Ladder 118

[patries]

Joseph Agnello
Vernon Cherry
Scot Davidson
Robert Regan
Leon Smith JR.
Peter Vega

[SeaBreeze]

Daily News - Online Edition
From: News and Views | City Beat |

Wednesday, January 09, 2002

Co. 118's Heroic Last Run
Doomed crew saved hundreds at hotel

By MICHELE McPHEE
Daily News Staff Writer

Elevator mechanic Bobby Graff worked frantically to save the lives of others at the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel on Sept. 11, and he remembers who saved his: "Tall firefighters with the numbers 118 on their helmets."

Along with 920 guests and scores of employees, Graff made it out of the hotel after the terrorist attacks. Many of them were ushered to safety by men working aboard Ladder 118, which had raced to the scene from Brooklyn Heights.

But the firefighters from the Ladder 118/Engine 205 "Fire Under the Bridge" house weren't as fortunate.

"I knew those were the guys that were saving everyone — I thought they had made it out," Graff said.

"Their families should be proud of them. They knew what was going on, and they went down with their ship. They weren't going to leave until everyone got out," he continued, his voice trembling through tears. "They must have saved a couple of hundred people that day. I know they saved my life."

Final Moments

Graff's story of Ladder 118's final moments is the first account of the heroics of the doomed Brooklyn company. Three months ago, its rig was pictured on Page One of the Daily News as it sped over the Brooklyn Bridge toward the burning twin towers.

Last week, the bodies of three members of Ladder 118 — Firefighters Joseph Agnello and Peter Vega and Lt. Robert Regan — were found in the debris at Ground Zero. Searchers also found the turnout coat of Firefighter Vernon Cherry.

The body of Firefighter Scott Davidson was recovered in November, but the remains of Firefighter Leon Smith are still missing.

Graff's testimony of their bravery gave some comfort to their widows, who knew their husbands were being called heroes but had no detailed explanation of how they gave their lives.

"I always knew that my husband died helping others, and I knew in my heart that he was helping people up until the minute he died, but I didn't know how," said Agnello's widow, Vinnie Carla Agnello. "This is so incredible — knowing what happened that day is a gift that I can give my sons."

The scene at the hotel at 3 World Trade Center after the planes hit was chaos. A swimming pool on the 22nd floor cracked, flooding elevator shafts and trapping fleeing guests between floors.

In the lobby, Graff was trying to pry open the doors of an elevator when one of Ladder 118's firefighters — "a stocky guy with a mustache" — knelt next to him with a giant crowbar called a halligan tool.

Together, they opened the door. As people ran out, they were met by a row of firefighters who ushered them away from the more dangerous West St. exit, where steel girders, debris and bodies were raining down, and through the hotel's restaurant, Tall Ships, to the Liberty St. exit.

"They made a human wall to make sure no one went out the wrong way," Graff said. "I remember they were all standing together, the guys with 118 on their helmets. The lieutenant [Regan] got a call on the radio and started yelling, 'Stay away from the windows — this place may come down!'"

Minutes later, the 843-room hotel was battered by the collapse of the south tower, and then obliterated under the mass of the north tower.

Graff was covered by dirt and scalding debris but managed to crawl to the street, where he was treated by emergency medical technicians.

The six men of Ladder 118 didn't make it out.

"From what this guy is saying," said Firefighter John Sorrentino of Engine 205, "it sounds like the Marriott was the Titanic, and the guys were the band that played on."


http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-01-0...t/a-137664.asp

[SeaBreeze]

Wednesday January 16 03:03 AM EST

Bravest Died Together & Buried Together

By MICHELE McPHEE

The men of Ladder 118 died side by side — and three of them will spend eternity that way.

On a grassy hillside in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, Firefighters Joey Agnello and Pete Vega share a grave in the shadow of a statue of an angel.

When the remains of Firefighter Vernon Cherry are identified — his bunker coat was recovered from Ground Zero this month — his widow plans to bury him there, too.

