9/11 25 Years Later: Your Tributes to Everyday 9/11 Heroes

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Brian Lehrer (0:40)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. And as I said before the news, for this next stretch, we're just going to take some of your phone calls with your remembrances of anyone you may have lost on 9-11. And this year we are adding your remembrances of anyone you have lost to post-9-11 related illness. In addition to the attack itself, of course, with this so much in the news now, and probably should have done this years ago, but so much more awareness with the release of the documents by the Mamdani administration this week. We'll start with Nicholas on City Island. You're on WNYC. Nicholas, thank you for calling in.

Nicholas Hollander (1:24)

Well, thank you for receiving me. My name is Nicholas Hollander. And on 9-11, I had just flown in on the Red Eye from Los Angeles, and through the skylight from where we lived, we watched a plane fly into the World Trade Center.

At first, they said it was the radar fault, and then the second plane came. So I walked my girlfriend and our dog uptown, and I ran across Bill Biggert's wife. Bill Biggert was a photographer who decided to walk down, and he was a bang-bang photographer, means he never used a telescopic lens. He got right up close. So as he walked down, he was taking photographs of different angles as he gets closer. And when he got really close, the second building fell on him.

His work is online. His cameras are at the Smithsonian. I lost...

I volunteered at that point, because I was looking for him. I volunteered to help people get out of their cars. You wouldn't believe the thickness of the dust on the cars nearby. You wouldn't believe the thickness of the dust on the ground. It felt like walking through light snow and sounded weird.

I was a writer at the time for Warner Brothers. I had come in to write for an HBO show called A Little Curious. And I was there, right in the middle of it. I started walking people towards Canal Street, and then I walked people up Mott Street, to the Manhattan Bridge. And I lost, after a year, I got one fellow who wrote me back to thank me, and he walked all the way to Glen Cove.

Brian Lehrer (3:29)

And we thank you too, Nicholas, for your service on that day, as you just described, for calling in today, and for honoring the photographer Bill Biggert by name. We're going to go on to some other people now in calls and texts, the 212-433-WNYC.

Here are some texts remembering Keith James, who died of 9-11 multiple myeloma. He lived and worked in the zone, and his fingers disintegrated from the dust. For years, he literally had to glue the skin together. He was a true original who is terribly missed. Another one, we need to remember Father Michael Judge, who was the chaplain of the FDNY, but was also a prominent gay activist. His heroic activities on 9-11 have led him to be proposed for sainthood, and he might also become the patron saint of LGBTQ. Another text, on 9-11, I was president of the hospital closest to the World Trade Center, several crosstown blocks east. I want to recognize our EMTs, first to the site, and doctors, nurses, and staff who responded brilliantly to this tragedy. Fern and Wayne, you're on WNYC. Hi Fern, thank you for calling in.

Fern (4:51)

Oh, I'm really honored to be here. I'm calling to pay tribute to a member of our community that we lost two years ago.

Dr. Robert Gordon, who was a veterinarian, and this is one aspect of the people working at the pile that I don't know whether they've recovered. He was a vet all his life. He had a very high position in the state organization, and on 9-11, he was down at the pile, caring for the search and rescue dogs, and he is terribly missed.

Brian Lehrer (5:20)

Fern, thank you very much for that. Let's go next to Cindy in Cranford. You're on WNYC.

Hi Cindy.

Cindy (5:29)

Hi Brian, thank you for taking my call. I wanted to call in memory of Dean Eberling, a man in my community in Cranford, worked in the second tower. And just yesterday, a podcast dropped on Smart Her News about the story.