Jimmy Lanza was one of the casualties of 9/11. Although he didn’t die on that day, his lungs were exposed to asbestos and other contaminants in the air. As a result he contracted brain cancer and died at 71 years of age.
                                 Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

Jimmy Lanza was one of the casualties of 9/11. Although he didn’t die on that day, his lungs were exposed to asbestos and other contaminants in the air. As a result he contracted brain cancer and died at 71 years of age.

Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

A WEEKLY CHALLENGE

<p>The initial interview that is still being played as part of the training of Port Authority police and FDNY new firefighters was done at a small county fair in Dodge Center, Minnesota. The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers exhibit was set up at the fair where Jimmy Lanza gave a profound and poignant take on what happened that morning for him.</p>
                                 <p>Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal</p>

The initial interview that is still being played as part of the training of Port Authority police and FDNY new firefighters was done at a small county fair in Dodge Center, Minnesota. The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers exhibit was set up at the fair where Jimmy Lanza gave a profound and poignant take on what happened that morning for him.

Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

<p>The sun shines on the buildings that were all rebuilt or refurbished at Ground Zero with the exeption of the Twin Towers. Rather than putting up new towers, the city erected the massive set of wings for hope and peace and also built the Freedom Tower.</p>
                                 <p>Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal</p>

The sun shines on the buildings that were all rebuilt or refurbished at Ground Zero with the exeption of the Twin Towers. Rather than putting up new towers, the city erected the massive set of wings for hope and peace and also built the Freedom Tower.

Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

<p>One World Trade Center, also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly called the Freedom Tower during initial planning stages, is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan.</p>
                                 <p>Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal</p>

One World Trade Center, also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly called the Freedom Tower during initial planning stages, is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan.

Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

<p>One of the things that was done after 9/11 was to rescure surviors, recover the dead and clear the rubble. The City of New York, instead of making a mass graveyard, built a 9/11 museum and intalled two massive fountains that bare the names of all those who were killed.</p>
                                 <p>Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal</p>

One of the things that was done after 9/11 was to rescure surviors, recover the dead and clear the rubble. The City of New York, instead of making a mass graveyard, built a 9/11 museum and intalled two massive fountains that bare the names of all those who were killed.

Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

<p>Row after row of names like the fountain memorials that are set up at Ground Zero in Manhattan. 2,996 people lost their lives that day and many more have since died from complications of their injuries.</p>
                                 <p>Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal</p>

Row after row of names like the fountain memorials that are set up at Ground Zero in Manhattan. 2,996 people lost their lives that day and many more have since died from complications of their injuries.

Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

<p>Jimmy Lanza was a New York City firefighter working out of Spanish Harlem at 43 Truck and 53 Ladder. His interview in 2016 was so profound that the video is now used in the training sessions for Port Authority police and new firefighters coming into the profession.</p>
                                 <p>Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal</p>

Jimmy Lanza was a New York City firefighter working out of Spanish Harlem at 43 Truck and 53 Ladder. His interview in 2016 was so profound that the video is now used in the training sessions for Port Authority police and new firefighters coming into the profession.

Mark DeLap | Bladen Journal

ELIZABETHTOWN – The article I wrote won national acclaim and was called “Fifteen years and the tears have not dried… An intimate look at the day America lost its innocence.

This is part one of the Jimmy Lanza story with part two coming in next week’s edition of the Bladen Journal. It is a reprise of the thoughts and memories while I was a journalist in Minnesota.

“I remember sitting in my office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on a cool September morning, working on rewrites for a novel I was crafting. A phone call. A plane crash into one of the twin towers in New York.

I just figured it to be a freaky, “oh that’s interesting” story, when I heard the words that took me from the pages of my passion to the front page of America. “Another plane just hit the other tower.”

I was thrown face first into history with the rest of the country as we all began to rewrite the memoirs that would be forever remembered simply as “9/11.”

It was a day that would forever connect every American to the same page of remembrance. A moment in time that shoots every lucid thought back to a morning when, just a hint of autumn had come calling.

At the Dodge County Fair, here in Kasson, thousands of people came and revisited that page in our history as the Stephen Siller 9/11 Never Forget Exhibit arrived Tuesday in the midst of great pomp and fanfare.

Watching people lined up at the exhibit all week, I saw firsthand a people who would never forget and as they exited the exhibit, I realized that although it’s been 15 years, the tears have not yet dried. Perhaps they never will.

On Saturday, my profession afforded me an incredible opportunity to sit down and speak with one of the firefighters who was there on the day we all remember. He told his story of a time that he will never forget.

We all had an agenda for the day. Nobody remembers what it was. It was a day that took control of every schedule, every task and every thought. Certainly, it changed not only the day, but the destiny of Jimmy Lanza.

We must remember that to share again and again, the events of that infamous day, takes a special heart beating inside of a hero. To be willing to relive that day is a mantle that carries a weight that I cannot comprehend.

I wrote in my column this week, “I listened to his story and for someone who had only experienced the tragedy from the safety of the Midwest, 15 years ago, I finally understood the scope as I saw the reflection of that day in his stoic eyes.”

Lanza is not a tall man. He is not a muscle-bound caped crusader from Metropolis. He doesn’t have a booming voice. But he exemplifies and solidifies the very fact that heroes come in every shape and size.

Lanza worked as a New York City firefighter for 28 years and Sept. 11, 2001, he worked in ladder 43. Stationed in East Harlem.

On that morning, he was outside and off duty when he heard from a neighbor that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. As I ask him about that morning, he looks away from my eyes and squints slightly as he looks back into the distance.

