, of Rivervale, New Jersey, was inside&nbsp;the World Trade Center's north tower when the building collapsed. Lyons and other fighters pulled him&nbsp;from the rubble, Buzzelli said, and the two never lost touch 
 “We’ve been friends ever since he rescued me,” said Buzzelli, 52. “I had an angel that day here on Earth. Now I have an angel in Heaven.” 
 Buzzelli, an engineer with the Port Authority, said he and Lyons met up at a block party in Brooklyn last summer and last spoke about two weeks ago. 
 “He said he was going through chemo,” Buzzelli said. “I replied ‘look man, you’re the strongest fighter I know.' I said ‘let’s get together soon’ and that was it. He gave everything. He's a hero.&quot; 
 A visitation for Lyons&nbsp;will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday&nbsp;at the M.A. Connell Funeral Home in Huntington Station. 
 An&nbsp;11 a.m. funeral Mass will be celebrated Monday at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church, 175 Wolf Hill Rd., Melville. 
 Lyons is survived by his parents,&nbsp;two children, three brothers and 10 nieces and nephews. 
 With Matthew Chayes

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Ex-FDNY member Michael Lyons of LI dies of 9/11 cancer

Retired FDNY member Michael Lyons of Dix Hills dies of 9/11 cancer

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Women who lived or worked near Ground Zero, as well as female first responders after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks who later developed uterine cancer could soon receive full coverage from the WTC Health Program. 
 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed adding uterine cancer&nbsp;— one of the only types not covered by the Health Program — to the list of WTC-related health conditions. 
 The change would allow&nbsp;qualifying patients with all types of uterine cancer, including endometrial cancer — or who go on to develop it — to seek compensation from the Sept. 11th&nbsp;Victim Compensation Fund. 
 The end of the department's 45-day&nbsp;<a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/05/10/2022-09708/world-trade-center-wtc-health-program-addition-of-uterine-cancer-to-the-list-of-wtc-related-health">public comment period</a> is Friday. 
 Iris Udasin, principal investigator for the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at Rutgers University and her colleague, Judith Graber, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, first petitioned the WTC Health Program to add uterine cancer to the list of covered ailments almost two years ago after discovering the disease among several patients. 
 Udasin said the number of affected patients is not large — men represent a significantly higher percentage of patients in the WTC Health Program — but will make a significant difference in their lives. 
 “This is very important to the&nbsp;women who have this cancer,&quot; said Udasin, who doubles as medical director of the Clinical Center at Rutgers’ Environmental and Occupational Health Science Institute. &quot;It's important&nbsp;so that we can make sure they're receiving proper medical care. But it's also important, because … the victims compensation fund provides a financial reward. And that's certainly significant to the people involved.&quot; 
 The Rutgers petition won support from doctors and researchers&nbsp;at New York University School of Medicine, Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine&nbsp;and Long Island's Northwell Health.&nbsp; 
 The effort also&nbsp;received the backing of nearly two dozen members of Congress, including Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) and Gregory Meeks (D-St. Albans), who <a href="https://sherrill.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-sherrill-urges-world-trade-center-health-program-expedite-decision">signed a letter</a>&nbsp;last year supporting the change. 
 Dr. Jacqueline Moline,&nbsp;director of Northwell’s Queens World Trade Center Health Program, said while men represent about 86% of her cohort patients, she's begun to treat more women that developed uterine cancer after World Trade Center exposure.&nbsp; 
 &quot;We're all looking forward to Friday when the waiting period ends and they can formally adopt it,&quot; said&nbsp;Moline, who also serves as senior vice president of&nbsp;Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Prevention at Northwell, &quot;It's been a long time in the making.&quot; 
 Dr. John Howard, administrator of the WTC Health Program and director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, will make a final determination, likely in the fall,&nbsp;whether&nbsp;to add uterine cancer to the list of WTC health conditions,&nbsp;said NIOSH spokeswoman Stephanie Stevens. 
 &quot;If uterine cancer is added to the list in a final rule,&quot; Stevens said,&nbsp;&quot;women who are enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program will have access to the cancer care and treatment they need if their uterine cancer is related to their 9/11 exposures.&quot;