"They ate together and slept together and argued together, then they died together. It's a big consolation, knowing that they weren't alone in their last minutes," said Joanne Cherry, Vernon Cherry's wife of 33 years.

"My husband was a firefighter for 28 years, and he loved those men," she added. "I want to keep him with the guys that he loved. They won't be lonely and they can talk about their fire stories."

The three are among the six firefighters from the Brooklyn ladder company killed together after racing to the burning World Trade Center on Sept. 11. A picture of the six men speeding over the Brooklyn Bridge in their tiller truck ran on the cover of the Daily News in October.

Found Under Hotel

The remains of Agnello, Vega and Lt. Bobby Regan — along with Cherry's coat — recently were found under the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel, where the men of Ladder 118 spent their final minutes rescuing hundreds of people.

Their fellow firefighters from Ladder 118/Engine 205 carried the men out of Ground Zero during the first weekend of the year.

Another firefighter aboard Ladder 118, Scott Davidson, was found in November. Now surviving members of the "Fire Over the Bridge" house are at Ground Zero around the clock, searching for their last missing man, Leon Smith.

"I think it's very sentimental that they are all together," said Ladder 118 Firefighter Jimmy Mangracina, a 17-year veteran at the Brooklyn Heights firehouse, of the Green-Wood cemetery grave holding his fallen colleagues.

"I hope I can get a plot with them one day," he said. "I remember standing at their grave and thinking this place is so beautiful. I got a good feeling standing there. We miss the guys terribly, but I feel honored that I worked with them. I'm glad they are watching over each other."

Seeking Right Tombstone

The widows of Vega, Agnello and Cherry still are trying to come up with an appropriate tombstone to honor their husbands and are discussing buying surrounding plots for their own burials.

But more than anything, the final resting place for the firefighters has become symbolic of how the fallen men's families have bonded.

Before Sept. 11, the families of Ladder 118 had casual friendships — chatter at firehouse parties and occasional backyard barbecues.

Now, some of the widows are inseparable. Even the parents of the firefighters turn to one another for comfort, sharing memories of their sons as little boys, before they grew up to die as heroes.

Vinnie Carla Agnello, Joey Agnello's widow, said she buried her husband with his brethren partly because she wanted her children, Sal, 3, and Vincent, 1 1/2, to grow up alongside Regan Grice-Vega's daughter, Ruby, who is also 1 1/2.

She said the gravesite will cement the emotional connection among the families of Ladder 118.

"I feel that over the years they can grow up together and have that common bond. Now Ruby will have Sal and Vincent as brothers as they get older. We'll all be united for the rest of our lives," Vinnie Carla Agnello said. "Like it or not, we've all been thrown together in this situation. We've all been there for each other.

"It proves evil cannot win. Out of this horrible, horrible situation we've got this soulful community," she said. "The firehouse has always been like a family, just not on this intimate level. ... We're holding each other up."

"We've shared something that will keep us together forever and ever," said her mother, Maureen Rosenberg. "We'll all end up in heaven together.



http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/krnewyo...ogether_1.html

[SeaBreeze]

Ladder 118's Final Run 'Into the Gates of Hell'

Six from firehouse lost in Trade Center disaster

By MICHELE McPHEE
Daily News Staff Writer

When the bell resonated through the Brooklyn Heights firehouse — in the instant after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center — the members of Ladder 118 were ready.

Five of their housemates had already responded, aboard Engine 205, within moments of the first plane hitting the north tower.

During the next 14 minutes, the men of Ladder 118 watched the black, acrid smoke billow across the water, waiting for their call to action.

At 9:02 the morning of Sept. 11, with the unthinkable having happened a second time, it was their turn.


The truck of Ladder 118 lies buried in debris from the World Trade Center.
Leon (Express) Smith jumped behind the wheel. Lt. Robert (Dizzy Dean) Regan sat in the adjacent officer's seat. Scott (The Dog) Davidson took the position behind the driver. Joey (Bells) Agnello sat behind the boss. Vernon (Mo) Cherry was behind him.

