A Decade of Hope (45 page)

 

When Stephen was older he eventually got an apartment on Staten Island, not far from me, living on his own, in a basement apartment. He ended up marrying a girl named Sally Wilson, who lived one block from where he grew up on Staten Island. He must have met Sally a few times when he was a kid, but nothing had registered. He wanted to have kids because he wanted with Sally to be the parents he did not have growing up. He was determined to have a wonderful family life to make up for some of that sadness he had experienced. Stephen and Sally started their family with Jamie, and then came Olivia, Genevieve, Jake, and finally Stephen, who was around nine months old on 9/11.

Stephen joined the Fire Department because he had such a connection with people—he loved them, and he loved being around them, and he loved the family feeling. The Fire Department gave him that feeling of family, being with the guys, the teamwork thing. He was so sociable that he'd have a thousand friends, no matter where he was. In fact, at his funeral, almost every person who came told us he was Stephen's best friend. He made everybody feel that way, being so gregarious and warmhearted. He never slept; he would go to everything—any family or friend event you could think of, he'd be there. We called him Mr. Multiplicity. He did five things on the Sunday before 9/11, one of which was calling me up asking if I wanted to play some golf. All of a sudden, on the fourteenth hole, Stephen says, I gotta go. And that's the way he was. He was probably supposed to be someplace else the whole time. Then he came back to my house to watch
Band of Brothers
, the HBO miniseries, and after the episode ended, Stephen said he was going to come over every week to watch the rest of the series with me. So we made plans to do that, but, of course, we never got to.

His desire for the Fire Department was unstoppable. That's the word to describe the way Stephen went about everything in his life—unstoppable. I'm not sure where that determination came from. He did always love John Wayne. All the athletes he admired were tough guys—like Lawrence Taylor, Bernard King—and his favorite baseball player was George Brett. In fact, he drove across country to see George Brett's last game in Kansas City. He made everything, did everything.

In sports, he never met a shot he didn't like. He had a great arm and could really throw, in both football and baseball. He was a little erratic, in that he'd make an unbelievable diving catch at third base, but then throw it over the first baseman's head at a hundred miles an hour. He was so competitive, so determined. And he brought that into his work. Maybe a month or two before 9/11 he fell through a floor into a basement filled with water. There was nobody in the building, and I said, Stephen, you gotta think. But he was gung ho: gung ho about his job and about his family. He gave so much time to each niece and nephew. I don't know how he did it. My son George said to me at Stephen's funeral, “I thought I was the only one who had a special relationship with Uncle Steve.” But all the cousins were saying how Uncle Steve showed up for this and made it to that. I didn't even know about it at the time, but Stephen was helping my son Greg, who was playing college football. Greg went off to college as a tight end, but when he tore his ACL [anterior cruciate ligament, part of the knee], they wanted him to be an offensive lineman, which meant he had to bulk up. Stephen would go and work out with him at a park down the block here. I never even knew they were working out together, as Stephen was doing stuff with him while I was at work. When Greg had his first football game in college, at the University of New Hampshire, Steve planned to come up with me to see the game. But then a fireman died, and he had to pay his respects. Stephen told Greg, I'll make the next game. That was the Saturday before 9/11.

 

My brothers and I had a regularly scheduled golf game, and on 9/11 we had plans for a golf outing in New Jersey—Frank, Russ, Stephen, and myself. We used to play almost every month, but then we could only manage to get together a few times a year. We were pretty excited about that day, because we knew what the weather was going to be like—perfect. Ironically, every time we went golfing we'd try to get Stephen to leave early, or get some guy to pick him up early, so he could get there on time. But that day we didn't rush him because he was working the night before. And like Stephen, we usually tried to get the golf in and then go to work, but that day we all decided, let's just take it easy and really enjoy ourselves. It could be one of the last good days of the golf season, that kind of thing. So Frank, Russ, and I planned to meet at Frank's and to wait for Stephen. But Russ stopped first at Sally and Stephen's house on the way, and Stephen called Sally and said, “Tell the boys I'll meet them at the golf course, There's something going on at the World Trade Center. I'll meet up with them later.” He didn't know then. And that was our last phone call from Stephen.

