A Decade of Hope (31 page)

One regret I have is not having joined the military—not because of what happened on 9/11, and not in a vindictive spirit. I'm grateful, though, that I've been able to work with Hope for the Warriors, which is one of our main charities for the golf outing. It's a big organization started by wives to support their wounded loved ones, and they're bringing in multimillions of dollars. They'll provide whatever wounded troops need, like building a house for a quadruple amputee who lives on Staten Island. Just this past year, we gave them fifteen thousand dollars.

I've met so many extraordinary people over the years, wounded veterans and military personnel, and I'm always struck by the fact that their character is second to none. Despite the trauma that these guys have experienced in their lives, they still have a positive attitude, and their patriotism, and all the wonderful things you want to see in an American. I find these guys truly inspiring.

To be able to impact somebody's life in the ways we've been able to with the money we've raised is the greatest thing, as is the opportunity, even after a decade, to get together once a year and have the golf outing, a day when all of us spend the day talking about Tommy and Timmy. Each year I continue to hear new stories about them.

This is the way I've chosen to live my life post-9/11, but others have taken different routes. Just look at what Lee Ielpi's done [see page 98], truly extraordinary things—starting the Tribute WTC Visitor Center at Ground Zero, speaking about 9/11 all over the world. Guys like Lee are unique in having the strength to do the things they do.

 

Since 9/11, I've always wanted to be around like-minded people. When you experience trauma in your life, it's very important that you're around good people. Some family members affected by the tragedy have taken up conspiracy theories, blamed the government for everything, and were just bitter. Others have kind of crawled into a hole, or they've latched on to political issues that have just paralyzed their lives. I do not want to be that kind of person. You control your own destiny, and if you are around misery, you're going to be miserable.

I always say that my brothers were the first casualties in the war on terror. And here we are, ten years removed, and we're still fighting that war. As we become further removed from 9/11, one of the biggest emotions I feel is frustration that people fail to remember what we all went through. What happened to “We Will Never Forget”? I don't want my children to experience what I experienced. And they will if we're not brave enough or honest enough to address the real issues. I just hate to hear a politician get up and talk about the beautiful, peaceful religion of Islam. Well, maybe there's a small minority who've perverted the religion and espouse hatred, but they're still using that religion and their beliefs to attack and murder innocent people. We need a leader with the courage to address this for what it is, and to resolve it. This is not a problem that we can wish away; the only solution is going to be a military solution. The world that our children are going to grow up in is going to be a very dangerous one, and I don't want to see that for my kids. I don't want them to shed as many tears as I have because of terrorism.

I remember going to the christening of the USS
New York
, which has five tons of the World Trade Center steel built into its hull. The story of how the ship came to be, and the fact that the name was available again for a ship at that time in history, is pretty extraordinary. I was thinking about my father, who had died in 1994, and what he, as a marine, would be feeling on this day. After meeting the captain of the ship. I thanked him for his service and told him, “My father was a marine, and I don't think there would be anything he would want to stand for more than what we're standing for right now.”

I don't know if you want to call it retribution for those who took Tommy's and Timmy's lives, but that that ship is a warship that is going to go out on the seas of the world and do incredible things—it's really in the spirit of the way those cops and firemen sacrificed their lives on 9/11.

These days when I'm not working at the firehouse, I support my family with a second job, in the trade my father taught me. I used to own my own contracting business, but it got to be too much with two jobs—it was just easier for me to go work for somebody else. My wife, Genene, works as well. So many of my friends now are out of work, losing their jobs. I've always had the ability to support myself because of the skills I have, and I really hope to pass them on to my older son, Kenny. He's a lot like I was when I was I young: good with his hands and very inquisitive—maybe a little smarter, though. I have two boys: Kenny's eleven and Ryan is nine.

Ryan was born right before 9/11, in June of '01, with a host of medical issues. He had a condition called craniosynostosis, a premature fusion of the skull bones. The skull is actually made up of six different bones, six different sutures in your head. In the first year of a baby's life those bones are very pliable, which is the body's way of shaping itself. The head's growth is actually dictated by your brain's growth. The bones in Ryan's forehead had fused prematurely, so his brain grew [in] the only place it had room to move, which left him with kind of a cone-shaped head. He wound up having seven operations. On top of all that he had some other problems, and then 9/11 came. So I had a big challenge.

Ryan's baptism had actually been scheduled for the week of September 11, and we hadn't given him a middle name. But then my two brothers died, and since our son Kenny already had the middle name Thomas, we decided to give Ryan the middle name Timothy. We postponed the baptism, because I was down at Ground Zero, and it wasn't until maybe six weeks after September 11 that we finally had him baptized. I remember calling the city to try to get his birth certificate changed, to have Timothy added, because we needed the documentation for the church to baptize him with that name. I was told it would take six months, so I just explained to the guy what I was going through. And he said, “I'm sorry, buddy, you can have it this second.” So we got him a middle name, and we baptized him Ryan Timothy Haskell.

I probably didn't deal with 9/11 as directly as I would have had my son Ryan not been sick. Most of my energy from 2001 to 2003 was devoted to his health. We almost lost him more than once. The things we went through with Ryan then, coupled with losing Tommy and Timmy, made this an incredible time in our lives. There probably was a certain amount of strength in me already, to be able to handle what I did, strength that came from my parents. I've just always been somebody who could see things clearly, see them for what they are, and just deal with the problem—whether it is a fire in Brooklyn or my son in an emergency room. Ryan is a very special kid. He's handicapped, mentally retarded, probably as a result of the craniosynostosis and all the trauma he had with his skull. But he just smiles all the time. He doesn't have any physical limitations other than he just doesn't do things as well as a normal kid would. And he has an attitude that has just inspired me over the last nine years. He never cried, never complained. Obviously there was pain involved, but he was so strong through all the surgeries he had to get, almost as if it were just a matter-of-fact thing to do. I realized a lot of my own strength from watching my son. Just the way he handled things. He is the one, really, who got Genene and me through it, and it brought us closer together too.

