Firefighter Salvatore Calabro

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Salvatore Calabro, 38, had just finished his shift that Tuesday morning, but rode in heavy with the six others. This 14-year veteran had been with Ladder 101 his entire career and was the senior man on the truck. He’d trained all the firefighters. Their firehouse was affectionately called Sal’s House. “They said he was the heart and soul of Ladder 101,” said his wife.

He was also a professional diamond setter and jewelry designer before being appointed to the FDNY but from the time he was a child, his dream was to be a firefighter. 
A weight lifter, Calabro also played softball, football and hockey, including with Department teams.
He had two young boys, 4 and 2. He had met his wife when they were both teenagers working in the same supermarket. Their 12th wedding anniversary was on September 15th.

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Firefighter Patrick Byrne

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Patrick Byrne, 39, had been with the FDNY since 1994. Before he joined he had studied accounting and started a roofing company. On the job, he was apparently the practical joker of the crew, known for pouring whole buckets of water from roof onto the unsuspecting. “He was a character, but he was a real good guy, a good fireman,” said a fellow firefighter.

The youngest of 9 children, Byrne did construction work on the side and played league softball including with the Red Hook Raiders. If anybody asked him, his job was simply “fighting fires, saving lives.”

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Lt. Joseph Gullickson

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Lt. Joseph Gullickson, 37, was a 13-year FDNY veteran just days away from his 5th wedding anniversary. With the NYPD for three years before joining the FDNY, that September Gullickson was studying for his Captain’s test. “He was the best drill giver that we had,” said Lt. Mike Delgrosso. “He knew everything.”

Gullickson played in the FDNY basketball league. He loved country music and books, especially history. The light of his life was his two young daughters, just one and three.
On the side, Gullickson had a lawn sprinkler business that he ran with one of his brothers. Inherited from their dad, this specialized company installed underground sprinklers for sites that included Gracie Mansion & New York’s Museum of Natural History.

His three brothers spent the first nine days after 9/11 on the pile searching. I believe Gullickson’s remains are among the 1000 or so who have not yet been found.

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Ladder Co. 101

“Seven in Heaven” is what Ladder 101 calls the men they lost on 9/11.

The Red Hook Raiders shared a firehouse with Engine 202.
 Located near what used to be one of the busiest piers on the Brooklyn waterfront, L101/E202 were just five minutes away from lower Manhattan through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. They had an easier time getting to the WTC site than many Manhattan companies who had more traffic to negotiate, and they emerged from the tunnel just in time to see the 2nd plane hit in front of them.

Ladder 101 parked their rig under the north pedestrian bridge and were assigned almost immediately to help evacuate people from Tower Two. The men of Engine 202 were still in the street awaiting orders when the rumble of the South Tower collapse sent them all diving into the parking garage under the World Financial Center. The men of 202 survived but their rig didn’t.

In 1867, New York City gave a fire truck to Columbia, SC, a town that had no fire equipment left after the destruction of the Civil War. The first fire carriage sank in a storm at sea on its way to being delivered. New York sent a replacement.

134 years later, students at White Knoll Middle School in Columbia, SC, started raising money to buy a fire engine for New York. In the end, through cake raffles, button sales and just plain asking for money, they raised almost $600,000 and bought a truck for Ladder 101. In March of 2008, the FDNY held an official ceremony to receive it.

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Firefighter Christian Regenhard

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Christian Regenhard, 28, had been a firefighter for just six weeks. Nicknamed “Braveheart,” this probie had graduated from the academy on July 27th. 
After graduating from the elite Bronx High School of Science, Regenhard — with an IQ of 146 — joined the Marines on his 19th birthday, retiring five years later as a sergeant.

The Marines made him an experienced mountain and rock climber, a pursuit he continued whenever he could. This world traveler had already visited 22 countries, and especially loved South America.

Assigned to Ladder 131, Regenhard was covering for someone in the Engine company on the morning of 9/11 and rode in with them.

