A Decade of Hope

by Dennis Smith

  Lee Ielpi

  Lee Ielpi is a retired New York City firefighter and one of the most decorated in New York City history. His son Brendan (see page 115) is also a member of the FDNY. His older son, Jonathan, was a firefighter in Squad 288, which was housed with New York’s special HazMat 1 company. Jonathan was lost on the morning of 9/11 along with eighteen other firefighters from the Squad 288 and HazMat 1 firehouse.

  I come from a regular American background. I was born in Flushing Hospital and have lived my entire life in Great Neck, on Long Island. My dad came here from Italy as a teenager; my mom’s folks came from Italy. They met where they were brought up, in Greenwich Village, married, and had a very simple American life—raising a family, doing the best they could. I owe everything to my mom and dad, who had good family values.

  My dad had to work two jobs, and it was very difficult times. My mom had to work just about every Saturday or Sunday. In good weather my dad would put my mother, my grandmother, my sister, and me in the car, and we would go fishing someplace far upstate. My dad knew as much about fishing as the man in the moon, but he wanted to take us out to the country. Dad loved to fish, while my mother would sit there.

  From these trips I learned the love of the outdoors, and then I joined the Boy Scouts. Dad then got involved, became the scoutmaster. Our family motto was that we would go on an overnight camping trip every month of the year. Every month of the year. And we did.

  When I graduated from Great Neck South High I knew enough to get a good job. I got married to my high school sweetheart, worked with my dad and then with my uncle for a while in his big shower door company. But my love was the Fire Department.

  Great Neck has an all-volunteer fire department. A very loud siren would blast to let the volunteers know that they had a call. I grew up just four blocks from the firehouse, and I’d hear the whistle and see these big red fire trucks come zipping by. I knew it was a volunteer thing and wondered how I could be one of those firemen. I wanted to race around in the big red fire truck too, have fun, and go through the red lights. And so when I turned eighteen, I joined the volunteers.

  I realized right off the bat that it was exciting work, but that it was also helping people. And I love to help people. I think it’s fabulous to be able, whether you’re a doctor or even somebody who has the ability to sell goods to folks, to do good. Going to a fire and rescuing somebody, or simply saving their belongings—what more could you ask for?

  My next thought, of course, was FDNY—to be a fireman in New York City. I listened to my scanner radio, and I could not believe how many fires they went to. Yes, that is what I wanted.

  My career changed a little then, because I was drafted during the Vietnam War—actually, for the second time. They tried but did not draft me at eighteen, because I had braces on my teeth. They didn’t want to take me then but told me to let them know when the braces came off. It was the first time I had been turned down for anything. The braces came off in May 1968, and in June I got the letter saying, Greetings, we want you. I had been married for almost three years by then, and I was drafted into the United States Army, did my boot camp, and went off to Vietnam.

  I did what they tell you never to do in the military—volunteer for anything. They were looking for a few people to go into a reconnaissance unit, which I knew was a small unit that was a pretty tough and front-lines group, so I raised my hand. People who want to do something are always better to be around than people who do things reluctantly. I went to recon, Twenty-eighth Infantry, First Division, and spent a year in Vietnam. My unit was twenty-four guys, and we’d go out in the jungle for a week or two at a time, on whatever mission they told us. Of the twenty-four guys I worked with that year in my unit, twelve were killed, and many were wounded.

  Just two days before I had been drafted, I took the test for the New York City Fire Department and passed with flying colors. The FDNY immediately put me on a military list. I was not being paid by the department, but I was building time. After my year in Vietnam I spent six months in the States finishing up my service time. I came out in June of 1970, and in September I was sworn in to the New York City Fire Department.

  There is no better way to go through life, and it all just worked out so well. All the guys who in those firehouses were so totally involved in their work, it was great. We went to fire after fire like no one had ever seen before. It was a tough time in the city, but for a firefighter, what better place to be than a firehouse that has fire?

  I eventually had four children, and because my wife, Ann, loved to go camping, we brought the babies up doing so. Anne Marie, my oldest, is a schoolteacher, and is married with two children. She still loves the outdoors and goes camping every single summer. Then Jonathan came along, my older son, and Brendan was next. We took Brendan camping at two months old. And then Melissa came along, who is the baby in the family. And everybody’s married now.

  Jonathan and I went hunting many, many times together. I can remember the first deer that he shot. He thought it was a doe, because it was doe season. It had just become dark as we hung her up, to let the deer hang there overnight, and Jonathan was so happy as we got into our sleeping bags. The next day I was looking at it, and Jonathan was still very proud of his deer. I said, “Jon, nice doe, but there’s only one thing wrong.” Jon says, “What’s that?” I said, “Jon, your doe has a penis and testicles.” It was what they call a button buck—its horns never came through, but you can feel little buttons on its head. Everybody cracked up, and it was a good experience for him too.