The tiller man, Pete (Big Head) Vega, controlled the rear of the rig, steering out of the firehouse, down Middagh St., then a tight left onto Cadman Plaza, a fast right at Prospect St. and onto the Brooklyn Bridge.

As the truck sped across the span, a man named Aaron McLamb snapped a photograph of the rig from the rooftop of the Jehovah's Witness Watchtower building — six firefighters headed to their deaths.

"I look at this picture, and it makes me think those guys were driving straight into the gates of hell," said the Rev. Michael Carrano, the pastor at Assumption Church, located around the corner from the Engine 205/Ladder 118 firehouse.

"I've learned a lot about these men since Sept. 11," Carrano said. "They must have had hearts of gold that you can't find at the end of any rainbow."


Surviving Engine 205/Ladder 118 firemen pay respects to fallen housemates.
When they arrived on the scene, the six firefighters from Ladder 118 parked their rig at West and Vesey Sts., then vanished into the thick, cloudy smoke and soot.

"We don't know what tower they were in, or on what floor," said Ladder 118 Firefighter Eddie Greene. "What we do know is that every guy in that truck was going to go in no matter what. If there had been more guys on the rig, there would have been more deaths."

The Ladder 118 truck was recovered within days of the terrorist attack — its windows broken, its cab filled with twisted steel from the blast.

The vehicle has been restored and put back in service. But its members are still missing.

A grim twist of fate saved the lives of the five firefighters riding on Engine 205.

They had stopped to help Danny Suhr, a firefighter who was fatally injured after someone fell or jumped from one of the towers and landed on him.

"It's terrible to think about, but this guy [Suhr] getting killed saved all these guys from Engine 205," said Ladder 118 Firefighter Jimmy McAlevy.

With the days turning to weeks, the survivors from the firehouse nicknamed "Fire Under the Bridge" allowed their hope to turn to sad reality, mourning the loss of the six who were aboard Ladder 118, along with two others from their firehouse — Lt. Robert Wallace and Capt. Martin Egan.

Then McLamb, the man with the camera on the Watchtower roof, appeared at the Middagh St. station with blown-up copies of the photograph he had snapped that terrible morning.

Firefighters studied the picture with a magnifying glass to make sure the truck on the bridge was Ladder 118.

They concluded the evidence was convincing.

The rig's orange stokes basket was upside down, a Ladder 118 trademark. Its saw box jutted out. And the dings and scratches were the same ones firefighters had stared at on the tiller truck — one of six in the FDNY fleet in Brooklyn — for years.

"Oh, my God, we're looking at their last run, literally. That's the first thing I thought when I saw it," said Ladder 118 Firefighter John Sorrentino, who was off from work that day but had rushed to the scene in his car anyway.

"Imagine what was going through their heads, going over the bridge, looking out the window and seeing that," Sorrentino said.

As they wait for any news about their missing men, the surviving members of Engine 205/Ladder 118 have tried to bring cheer into the house by trading stories about each of their fallen brothers.

They talk about Cherry, 49, a 28-year FDNY veteran who was the department's official singer. He had a secret lasagna recipe called "Vernon Mo Lasagmo" that was the envy of other firehouse cooks.

Smith, 48, the neighborhood mechanic who spent all 19 years of FDNY service at Ladder 118, earned his nickname, Express, by making sure his was the first truck at every fire.

Regan, 45, a quiet guy with a permanent smile, always looked like "he combed his hair with a shoe;" Scott (The Dog) Davidson, 33, had earned his moniker because he frequently wore everyone else's clothes, reputedly not buying a single pair of boots during his eight years on the job.

Agnello, 35, was known for bragging about his toddler boys — Sal, 3, and Vincent, 1. He had been the target of good-natured ribbing about the way he rang the wrong bells in his first days at the house — hence his nickname Joey Bells.