Regenhard’s mother has been among the most active 9/11 family members, devoting herself to improving skyscraper safety, both design and evacuation protocols.

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Firefighter Anthony Rodriguez

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Anthony Rodriguez, 36, often said “I have the best job in the world” and he had had that job for just six months. Still a probie, he had finished his shift and was on the phone with his family when the first plane hit. He told them he was on his way home. But he hung around the firehouse talking and after the 2nd strike he called them again to say he was going in.

Rodriguez had been a radio man in the US Navy for 10 years.
 He was big on family and the “the life of the party,” always planning the family cookouts and camping trips, and monthly gatherings of all the cousins. He and his wife had five kids, four from a previous marriage. Their sixth child, a daughter, was born that Friday, September 14th. He had designed her room and proudly showed it off whenever and to whomever he could.

When the graduation ceremony was held for his class on November 1st, his chair was one of six draped with bunting. Posthumously he was made a firefighter.

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Firefighter Michael Ragusa

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Michael Ragusa, 29, was on the FDNY’s waiting list for seven years before he was able to join the force in 1999. He was based with Engine 250 in Brooklyn, but was on rotation to Engine 279 on 9/11. He loved being a firefighter and just in August had the opportunity to be the nozzle man at a large paint fire in Brooklyn. 
134 firefighter families have had no one to bury following 9/11, and not one firefighter from Engine 279 or Ladder 131 was ever found. The memorial service for Michael Ragusa was the very last FDNY memorial service of all 343, held just a few days shy of the 2-year anniversary. His parents despaired of burying an empty coffin, so they retrieved a vial of blood that he had donated to the National Marrow Donor program and buried that in his coffin, grateful to have something of him.

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Firefighter Ronnie Henderson

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There were 17 marines in the FDNY who died on 9/11 and Ronnie Henderson, 52, was one of them. A marine for 12 years, then 8 years in the National Guard, his service ranged from Vietnam through the first Gulf War. 
This father of four also worked briefly as a longshoreman before he became a firefighter. His more than 22 years with the FDNY were all spent with E279/L131.

If he was reading in the firehouse it was likely to be a book that had something about making money in it’s title. Since he was a young man helping to raise his five younger siblings, he was frugal and a saver. As a fireman he bought bonds and mutual funds with some of his earnings. Living up the Hudson River in Newburgh with his family, Henderson knew all the travel routes that would save toll fees.

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Lt. Anthony Jovic

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Lt. Anthony Jovic, 39, was based with Ladder Company 34 in Washington Heights, but on 9/11 he was assigned to Engine Company 279. Just on the other side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Engine 279 was among the first to respond.

Jovic had two boys, aged 9 and 10, and the first question they always asked of him whenever he came home was, “Did you fight any fires today?” 
A first generation American and a 12-year FDNY veteran, Jovic was preparing for the Captain’s exam in October.

His wife said, “When that tower came down, his soul went right through me. I knew it then, he just went through me and I knew he was gone.” His shield (and only his shield) was found in November, just before his memorial service.

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FIrefighter Daniel Suhr

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Firefighter Daniel Suhr spent ten years as a middle linebacker for the Brooklyn Mariners, a semi-pro team. He was “a big brave man who could get mushy over his 2-year-old daughter.” He was called “Captain America,” perhaps because he looked the part but also because he had a habit of always pointing out the exits and designating an emergency rendezvous everywhere he went.

The son and brother of firefighters and one himself since 1983, Suhr and his team from Engine 216 must have been among the first called on 9/11. They had just arrived and were setting up on the plaza when Suhr was hit and killed by a jumper. He was the first firefighter to die that day. Father Mychal Judge administered last rites. But Suhr’s death also made it clear that it was not safe at all on the plaza level and that entry and exit needed to happen from the more sheltered street level below.
The men of Engine 216, joined by a team from 205 carried Suhr’s body blocks away to safety and delivered him to an ambulance to be taken to Bellevue. Then the tower came down. They all feel that Suhr saved their lives with his own.

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