Health

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Uterine cancer may soon be added to WTC Health Program

Uterine cancer could soon be added to WTC Health Program

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A bell tolled Monday at the World Trade Center memorial to mark almost&nbsp;exactly 20 years since the formal end of recovery operations at Ground Zero. On May 30, 2002, one last stretcher, with just a folded American flag, had been carried away from Ground Zero by 10 people. The stretcher symbolized the countless others that had been removed with flag-draped remains in the 260 or so days after&nbsp;the 9/11 attacks eight months earlier. And on Monday, the end of recovery efforts were commemorated by a delegation including Gov. Kathy Hochul and U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold&nbsp;Nadler. &quot;For many, the devastation, the loss occurred on that day, 9/11, but there's so many who know the bigger story. That for 260 days, people showed up here, exposed to toxins and contaminants,&quot; Hochul said above the whoosh of the nearby reflecting pools commemorating where the Twin Towers once stood. Like the ceremony 20 years ago, a slow-marching bagpipe unit opened the commemoration, capped with a bugler's &quot;Taps,&quot; and attended by more than 100 survivors, police, fire and sanitation personnel, as well as families of those who died. Nearly 1 in 5 people who perished in the attacks in lower Manhattan were Long Islanders — two-thirds from Nassau County and the rest from Suffolk. The number of those who died in the actual attack — 2,753 — has been eclipsed by the estimated 4,000 to 5,000 sickened by and dead from toxins pulverized into the air when the towers crumbled. 
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 For&nbsp;more than eight months after 9/11, hundreds of workers dug through the rubble to search for remains of the dead.&nbsp;About 40% of those who died at Ground Zero have yet to be identified, CNN reported last year. 
 Some remains were never found, and rubble was taken en masse to Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill where further recovery was pursued. &quot;The brave people, the sanitation workers who showed up and had endured the unthinkable, what they saw. The private contractors, the city agencies, everybody who showed up and made sure that everything that was drawn from this site was honored in place in a hallowed ground,&quot; she said. 
 John Feal, a first responder from Nesconset who lost half of his left foot after working to clear rubble from Ground Zero, noted how so many lives&nbsp;have been lost, or changed forever. He recalled a recent trip to the memorial. &quot;I was reminiscing about my journey: 42 surgeries, 320-plus trips to D.C., over 2,000 meetings with members of Congress and the Senate and the countless funerals,&quot; Feal said at the ceremony.&nbsp; Nadler, speaking Monday at the ceremony, criticized the federal government for assuring workers at Ground Zero, as well as lower Manhattan residents, in the attacks' aftermath that the air was safe, when in fact it was poisonous. &quot;The air was not safe,&quot; he said, adding: &quot;Our courageous first responders, lower Manhattan residents, students and workers were not being afforded proper protection from dangerous toxins as they were in and around the pile.&quot; Hochul said the aftermath of 9/11 demonstrated New York's resiliency.&nbsp; 
 &quot;People said we could not come back, 'Close it down. Lower Manhattan is dead now because of that day,'&quot; the governor recalled. &quot;But if that had happened, that would have meant the terrorists would have won. And by our strength and determination to bring this city back, we demonstrated no, they did not win.&quot;

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Ground Zero ceremony marks end of recovery efforts 20 years ago

See Newsday's extra edition cover from Sept. 11, 2001, its covers from the days immediately after the terrorist attacks, and related front pages and stories through the 20th anniversary of 9/11. They are in chronological order.

The cover of Sept. 11, 2013, is not included, as it dealt with other subjects.

Newsday's Sept. 11 covers going back to the attacks

See Newsday's Sept. 11 covers going back to the attacks

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Carmine Agnello's arrest, for allegedly choking his girlfriend during an argument, comes weeks before he is to surrender to prison on a fraud conviction. NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa reports.

'Nothing happened,' Agnello said

Read stories and view photos of Long Islanders who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, and see the latest news headlines and more from Newsday.com as the nation marks this year's anniversary of 9/11.

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