And Vega, 36, the resident politician, many times had dragged fellow firefighters into long, animated debates that raged into the night.

"They were troops on their way to battle," said Ladder 118 Firefighter Mike Gallino. "Now there is a big, empty hole in this house."

As part of the healing process, firefighters have made copies of McLamb's photograph for every member of the company.

When family members of the fallen men stop by, they sip coffee in the kitchen, seated next to a framed copy of Ladder 118's final run.

"I looked at the picture and I thought, 'Oh, my God. This is Vernon driving to his 'exit out,'" said Joanne Cherry, Vernon's wife of 31 years. "Maybe this was the way Vernon wanted to leave the world."

"I don't wish that truck turned around," she added. "I know in my heart he would have wanted to go full blast in there. He would have never turned back. His job was saving people. He loved his job."

Donna Regan, who met her husband when she was 15, is also grateful that he died in the performance of duty. She tells their children — Caitlin, 15, and Brendan, 12 — that the Regans are a lucky family, despite their loss.

"I'm glad the miracle in our lives is that we had him," she said. "My little prayer is that if these guys should be laid to rest, they should all be together, where they answered their last call."


http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-10-0...t/a-127426.asp

[SeaBreeze]

B'klyn Bravest Found at WTC
3 from Ladder 118 in rubble of hotel

By GREG WILSON, MICHELE MCPHEE and GREG GITTRICH
Daily News Staff Writers

The firefighters of Ladder 118 died side by side.

Lt. Robert Regan and Firefighters Joseph Agnello and Peter Vega were found together on New Year's Day, more than three months after their last tragic run together Sept. 11.

Their final journey was photographed from a nearby Brooklyn roof, the picture capturing the tiller truck crossing the Brooklyn Bridge "into the gates of hell," as a priest from a nearby church had put it.

Six men were aboard the truck from Brooklyn Heights. Scott Davidson, the driver, was found weeks ago. Everyone else was missing until the first few hours of 2002.

They were pulled from the buried lobby of the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel, where many had sought refuge when the towers fell, Fire Department sources said.

Recovery workers believe Regan, Agnello and Vega died together in the hotel lobby, near four other firefighters and three civilians whose bodies also were recovered Tuesday.

They refused to leave one another, and they would not abandon civilians in the suffocating smoke as the towers crumbled.

"That's what he would be doing. That sounds like him," Agnello's wife, Vinnie Carla, said yesterday.

Regan's wife, Donna, has prayed daily that her husband would be found alongside his men.

"The biggest honor for him is that he was found with his guys," she said yesterday. "Bobby loved those guys. He never would have went anywhere without them."

Firehouse Lost 8

Eight firefighters from the Ladder 118/Engine 205 firehouse on Middagh St. died Sept. 11. Of the six aboard Ladder 118's tiller truck, two remain missing — Leon Smith and Vernon Cherry.

The medical examiner's office identified three other firefighters recovered between midnight and 8 a.m. on New Year's Day as Christopher Pickford of Engine 201 in Brooklyn and Charles Mendez and George Cain of Ladder 7 in Manhattan.

The body of a seventh firefighter recovered that day was not identified. But Vega's widow, Regan Grice-Vega, told the Daily News that Fire Department brass told her the body was another of the men who rode on Ladder 118's truck.

The Oct. 5 edition of the Daily News immortalized that final run. The front-page photograph, snapped from the roof of the Jehovah's Witnesses Watchtower building, shows the men heading to their deaths across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Grieving family members said yesterday that the discovery of the firefighters tore open wounds that had only begun to heal. But the pain was worth it.

"It's a mixed emotion because it dredged up the shock of Sept. 11," said Vinnie Carla Agnello. "I was just going on with my life, thinking they'd never find him."

"When they said they found him, it was reality," she said. "It hurts all over again."

Agnello's body was the first recovered early Tuesday. The heavy machines quickly came to a halt, and a group of his Ladder 118/Engine 205 brethren who happened to be digging through debris nearby were called over.