“It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day, without a cloud in the sky,” he begins his descent into the disaster area. “And I knew that with visual flight rules and even without the instruments on, there’s no way a plane would hit that tower.

“Unless they had mechanical trouble. And the news kept showin’ it over and over; and to me, it looked like it was intentional.”

Lanza went on to explain the fact that the city has major air traffic from LaGuardia, Newark and Kennedy and most air traffic is not over the city. He stated very clearly that planes that make that kind of a drastic change in path are duly noted and flagged.

He fully believed that in the moments before impact and at the time of the crashes, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had already known what was happening. They all began to brace for the worst while hoping for the best.

“I went down to the firehouse and met up with 13 other firefighters,” Lanza said. “We got another fire truck as my own company had already left to go to the Trade Center. We got down there and they held us back until the second building came down.

“And it was like a nuclear winter with the smoke, the debris, asbestos… who knows what was in the air. Unfortunately, some of it was the smell of human remains.”

When finally released to go into the belly of this hell, Lanza’s crew was assigned to go into the stairways through the A tower and the B tower. What they encountered was something horrific. With Lanza’s words or my writing and recounting of those scenes, if you let your imagination read between our lines, I still feel hollow and inadequate to fully describe the carnage.

Lanza describes finding and aiding in the rescue of firefighters like Captain Jay Jonas from 6 truck and guys from 39 engine, like Jimmy McGlinn who had fallen down floors when the tower collapsed and trapped below floors.

“We also found Chief Amante, unfortunately he was passed away,” he said. “And after that it was like a recovery effort because everyone you found was dead or a body part.”

As Lanza began to describe delicately the handling of the body parts found, he mentioned that a fortunate part of finding something like that was found in the faces of the thousands of people who were standing outside for days with pictures of their loved ones. Waiting for news. Waiting for confirmation. Waiting for closure.

After days of waiting, checking hospitals and piles of human remains, it gave a sense of purpose in recovering anything that could lead to some peace of mind in those who waited. And waited. And cried. And waited.

“When we found a body part or a body, we would put it on a stretcher, cover it with an American flag, march it out with honor to a temporary morgue that the city had set up,” Lanza recounts with an inflection of great pain. “They had gathered hairbrushes, toothbrushes and DNA samples from family members and tried to quickly set up a DNA database. The rewarding part of that which may sound crazy to somebody else was that we knew we were giving closure to a family or a parent or a daughter.”

Lanza, who was a steamfitter after his military experience and college career, explained his ideas behind the actual collapse of the buildings. He explained that above the impact, most likely people had been incinerated due to the explosion. Below the crash where the jet fuel began to pour down the main elevator shafts, the fire was so intense that it caused the steel to expand.

“They put the horizontal beams to the vertical beams,” Lanza explained. “They bolted them together. When the heat from that jet fuel came down on those beams, the heat had to be 1200-1400 degrees. At that temperature steel expands.

“I believe that it expanded a few inches and sheared those bolts. Then you get what we call in the fire department a pancake collapse. One floor falls on the other floor.”

Lanza went on to describe the rigors of the job and the challenges that come with the calling. He described accident scenes or perhaps the baby who had died in a fire. As a true firefighter trained in his position, he reflected with a calmness and a reverent demeanor how those things impacted him but did not deter him from continuing to do a job that he was called to do.

“It’s not nice all the time, but you do the best you can,” he said.

He seemed to point toward the actual steps of the schedule and routine that at times kept him on track so that he would be able to maintain focus on “fruition of mission.” In other words, keeping busy thinking of the steps instead of the situation.

“But there’s times when you get a break,” he said. “And you look at how bad it is. And then I’m sayin’ to myself, who’s gonna want to build here again? The last thing I wanted to see was a 15-block cemetery or desolate place.”

In crisis, the mind seems to try to find a way to mentally rebuild it and to dream about restoration, but in the midst of what was happening on that Tuesday in September, Lanza was at an impasse. He had been working for 36 hours and then on again, off again shifts of search and rescue that were 12 hours in scope. Just to think of that is something I was not trained in public school in America to handle. 12-hour shifts to find remains and to try to put the pieces of “normal” back together.

“To me, if was a cemetery, then the bad guys would win,” he said. “All seven buildings are built again. I go to the freedom tower every now and then, eat a hot dog, have a soda and I just watch the people comin’ out of the subway.

“Runnin’ into the buildings to go to work. Coming out to go to a restaurant. So, the bad guys really hurt us, and I feel sorry for the families of those who lost loved ones, especially firefighter friends of mine, but the bad guys didn’t win. They didn’t change our way of life.”

The day seized us, but from it, we learned how to seize the day. I got the unusual opportunity to sit with a bona fide hero. A man small in stature but huge in purpose. Sitting there under that small tent at a county fair made me feel as if I were seated in the shadow of 9/11 itself. It brought a shiver to my spine. It brought a new perspective to the word “sacrifice.” It brought tears.

That is perhaps the most poignant, the most powerfully simple thing to say that will leave a need to speak no more. It brought tears.

There is much more that was recorded in the live interview with Lanza and you can view that video online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9ZETSuDEps entitled “Trip to Honor Jimmy.” It is worth a look and a moment of your day to view an honest to goodness 21st century hero who took the time, left his family, sacrificed his agenda to come and sit with all of those Americans who, on that day could only watch from a distance.”

You can Reach Mark DeLap at mdelap@www.bladenjournal.com