  With time I rose up the ranks in the volunteers and became the chief of the department. My children had never known anything but the Fire Department. When I first became assistant chief, they were just young kids, and I would drive Ann and them around in a chief ’s car—fire-engine red, gold printing on the doors, lights, siren. My radio would go off for a call, as we had an alarm, and because I couldn’t tell the kids to get out of the car and stand on the sidewalk, I would say, “Hold on,” and we would be off to the fires, all siren and flashing lights. This was their entire life, all four of them.

  I retired from the FDNY in 1996. My wish list was to be able to go fishing, hunting, hiking, and camping with my sons, because they loved to be outdoors, and while it lasted, it was the most wonderful time. We had all of that time together in the wild of nature and worked with the Great Neck Vigilant Volunteer Fire Company, and because I kept an FDNY fire helmet I even volunteered a few times with the department at really big jobs. I loved everything I did in those years, from 1996 to September 11, 2001.

  It’s still baffling to me: How did I get to this point, after my son was taken from us? I think it started not long after 9/11. The mission at that time for me was him, Jonathan.... I still cry every time I think of him. . . . Happens every time.... Still, ten years later.

  The site, on September 11 was where and when it started. Finding Jonathan was paramount, obviously, but as I have said many times, I do not want people to think that I and my buddies in the Fire Department were looking only for firemen. We were looking for people, and I was looking for my son, but anyone we found along the way was going to be a blessing to someone. It’s a great way for me to think about the way things happened at the site. It took three months to find Jonathan, three months to the day. Of course I wanted to be there, but at the same time I didn’t, and I guess the good Lord worked it out correctly. That evening I had left the site and gone home, and when I got the call I came back with my son Brendan. We did what you’re supposed to do in the fire service: You carry out your own. So that little chapter ended right there. Jonathan was brought home.

  We were blessed. There were only 174 bodies found whole, and after three months Jonathan’s was a whole body, or what they considered a whole body. A week or two after that we found his helmet, and then a week or two after, his turnout coat. So were we blessed? We were totally blessed.

  At the funeral service for Jonathan, I made a statement at the church, St. Al
oysius, in Great Neck. I wasn’t sure if I could get up to speak, but my family didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to say either. There were so many guys there that had given of themselves—the guys who had come out of retirement. They knew they couldn’t all come to the site, so what they did was to go to services and funerals—thousands of them went to hundreds of services and funerals. There is no way to comprehend that so many thousands of beautiful people went through all of that.

  So I felt I had to get up and say something, because I wanted to honor them. I can remember saying, “We do a lot of clapping at all these services, and I want to acknowledge a group of people we need to clap for,” and I gestured toward these folks. “These are guys who have been leaving their families and going to services. They knew they had to do something, as we all did, and so I’d just like to acknowledge them.” And I can remember clapping for them, which was . . . I hope they remember that, because it was a beautiful thing. And when I was going to finish, I said, “I know my son Jonathan is in God’s hands, but I really wish he was in my hands.” And then I went and sat down. And I still don’t know where that came from.

  We buried Jonathan about two blocks from our house in a beautiful, beautiful cemetery in a spot on a little knoll, under the shade of a tree. But my mission was not over.

  All the other dads were still there at the World Trade Center, and so I went back to work at the site for the long recovery period, and I was there for nine months.

  The more time I spent at the site, the more I came to develop different points of view. I began to see how huge this great tragedy had been for so many people: the victims’ families and friends; the volunteers giving up their lives to help at the site, handing out food and equipment; the construction workers skipping coffee breaks and lunches or dinners to get their work done; the police and fire departments’ bosses watching out every second for the safety of the responders and workers. Seeing all this I realized that we needed to remember what had happened here in a big way. We needed to understand what hatred and intolerance can do.

  So my first thought was steel.... Because it had become the most famous place in the world, I knew people were going to be asking for steel for 9/11 memorials. I don’t know where that idea came from either. But I was able to capture a lot of steel with the cooperation of the Port Authority, who owned the site, which we then used for a major project of the Fire Department: to give a piece of that steel to the families of the 343 firefighters who had been killed. The Port Authority and I then did a major project to give out these pieces of steel to almost three thousand additional people, mostly 9/11 families. So, in a way, I didn’t want all these people to forget.

  Of course we’ll never forget 9/11, but I really don’t want people to forget the minutes, the day, the search, the recovery, the aftermath of 9/11 either. I want people to understand why 9/11 happened. So steel was one of those devices that would bring you right there. For when you touch that piece of steel, there’s something there—you can feel it. So I guess that’s how I started thinking about education, and that’s how it continued.

  Over the course of the months I spent at the site I began working with a number of family members. Marian Fontana was one, a young lady who lost her husband, Dave, from Squad 1. She started one of the many organizations created by surviving families of 9/11, all seeking to gain more information from the city, state, and federal governments about what was going to be built at the site, what kind of memorial was planned, and how big it would be, who was investigating the terrorists, who would compensate the families for the great loss of family income, and that kind of thing. There was much politics involved in the aftermath of 9/11, maybe too much. Marian called her organization the Widows’ and Victims’ Families’ Association and asked if I would join, I guess because she knew I was spending so much time at the site. I told her I would love to join, but that I wasn’t going to leave the site, as there were still many things that had to be done there. And so I became the eyes and ears of the WVFA.