Agnello, 35, was constantly bragging about his young sons, Sal, 3, and Vincent, 1. He had been the target of good-natured ribbing about the way he rang the wrong bells in his first days at the house — leading to his nickname, Joey Bells.

As construction workers watched with their hardhats over their hearts, the firefighters carried Agnello out of the pit. They then returned to painstakingly dig for their other missing colleagues.

Using tiny shovels, they found Vega, 36, next. The resident politician of the Engine 205/Ladder 118 firehouse, he routinely debated his fellow firefighters.

About 4:30 a.m., the firefighters came upon Regan, 45. A quiet man, Regan had met his wife when she was 15, and together they had two kids — Caitlin, 15 and Brendan, 12.

His brother-in-law, Charlie Wells, retrieved Regan's wedding ring and his medallion of St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters.

The back of the medallion is inscribed: "We love you, Caitlin, Brendan and Donna." It also carries the date 12/10/85 — the day he became a firefighter.

"I'm very happy. I don't have to think of him down there anymore," Donna Regan said as she caressed the medallion and ring.

She said she was going to wait to bury her husband until the last members of the doomed fire truck were recovered.

Engine 205 Firefighter John Sorrentino, who helped find Regan and the others, vowed to keep searching.

"We are still waiting for Vernon and Leon," he said. "It is very important to us that we've been there to get them out and carry them home."

With Alice McQuillan


http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-01-0...t/a-137062.asp

[Neil]

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS
PRAY FOR OUR BROTHERS

[SeaBreeze]

No replacing 6 who went down together

Those left behind know men of Ladder 118 were side by side

By MICHELE McPHEE
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF

Just before his last run Dec. 1, 1984, firefighter Philip D'Adamo flipped the clock in Ladder Co. 118's kitchen upside down in the type of prank that had become his calling card.
He never had a chance to right it.

That clock — stained a leathery brown from two decades of cigarette smoke and dust from countless jobs — remains untouched in Ladder 118/Engine 205's kitchen, a shrine to D'Adamo, who died that night at age 34 while battling a blaze at a Brooklyn school.

But now the clock has come to symbolize much more for the "Fire Under the Bridge" house in Brooklyn Heights, where life will forever be upside down.

"Everything has changed," said Engine 205 Firefighter Chris Murray. "This job will never be the same."

On Sept. 11, six of Ladder 118's firefighters probably glanced at the old clock, registering the instant — 9:02 a.m. — when shrill bells summoned them to the World Trade Center, where a second plane had crashed into the towers.

Captured on film

As they sped toward calamity, someone from atop the Jehovah's Witness' Watchtower Building snapped a picture of their rig racing over the Brooklyn Bridge. The photograph captured six men who were about to die, an image memorialized on page 1 of the Oct. 5 Daily News.

The five men aboard Engine 205 escaped the fate of their brethren only by chance.

They had responded to the Trade Center nearly 20 minutes before Ladder 118 and were headed into the south tower when Firefighter Daniel Suhr was struck by a falling body and became the first FDNY fatality that day.

Members of Engine 205 and other firefighters carried Suhr to an ambulance parked a block away — and saved their lives in the process. At 10 a.m., the south tower collapsed in a blinding miasma of pulverized glass and concrete.

In the cloud of gray, they could see nothing and could hear only the beeps of firefighters' PASS — Personal Alert Safety System — alarms, a signal that a member is in distress. Engine 205 members tried to raise their brethren on the radio. "We kept calling, '118, 118, 118,' on the radios, and we got no response," Firefighter John Sorrentino remembered.

"I always felt the guys were indestructible. I didn't think even two towers falling on top of them could kill them. But, deep down, I knew, even though I was hoping for a miracle."

Slow recovery

The Ladder 118 truck was recovered within days of the attack — its windows broken, its cab filled with twisted steel. There would be no miracle.