Tommy and his wife, Barbara, had three girls: Megan, Erin, and Sara, who is a senior in high school now. We're very close with Barbara and the girls—we talk and see them all the time. We're very fortunate to still have Tommy's girls so actively a part of our lives, as some families have been torn apart. It's real sad. I know some of the lost firefighters whose parents had to take the spouses to court to get visitation to see their grandkids. The guy who was killed might have been the glue that kept the whole family together, or kept a particular relationship together; perhaps the in-laws didn't like the spouse or vice versa. But the thing that really breaks my heart is seeing his girls hit all these milestones without Tommy being there. I remember when Megan was moving up from elementary school to middle school, they had a father/daughter dance, and she called me up and asked that I take her, which I was honored to do. I tell you, that got me. When I got off the phone . . . I hardly ever cried before, I don't know why, I didn't feel the need. I was impacted by 9/11 tremendously, but the two times I actually did cry, both were with Megan.

The first week after 9/11 everybody was at Barbara's parents' house, and because I was at the site pretty much the entire time, my mother asked me to come home and just have dinner with everybody. They were tired of watching the news and wanted to talk to me and get a sense of what it was like down there. When I finally was able to go over to Barbara's parents' house, Megan, who was eleven at the time, came up to me and asked, “Did you find my dad yet?”

“No, Megan, not yet. But I'm going to find him for you.”

And she said, “I need you to find him for me.”

I said, “I will, Megan,” and I just had to walk out of the house. I went to the side of the house, and it just hit me like I had gotten hit by a freight train. I sat there alone and cried for like five minutes. Realizing the loss had already come to me that day—being at Ground Zero on 9/11, seeing the destruction, I knew Tommy wasn't coming back. But seeing it through Megan's eyes just killed me. And then doing all these things with Megan over the years that Tommy should have done—you know, it's just tough.

The exciting part of living in that post-9/11 world is getting to watch Tommy's children grow up. Megan is driving now. Tommy had this old Mustang, an '86 Capri, that was his baby. He kept it under a cover in the garage, taking it out only on nice days. Tires with like thirty thousand miles on them. Barbara thought about selling it after 9/11, but I suggested, Let's hold on to it. Megan was always talking about it, thinking it was going to be her first car. So when it was time to get her permit, she wanted that Mustang. But that car is superfast, so I told her she would not be driving it for a couple of years. First get a car and bounce it off the walls and whatever you're going to do, and when you become a good driver, when you become comfortable, then you can start driving the Mustang. So she's driving a Honda Civic in the meantime.

My brother Timmy, on the other hand, had not started a family yet. He had had a girlfriend for two or three years, a woman named Gabrielle, but they weren't married or even engaged. She was young, a young woman with a difficult personality, and the family found it hard to get along with her. When Timmy was killed, Gabrielle wound up getting the federal money from the Victim Compensation Fund, probably close to $1 million. In the long run that was pretty much the last we have seen of her, and I guess she went on with her life.

Tommy's girls are stronger than they even realize. I don't think they'll ever take anything for granted, as most kids do. But I'm hopeful they won't see any more trauma in their lives. Their innocence was taken ten years ago, and they were forced to grow up quicker than they had to. Barbara is also not the same person she was prior to 9/11. She has had to learn how to be without Tommy, how to do more things on her own, and I think she was much stronger than she knew. When somebody loses a father or a husband, when a loved one is murdered in such an extraordinary event as September 11, I think it forces you to become a different person.

Tommy's family has always loved ladybugs, and Barbara and the girls said that whenever they see one they think of Tommy. I thought that was sweet and kind of funny and really didn't think anything more of it.

Then, in December in 2001, I went back to work. The Fire Department had told me to take some more time off, but I felt that I needed to work, to try to get my life back to normal. I got transferred to Ladder 175, and on one of my first calls there we pulled a really big fire—a three-story frame house with fire on the second and third floors, blowing out every window but one. I grabbed a portable ladder and put it up to that one window on the second floor. I'd done the same thing at many other fires, but this time, at the tip of the ladder, I suddenly felt apprehensive. It was like a clairvoyant moment, and something was telling me not to go in there. My senses were on overload, but I climbed in anyway to make a quick search of the room. I found the bed and felt my way around the room, and there was no one unconscious.

But now, rather than find the door and go into the hallway and on to the next room, as I normally would for a full search at a fire, I just stopped myself and turned around. I turned around and said something like, Tommy said get the hell out of there. I went back down the ladder, and as soon as I stepped off it, the fire flashed out of that window, and part of the parapet on the front came down and wiped out the ladder I had just been on.

Afterward I was sitting on a stoop across the street, reflecting on what just happened. I reached for a bottle of water, and just as I was bringing it up to my mouth, I saw something on the top of my hand—a ladybug. Right away I thought,
Thanks, Tom.

William “Billy” Burke, Jr., was the namesake of Deputy Assistant Chief of Department William Burke, a high-ranking officer in New York City's Fire Department. He followed in his father's footsteps and entered the FDNY. Billy, a captain, was lost in the North Tower on 9/11. His family today refers to him as Captain Billy Burke, FDNY, which is the way he liked to describe himself. Billy was one of six children, and his younger brother Michael describes his peregrinations through the clouds of New York politics in trying to memorialize his hero brother appropriately.