Five days from today marks twenty-five years since September 11, 2001. A quarter century has passed since that terrible Tuesday morning. It is the duty of the living to remember those killed that day. It is the duty of the living to make sure that the stories of their lives continue to echo through the years. It is the duty of the living to ensure that those who were murdered that day are never forgotten.
Three hundred forty three members of the FDNY died on September 11, 2001, saving innocents at the World Trade Center. The youngest of the 343 was Probationary Firefighter Michael Cammarata, just twenty-two. He was stationed at Engine 28/Ladder 11, on the lower East Side of Manhattan. On September 11, 2001, he was in the ninth week of his fourteen-week probationary assignment. He and his brother, Joe, older than Michael by fifteen months, had taken the FDNY test in the Summer of 1999. Michael attained a perfect score. Joe answered one question incorrectly.
Before heading to the World Trade Center with Ladder 11 on that terrible Tuesday morning, Michael called home and left a message on his father's voice mail. "I am going to the World Trade Center. A plane just hit it. Just tell everyone I am all right."
In 1991, Michael was a star on the Staten Island, New York Little League team that played its way to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. In 2006, Michael's No. 11 became the first number ever retired in Williamsport. Twenty years later, it remains the only retired number.
His body was never recovered. However, in the days after September 11, while his family was searching the house for something of Michael's to provide to the FDNY with his DNA as it assembled its forensic database, his mom came upon a tri-folded piece of computer paper on his nightstand that Michael had labeled "If anything was ever to happen to me", on which he had written a list of four items: (1) Take care of Jenna (his girlfriend); (2) Don't mourn as this is the career I chose; (3) Make my spirit live on; and (4) Remember I love you all and will be waiting for you upstairs. He signed it, "Michael Cammarata Shield #1138".
Forever twenty-two. Forever loved. Forever remembered.
-AK
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