Stephen had a shortwave radio in his car, so he would hear whenever there was a fire somewhere. Even on his off days he would go to a fire, and sometimes would drive to check it out when he had his kids in the car. He had already left the firehouse that morning and was heading toward the Verrazano Bridge on his way to meet us when he heard on the radio what was going on and turned around. He went back to his firehouse, Squad 1 in Brooklyn, and his crew had already gone. They lost eleven guys.

They wouldn't let anybody through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, so Stephen left his truck at the Brooklyn entrance and ran through the tunnel. Frank and I later got a call from somebody from the Police Department saying they found his truck there, and we then tried to retrace how it all had happened. We later learned that halfway through the tunnel Stephen jumped up on Engine 239, which was stuck in all that traffic, and after taking a six-foot hook from them started running again. When he took the hook he told the guys, I'll meet you there. We went over to that firehouse, Engine 239, where we found out that someone had seen him on West and Liberty streets. That's the last place that we know for a fact that somebody had eyeballed him.

I had seen the fire at the World Trade Center before I left for Frank's house, and like everybody else, I thought it was either an electrical fire or a small plane that actually hit it—like what had happened at the Empire State Building. So it didn't really register with me at first that it was a catastrophe. But at Frank's house I said, “Turn on the TV—there's something going on.” And then we got the call from Sally telling us that Stephen would meet us later. So Russ joined us, and we sat there and watched it. When we saw the first tower go down, it was like,
Oh, God.
We spent a good part of the time saying to ourselves,
There's no way he could have made it in time.
To rationalize it. He couldn't have made it there from Brooklyn. And then we kind of slowly realized that Stephen would have found a way to get there. We spent the next day or two waiting for a phone call. Well, they didn't find any part of him. But we had a burial anyway, because his wife and family wanted that ritual, those prayers. Stephen's grave is on Staten Island, right down the block from here in St. Peter's Cemetery.

Why did this happen? Why? In 1993 there was a bombing, and every time I would see the pictures on TV I'd get mad. Of course, for 9/11—I've watched it a million times—I have more of a feeling of disgust than of anger. Or a feeling of desperation. Why? Why did this have to happen? Why did Stephen's children have to grow up without a dad after he ran in to help people? I . . . and, I think, our family . . . pushed our energy toward trying to make the world a little better, but there is always that
why
question. I feel like the reason that these terrorists hate us so much is envy, and you can't stop people from being envious. And jealousy. And like many people, I feel that a respect for life is not there. It's unfortunate. I think that until they have something to lose in life people have less respect for life. If you have a beautiful house or a wonderful family or whatever, then you think twice, but if you're living in a cave in the middle of Afghanistan, you're not really giving up much, and that's the reason you're easily brought into this martyrdom. I believe they have nothing to lose. And they have a lot of anger, and are easily swayed.

I was in a daze all of that day. Frank said, “I think we lost our brother.” I kind of felt it that day, but for five or six days afterward I figured somebody could live in a hole or something, like when a mine collapses. So many people on Staten Island had a relative or friend who was involved in 9/11. We spent a lot of days sitting around Sally's house, hours and hours, and bringing the food in. We all kept trying to keep the kids occupied, [not] sitting there, waiting. Very anxious.

Sally is just a remarkable mother. She held up better than I thought most wives could possibly do. Not that she wasn't totally upset, worried, but she had five kids to keep her mind focused and occupied. In a way, for that situation, children are a blessing, to keep you busy. It also helps that we have a very big family. If we went out to dinner and everybody brought all their kids and grandkids, I think the reservation would be in the midfifties. I have a Christmas brunch every year, and depending on who shows up, we have from forty to fifty-seven now. I've never really counted them, but they can all be counted on.

