From Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a gift to widow of Ground Zero responder

The death in May of Erika Oelkers’ 46-year-old husband, Thomas — who as a city cop who worked on the Ground Zero pile and then became an FDNY firefighter just after the Sept. 11 attacks — came nine months to the day he was diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer. He left three young children behind: Camryn, 15, Juliet, 11, and Scarlett, 9. And the family still had a mortgage on the family’s Floral Park home.

On Tuesday, the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which was set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to help families of those who died in the attacks, announced an expansion of beneficiaries to those like the Oelkerses: families of those who died due to ailments connected to toxins at the Ground Zero pile. The new category covers families with children 19 and younger whose first-responder relatives died due to 9/11-related disease.

"So much — and rightfully so — is spoken of 9/11. But let’s remember 9/12, and what happened after, and the great loss of life after. It is a terrorist attack that keeps on taking lives, that we at the Tunnel to Towers Foundation promise that we will never forget," said Frank Siller, chairman and chief executive of the foundation, which is named after his firefighter brother who perished on Sept. 11, 2001.

Siller and Oelkers spoke Tuesday morning at a news conference held on the top floor of One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan — high above the footprints of the Twin Towers that terrorist-hijacked jetliners destroyed 20 years ago. The Oelkerses’ mortgage is to be paid off in full.

Siller estimates that there are about 75 or 100 families who now newly qualify for the mortgage payoffs. Charity spokesman Trevor Tamsen has said that between 2001 and 2020, it had bought, built or paid off the mortgages on 250 homes across the United States involving fire, police, medical or military personnel and their families.

In late April, the charity also announced that it would pay off the outstanding mortgage on the East Northport home of NYPD Officer Anastasios Tsakos, who was killed, allegedly by a drunken driver, in Queens on the Long Island Expressway that month.

Siller said that on Sept. 12, he will hold an event to read the names of those who have died from 9/11-related diseases. That number, said John Feal of the FealGood Foundation, is about 2,000. The 20th annual Tunnel to Towers 5k run and walk is set for Sept. 26.

Erika Oelkers, who works at JP Morgan in wealth management, said the charity reached out to her soon after Thomas died. She and an NYPD widow from Rockland County were the first two beneficiaries under the foundation's new policy.

While still with the NYPD, Thomas Oelkers worked on the Ground Zero pile searching for remains of victims for four or five weeks. At the time of the attacks, he had been on the Civil Service list waiting for an appointment to the Fire Department.

"He was on the list," his widow said, "but with the deaths on 9/11, that class that was supposed to go in 2002 was accelerated and went in October."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.