The body of Scott (The Dog) Davidson, 33, so nicknamed because of his frequently disheveled appearance, was recovered in late November.

On Dec. 28, Vernon (Mo) Cherry's turnout coat was found. Cherry, 49, a 28-year veteran and the official FDNY singer, was also known for his culinary skills. His trademark "Vernon-Mo-Lasagmo" was the envy of other firehouse cooks.

The next day, the remains of Joey (Bells) Agnello, 35, were recovered. In his first days with Ladder 118, Agnello rang the wrong bells and thereafter carried the good-natured nickname.

The following morning, the body of Peter (Big Head) Vega was carried off The Pile. Vega, 36, was the firehouse politician.

On the afternoon of New Year's Day, firefighters recovered the body of the company's leader, Lt. Robert Regan. He was identified through a gold medallion of St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters. The back of the medallion was inscribed by his family, "We love you, Caitlin, Brendan and Donna," and bore a date — 12/10/85 — the day he became a firefighter.

The rig's driver, Leon (Express) Smith, got his name by always being the first at a fire during his 19-year career. This time, he would become the last man out: His body has not been found.

Two other firefighters from the house, Lt. Robert Wallace and Capt. Martin Egan, also were lost but had been working in other companies.

"From the first day, we always dug on West St., right where we found our guys," Sorrentino said last week. "Why? I don't know. But that's where we spent all our time, we were drawn there."

Held their ground

It would soon become clear, at least to the firefighters who have come to rely on spiritual answers, why they were drawn to that spot.

Robert Graff, an elevator mechanic who helped evacuate the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel, called the firehouse to report:

"Tall firefighters with the numbers 118 on their helmets saved hundreds of people that day."

The hotel had stood near the spot where Sorrentino and fellow firefighters spent months digging.

The scene at the hotel was chaotic, Graff remembered. A swimming pool cracked on the 22nd floor, flooding elevator shafts and trapping panicked guests between floors.

Graff pried open elevator doors and was soon joined by firefighters he was later able to identify as Agnello and Vega.

"Joey helped me bring handicapped people down from the 19th floor in the elevator. Pete and I went up to the 12th floor, where people were screaming, and brought them down," Graff said. "The last thing I remember, Bob Regan got a call on his radio and his face totally changed. He started yelling, 'Get out! Get out! Get out!'

"Bob and the other guys used their bodies like a brace, like a riot squad, directing the people out," he said. "They knew what was coming, but they stayed where they were. I'll never forget that."

Graff, along with 920 guests and scores of Marriott employees, made it out of the doomed hotel. "Sometimes I wonder why I made it," he said. "Their faces still haunt me." The men of Ladder 118 died side by side, and Agnello, Vega, and Cherry share the same grave on a grassy hillside in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery.

The grave is still unmarked; the three widows, all mothers, have been reluctant to pick out a headstone.

"I don't need to go there and talk to a stone. Part of the reason why I chose to bury him is so that he could be with Pete and Vernon," Vinnie Carla Agnello said last week. "He loved Brooklyn and sunsets, and now that's where he is, in Sunset Park."

Agnello does not plan to attend ceremonies at Ground Zero on Wednesday because she is keeping a vow she made to her husband. She and the couple's two toddler boys will remember in private.

"Joey made me promise that if something happened to him on the job, I would move forward. I just kind of humored him and gave him my word. Now I'm honoring it," she said.

Ladder 118's widows are not the only ones trying to move forward.

Moving forward

There are five new officers and nine probationary firefighters at the firehouse. They pass time at the same round tables with mismatched chairs, under the old upside-down clock that now shares space with photographs of the lost men.

Four firefighters have married since Sept. 11.

Tim Julian, who was aboard Engine 205, married Sept. 28 but never celebrated the occasion. His wife's brother, Lt. Vincent Giammona, was killed Sept. 11, as were Patrick Lyons and Durrell Pearsal, two members of the FDNY Emerald Society bagpipe band, who were to perform at the wedding. Mo Cherry also was scheduled to celebrate the nuptials with his soaring voice.

