As Long Islanders remember 9/11, the emotion of the day hangs heavy even after 25 years

Long Island paused Friday, a day when a quarter-century of memories felt unbearably heavy.

At ceremonies across the Island, commuters and cops, teachers and politicians talked about what they remembered: planes and explosions, sifting rubble, sickness that spread long after Sept. 11, 2001, and the feeling of belonging that lingered for some time in the city and suburbs.

In Point Lookout, Kerrin Denue, 38, of Merrick, wearing an FDNY jacket, spoke of her uncle, a New York City firefighter who lived because he missed a truck going into the city that day. Every firefighter on that truck was killed, she said. "They were like brothers to him," Denue said. 

That uncle, Kevin Calhoun, now travels around the country every year with a flag to honor the lives of the firefighters who were killed, she said.

Close to 500 Long Islanders were killed in the attacks and more have died since of cancers and other diseases tied to contaminant exposure in lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center or other sites where debris was stored. About 26,000 Long Islanders are registered in the World Trade Center Health Program.

In Hauppauge, at a ceremony outside Suffolk County offices, Jennifer McNamara, an office worker on lower Manhattan’s Rector Street that morning, talked about the fear she felt when she saw the north tower burn and the second get hit. Hours passed before she was able to reach her husband, FDNY firefighter John McNamara of Engine 234 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn: "He was alive in lower Manhattan and had no idea when he would return," she said.

In those early days, when the fire department was reeling from the deaths of so many of John McNamara’s brother firefighters, the Blue Point couple thought themselves lucky to have survived.

Five years passed before he was diagnosed with the cancer that killed him. While he lived, John McNamara advocated for health benefits for first responders who were exposed at Ground Zero; Jennifer McNamara continues that mission as founder and president of the Johnny Mac Foundation.

At that ceremony, Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine recalled the ethos of another time: after the attacks, he said, "The sense of unity in this country was overwhelming."

Loss and the memory of loss should not be in vain, said Hofstra University President Susan Poser in a ceremony next to "Phoenix," the school’s Sept. 11 memorial sculpture of gently twisted steel.

"We come together today not only to remember those who died, but to remind ourselves that life is short, and that we must seize every opportunity we can to build community, to practice kindness, and to live our values," Poser said. She and others placed roses for the 26 alumni and one student killed in the attacks.

A generational divide

At Hofstra and elsewhere, Long Islanders grappled Friday with a generational divide: more than a quarter of the region’s population, some 862,592 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, have no memory of Sept. 11 because they were not yet born.

"It’s just like Pearl Harbor, I don't fully understand the extent, because I wasn't there at that time," said David Edouard, 51, a Hofstra public safety officer. "It doesn't hit as close as to somebody who was born in that time, who lived through it," he said.

Edouard, who was patrolling the campus Sept. 11, recalled students frantically calling their parents to make sure they were safe.

Sophomore Samantha Krall, 19, said she’d spoken to her mother about the attacks. "She was just talking about how the motto is always like, ‘Never Forget,’ " said Krall, a mathematical finance major and music minor who sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the ceremony with the Hofbeats, the Hempstead university’s a cappella group.

At Stimson Middle School in Huntington Station, Principal Michael Duggan faced the issue head-on in his remarks.

"Though most of you were not born on that quiet September morning, its legacy continues to shape our world," he said over the loudspeaker. "We pause today to remember the thousands of innocent lives lost in New York City, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania."

Afterward, 800 district students filed out of school, walked along the baseball field and past pictures of the day’s nearly 3,000 victims lined up on a fence.

A sign of respect

Before Friday’s event, students were given the names of three to four of the dead and were told to learn about their lives.

"To be able to unite a building around such a tragic event, but to celebrate it as a memorial, and what we've created today is so special to everybody here," eighth grader Jonah Becker said. "There's a sign of respect shown to the lives lost, and to the incredible first responders that helped us."

Students dropped flowers in the shape of an American flag before visiting the nearby memorial to alumnus Peter A. Nelson, an FDNY firefighter killed in the attacks.

In Long Beach, Julie and Tyler Rutter, a firefighter and paramedic for that city, struggled to explain the day's significance to their 7-year-old daughter, Joy. It's “a special day for first responders,” Julie Rutter told her. 

“It’s difficult to explain to younger kids,” she told a reporter. “ ‘It’s a special day to honor those that help us’ is how we express it to younger kids. And that this was a terrible day, but everyone showed up.”

At a ceremony in which fire trucks hoisted an American flag above West Park Avenue and a city fire official recited the names of 16 residents who died in the attacks or of related disease, Martin Stamile and his son Franco, 11, took off their caps. 

“People like him who weren’t born is why we always need to remember that day,” Stamile, 45, a Navy veteran of Island Park, said.

Some Long Islanders who experienced the attacks or worked in New York City afterward now struggle to recall the details.

At a memorial service in Islip, which lost 90 residents to the attacks, Jeanne Hermann told a reporter that she had come to memorialize the sacrifices made by her husband, Frederick Hermann, a retired New York City firefighter with Squad 270 in Queens, who has dementia and did not attend the ceremony.

“With the dementia now, it’s very difficult for him to remember,” she said. He lost 63 friends that day and lives with cancer, thyroid disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — “all thanks to 9/11,” she said.

At Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, 640 names of Long Islanders killed in the attacks and by diseases related to the attacks are etched into a black marble memorial, Richard Bie, the cemetery’s chief executive, said Friday.

"We add names every year and now there’s more people that have passed away from 9/11-related illnesses than there are people who perished that day," he said. "I don’t think the pain will ever go away but it’s important that we remember those individuals."

As the cancers and other 9/11-related diseases continue to claim lives, the remembrance of that day has taken on new meaning for those whose loved ones got sick years after rushing to Ground Zero.

Steelworker Sean O. Mills, who grew up on Long Island, died on March 14, 2021.

“He said he was happy to go down there and help clean up,” said Shawn Stiebel, a childhood friend. “He said it was a horrible sight.”

Mills' wife was worried when he was working on the site, as a welder cutting up steel girders to be removed during the cleanup.

“When I washed his clothes, they were always filled with all this dust,” said his widow, Cecily Mills, of Springfield Gardens, Queens, who came to Holy Rood cemetery. “I knew that it was bad.”

He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma about six years later, she said.

“The only reason why we knew that it was an illness that was related to 9/11 is because when he went into the hospital and the nurses found out he was down in the area, they said, 'Oh, well, that is a condition that is on the list,' ” Cecily Mills said. “He never considered it. We never considered it.”