Memories of a 9/11 firefighter: "Even on holidays I would go down to look for my father's remains"

New YorkFor Ray Downey, 9/11 was his last act of service as chief of special operations for the fire department. For his son Joe, also a firefighter, it was eight months among rubble and smoke searching for his father's remains. For his grandsons, Connor and Joseph, it is an inherited memory: that of their father, Joe, leaving them at a neighbor's house as he rushed toward the World Trade Center.

In the same year that marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Joe is about to retire at 64 – one year older than his father was when he died, at 63 – while his own children have just joined the New York Fire Department.

"I didn't go home that day. For the next five or six days, my brother, who is also a firefighter, and I stayed there. We slept right there on the ground. They brought us food and we ate there. We stayed in case they found any of the colleagues we had lost, but especially because if they found our father, we wanted to be there to pull him out ourselves."

Joe returns to that day with the same firmness with which one traces the relief of an old scar with their finger. He does it every morning when he enters the office. "From this office is where my father responded to the first call and then went toward the World Trade Center. For the last four years, I have occupied his position, even though the title has a slightly different name: I am the chief of rescue. They are mixed feelings. Obviously, most are good, because in some way I have been able to continue his legacy," explains the firefighter behind a mahogany desk full of piled-up papers. The grainy voices of the communication radios envelop the modest station room, in the middle of Roosevelt Island.

Photographs of Ray during his years of service in the fire department are interspersed with family photos. On one of the shelves, kept inside a small display case, there is a navy blue cap that is still covered by a fine white dust. Embroidered in white and red is "Chief of Rescue Operations. FDNY". Joe gets up to approach the cap and point to it with a crooked smile. Without stopping looking at it, he explains that on the third or fourth day – he no longer remembers exactly which – they were notified that they had located his father's truck. Inside was this cap and his uniform one. He believes his father's personal rosary was also there. He moves his fingers in the air, as if moving invisible beads.

"It was madness, because those buildings had furniture, chairs, tables, but you couldn't find any of them. Everything had evaporated. It was simply dust and steel... What I remember most is the smell of death, which persisted day after day." Eight months passed until they found and identified his father through DNA testing.

During those months every day was the same. New York was reduced to the path between Ground Zero and the cemetery where the funerals were held. He buried seven of his men. In total, 343 firefighters died there. Now, with the perspective of the years, he thinks about it more. Not because of what he lived through, but because of what he did not live.

"I went months without going home, and I had two small children: one four years old and the other two and a half years old. And I think about everything my wife had to go through, having to raise them alone for months. And I missed many things, because even on holidays I went down to look for my father's remains. Even today, I don't think people think enough about what the families went through while we were down there. Luckily, we are still together and have a good family". Before finishing the sentence, he claps his hands. His gaze, which had drifted away for a moment, returns to the office where we are talking. Now he smiles warmly: "My mother told me that after 9/11 she wanted to keep the family together".

A good part of what Joseph and Connor know about their grandfather and that day are memories borrowed from others. "My eldest son, Joseph, who is involved in social media, dedicates himself to searching for and reviewing stories about his grandfather: he finds people who knew him at some point, listens to the stories and publishes them", he explains.

Generational change

Joe, however, was taken by surprise when his eldest son told him he wanted to be a firefighter. "I never steered them towards it. And I don't think the reason was the attacks or their grandfather's role, either. He never put it that way: it was more that he was unhappy with his job and had seen me working as a firefighter, the camaraderie there is at the station. They have seen how much I love the job, despite what happened that day." Now that his children are beginning to wear the same uniform in which their grandfather died, Joe sees the risk of the profession in a different light. "I never thought about it for myself. But now I think about it more. There is always the possibility that I could lose them."

Joe is not the only member of the force who is retiring. He closes his eyes while trying to make a mental calculation of how many firefighters and emergency technicians from those who were there at the time must still be in the force. "There aren't many left. Maybe a couple of hundred." He has no doubt that the memory of that episode will continue once there is no one left who lived through it. "What I don't know is whether the younger generations really understand what we lived through down there. I think it's difficult to see the human side if you weren't there. I truly believe that. I would like to think that they do see it, and I hope that my children, by virtue of being their grandfather's legacy, understand the importance of it all."

At the time of this interview, there are still two weeks left until the 25th anniversary commemoration. Neither his mother, nor his brothers and sisters will go. Like every year, he will go with his two sons, his 20-year-old daughter, and his wife. "Everyone has their own way. I like it because it was the last place my father was alive." Then he goes to his old fire station, on West 10th Street, to meet with the families of the other firefighters. "And I finish the day at my mother's house. She is an Italian mother, so she always has food for us and we stay there talking".

He also knows that a day will come when everyone who attends the memorial will only have known the two large water fountains that occupy the site where the Twin Towers once stood. Ground Zero for them will be the shade of the trees there and the faint smell of bronze left on their fingers by the railings that guard the engraved names of those who died there.

"I would like them to continue remembering it and reading the names. Over time, most people will no longer know who they were, except for the families, because memory passes from generation to generation. And I know that, in the case of my family, my children, now that they are New York firefighters, will probably be so for twenty or twenty-five years".