  A young lady by the name Jennifer Adams, a very competent woman who came out of an investment banking company, came in to organize things. A firefighter from the NYC firefighters’ union knew that Marian needed some help and introduced her to Jennifer. Her company had left for Houston just shortly before 9/11 and wanted her to come along, because she is commendably brilliant, but she was in love with New York City, and so she stayed. She had been working in the North Tower on the eighty-sixth floor when it was hit. Jennifer had spent about three and a half months as a volunteer at the World Trade Center site, working on the corner of Liberty and West in a little white tent with many other volunteers, handing out coffee, hot chocolate, inserts for shoes, a warm word, a comforting shoulder, maybe some guidance. It was a very difficult place for anybody to be, but it gave her a pretty good understanding of what had happened at the site. Jennifer agreed to join us, but only for a few months, because she needed to work. We were able to pay her a minuscule amount of money at the end of each month, and that enabled her to stay on for almost eight years. We got our funds from banging on doors and calling on friends like the International Association of Fire Fighters. Family members helped us, because they knew this was an effort that was going to be vital for them and for everyone.

  I think that Jennifer’s joining us was simply meant to be—so many things have happened since then that cannot be coincidences. When she came onboard we saw right away what a godsend she was. She began by organizing our little WVFA completely. Early on she noted that there were many family organizations that were redundant and were conveying mixed messages, so she put eight of them together and created the Coalition of 9/11 Families. She was just relentless in her endeavors. She started a quarterly newsletter, which we still publish to this day. She built a database of some forty-five hundred family members. And then, after four years of work, she suggested that we step back and perhaps rebuild our own organization. “The Widows’ and Victims’ Families’ Association” was proving to be a mouthful, so we decided to call it the simpler “September 11th Families’ Association.”

  One day she looked out the window, pointed to Liberty Street, and said, “Why don’t we lease that little building down there, and we’ll make it a visitors’ memorial center?” So I looked at Jennifer like, I don’t know, as if she were an oracle, and so we discussed it. I said, “Jen, that’s wonderful.” We were given a very inexpensive space to share with a Lutheran organization—everyone was so generous.

  That was January of 2004. Our little odyssey began in March.

  During this whole period people were coming down here in droves, moving around aimlessly and wondering, Is this the World Trade Center site? There was nothing here saying that it was, except maybe for dubious street vendors selling 9/11 T-shirts and coffee mugs, so it was foolish to think that everyone who came to the site would automatically recognize Ground Zero. Hundreds of thousands of people have never been to New York, and what they saw was a hole in the ground. Nobody was out there to guide them, to help them, tell them the stories of that day.

  Jennifer, meanwhile, had been paying attention to what I had been doing at the site. I had just stopped my part of the recovery work after many uninterrupted months, and I was no longer working as a retired FDNY member. At around that time I had begun to get calls from people who wanted to go through the site. It began when the Port Authority asked me to bring a group of reporters through the site. And I felt something there, when I did that. I was able to talk to people about 9/11. I cried every time I did so, but I was able to talk about it, and I saw the value of talking, and of being a firsthand storyteller. I started to walk them around, explaining that terrible day to them, trying to give them a sense of what really had happened. It was a natural thing for me. And, I had become a tour guide without knowing it.

  Then the Fire Department asked me to take another group of reporters around. I can still remember vividly, walking through the site, with recovery work still going on, how a reporter stopped m
e, with a little bit of a smile on his face. He was watching one of the firefighters on the pile. “Did you see what that guy just did?” he asked. I said, “No, what?” The reporter said, “He just picked that shoe up and smelled it.”

  And I looked at this reporter and said, “Most guys are going to pick a shoe up and smell it, because it could have human remains in it. And that may be the only thing a family gets back.” I had caught him off guard, and he now had a tear in his eye. But these are things that we did at the site. We were looking for parts of people, and we were looking for them in places that were hidden, because there were no bodies here. And they were hidden, in any place you could think of: a shoe, a sock, inside a shirt, in a two-inch void between two massive beams. Only 174 complete bodies of the 2,752 beautiful people who were murdered at Ground Zero on September 11 were recovered. There are still 1,222 missing.

  A professor from Duquesne University, Mike Dillon, who has since become a very good friend, came to do a story. Someone in the city press office had asked if I would meet with this reporter, a professor, who was doing a story for a local newspaper in Pittsburgh. I don’t remember the full content, but it was about me, the site, Jonathan, and the recovery workers. In it he gave me a title, “ambassador to the dead.” When I first read it, I said to myself, Is this good? And then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was a good title, as our 9/11 dead need to be talked about and represented.

  At the World Trade Center site thousands of people came to volunteer their services. In America the volunteer spirit is still very much alive, whether it is working as a candy striper at a hospital, helping kids read at a library, or being a volunteer firefighter in your hometown—75 percent of the country is protected by volunteer firemen. And this volunteer spirit was prevalent at Ground Zero then, and is present at the Tribute [WTC Visitor Center] today.