At Stephen's funeral there were tons of people outside the church, and as many inside. It was very moving, almost presidential in a way, with all the firemen lined up. Mayor Giuliani came to the wake. I don't know how the heck he made all those things, but he was really, really wonderful. Lifted everybody he could. And Governor Pataki's wife was there, and other officials too. It was a good funeral, if there is such a thing.

My brother Frank is a take-charge guy. And he was already working in his head the idea of starting a foundation and what it would do. Not to knock golf outings or dinners, but when those things were brought up, I said, There's a million of them. I'm involved in sporting goods, and we do a golf outing every other day. We wanted something unique. Then one of Stephen's friends, Billy Todd, suggested, “Why don't you just retrace what he did?” So Frank called me up and said, “Billy has a great idea, don't tell anybody. I don't want anybody stealing it.”

Fortunately, Richie Sheerer was a fire dispatcher years ago, with my cousin, so he knew our family a bit. He kindly led us to Rudy Giuliani, who was instrumental in getting us up and going. After that it just snowballed. Once we decided it was going to be a run, we had to go to all the agencies for approvals. Frank did most of the legwork; I went to a few of them. We had a meeting in my dining room, fourteen or fifteen people, here in Staten Island. My next-door neighbor works for the New York City Marathon. Another friend of ours, Nick Navarro, is a firefighter and also the starter at the New York City Marathon. It turns out that Nick went to St. Peter's High School a year or so ahead of my brother Frank, and my brother Russ was teaching as St. Peter's at that time, so Nick knew and respected Russ. We had all these people to help us out. We wanted to get it done by the first year, but we went into one meeting where they weren't very nice to us, and after 9/11 it was surprising how some city officials went right back to the official stuff.

Now, though, they couldn't be nicer to us. I'm sure they have a million requests every year. Those same officials told us a few years later that they left that early meeting saying, “These Sillers are crazy; this isn't going to happen. But we'll try.” After all, for this race to happen they had to close the tunnel, part of Brooklyn, and part of downtown Manhattan. That's about 1.7 miles of very expensive real estate. Altogether it's about a threemile run. We honestly shocked ourselves when it all actually developed.

There was a headline in the
Daily News
: HE RAN FROM THE TUNNEL TO THE TOWER. So I said, We'll call it the Tunnel to Towers Run. I knew in my heart it couldn't just be called the Stephen Siller Run. It's bigger than that; Stephen was bigger than that. So Frank's idea became an event where we honored all of the firefighters and police officers and all the civilians killed that day.

In fact, the first year we had the names of all 2,974 people posted on a sort of Vietnam wall, set up near the finish line. Then we had the firefighters' banners of the 343 lost firefighters that they wore at the race.

The first year, 2002, we actually had the race end in the tunnel, but over the years, with so many people running, we have had to put the finish outside, coming out of the tunnel. So it's really snowballed. Every time we get frustrated with the many things we have to deal with, we also see all the good that comes out of it. It makes Stephen's life mean something. Everybody in the family gets involved in some way. But it is really the brothers and sisters. The kids give out the shirts and things like that. But the determination is with the brothers and sisters.

My sisters all went out and got restaurants to donate food for the race. We have so many people who donate food that it's almost like Jesus with the loaves and fishes—I'm talking about ten thousand, five thousand, two thousand servings of food from some really nice restaurants in Manhattan. We receive a tremendous amount of help in this effort from FDNY firefighters, who cook thousands of hamburgers and hot dogs. Initially, people didn't charge us for a lot of things, but as time has passed, they have businesses to run, so now we're paying for most of the food. My brother Russ has a lot to do with the writing of the PR material and press releases. My sister Mary is very good with the graphics and the writing too, so we kind of pulled it all together. I got the Web site going, which we needed the first year because there were so many people wanting to register other than by paper. And the Web site has taken over now, to the point where we do more registering online than we do by mail.