Julian returned to full duty only last month, after treatment for a small tumor on his throat, an ailment he believes he developed at Ground Zero.

"It's a different house," Julian said. "We have a new rig. A new crew. It's like starting all over."

But Jarrett Murphy, a probationary firefighter, said he has literally felt the spirit of the lost men.

Earlier this year, the senior men in the house told Murphy to leave them alone with their memories. He went to the bunk room upstairs and woke up to what he believes was a ghost.

"I opened my eyes, and right at the foot of the bed, there was a figure, kind of translucent and quiet, not moving, just looking down at me," Murphy said. "I didn't want to say it was the ghost of anybody, but all I can say is that it looked like pictures of Leon [Smith].

"I'm not alone," Murphy added. "There are guys around here who see things and hear things and feel things."

Engine 205 Firefighter Paul DiPaolo has an explanation.

"Leon is still looking out for the new guy," he said.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/sept...5p-16320c.html

[SeaBreeze]

Back to Pit of rage

Anguish of Ladder Company 118

By MICHELE MCPHEE
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF

The men of Ladder 118/Engine 205 stood in The Pit at Ground Zero under steel beams that once supported the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel - now a gravesite for their brothers.

Firefighter Richie Murray's eyes welled with tears of fury as the wind whipped up a sandstorm around them.

"This makes me angry," Murray said as he wiped grit from his face, much like he did a year ago when his company lost eight firefighters. "I'm thinking of bad things down here. If I had my way, I would never set foot on this place again."

At 8 a.m., firefighters from the "Fire Under the Bridge" company and family members of the lost gathered in front of the Brooklyn Heights firehouse to make the solemn trip.

As they marched 150 strong toward the subway near the Brooklyn Bridge, no one could help but look at the span and picture Ladder 118's rig racing over it toward the burning twin towers - an image captured by a photographer and immortalized on the front page of the Daily News last Oct. 5.

All six men aboard the truck were lost. Two other men from the firehouse also were killed.

Yesterday's pilgrimage to Ground Zero was felt most acutely by the firefighters from the house who survived that morning.

"I should have been killed, and to relive my steps from that day. ..." Firefighter Tim Julian said, his voice trailing off. "I don't want to remember it."

It was hard not to recall every ugly detail of that day, though, as the firefighters stood in a seven-story hole while the names of the dead were recited.

Hopes dimmed

It was there that firefighters digging through the rubble found Capt. Marty Egan - who had been working at FDNY headquarters on Sept. 11 - the morning after the attack.

"Marty was the first guy we recovered, and he was one of the best fire officers on the job," said Engine 205 firefighter, John Sorrentino. "When we found out he didn't make it, it dimmed our hopes that anyone else did."

It was in that hole they also found the bodies of Scott (the Dog) Davidson, Vernon (Mo) Cherry, Joey (Bells) Agnello, Pete (Big Head) Vega and Lt. Robert (Dizzy Dean) Regan.

The remains of the rig's driver, Leon (Express) Smith, and Engine 205's former officer, Lt. Robert Wallace, have never been recovered.

Smith's mother, Marilyn Smith, stood at the site yesterday, pleading with God to bring her son home. His family and firefighters held hands, formed a circle and prayed for his soul.

"It's Leon," Marilyn said, as the wind nearly knocked her to the ground. "I can feel him."

Later, the company returned to the firehouse where Gov. Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta were waiting to shake their hands.

The Rev. Michael Carrano, the pastor at Assumption Church around the corner from the firehouse, was among the men the politicians thanked. Last year, he had stared at the photograph of Ladder 118 on its last run and said, "Those guys were driving straight into the gates of Hell."

Yesterday, as the eight widows and 33 children who lost their heroes ate lunch together, Carrano had a different take on the anniversary.

"Now we are driving through the gates of hope," he said.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/sept...6p-17328c.html