by Dennis Smith
My brother Frank is a take-charge guy. And he was already working in his head the idea of starting a foundation and what it would do. Not to knock golf outings or dinners, but when those things were brought up, I said, There’s a million of them. I’m involved in sporting goods, and we do a golf outing every other day. We wanted something unique. Then one of Stephen’s friends, Billy Todd, suggested, “Why don’t you just retrace what he did?” So Frank called me up and said, “Billy has a great idea, don’t tell anybody. I don’t want anybody stealing it.”
Fortunately, Richie Sheerer was a fire dispatcher years ago, with my cousin, so he knew our family a bit. He kindly led us to Rudy Giuliani, who was instrumental in getting us up and going. After that it just snowballed. Once we decided it was going to be a run, we had to go to all the agencies for approvals. Frank did most of the legwork; I went to a few of them. We had a meeting in my dining room, fourteen or fifteen people, here in Staten Island. My next-door neighbor works for the New York City Marathon. Another friend of ours, Nick Navarro, is a firefighter and also the starter at the New York City Marathon. It turns out that Nick went to St. Peter’s High School a year or so ahead of my brother Frank, and my brother Russ was teaching as St. Peter’s at that time, so Nick knew and respected Russ. We had all these people to help us out. We wanted to get it done by the first year, but we went into one meeting where they weren’t very nice to us, and after 9/11 it was surprising how some city officials went right back to the official stuff.
Now, though, they couldn’t be nicer to us. I’m sure they have a million requests every year. Those same officials told us a few years later that they left that early meeting saying, “These Sillers are crazy; this isn’t going to happen. But we’ll try.” After all, for this race to happen they had to close the tunnel, part of Brooklyn, and part of downtown Manhattan. That’s about 1.7 miles of very expensive real estate. Altogether it’s about a threemile run. We honestly shocked ourselves when it all actually developed.
There was a headline in the Daily News: HE RAN FROM THE TUNNEL TO THE TOWER. So I said, We’ll call it the Tunnel to Towers Run. I knew in my heart it couldn’t just be called the Stephen Siller Run. It’s bigger than that; Stephen was bigger than that. So Frank’s idea became an event where we honored all of the firefighters and police officers and all the civilians killed that day.
In fact, the first year we had the names of all 2,974 people posted on a sort of Vietnam wall, set up near the finish line. Then we had the firefighters’ banners of the 343 lost firefighters that they wore at the race.
The first year, 2002, we actually had the race end in the tunnel, but over the years, with so many people running, we have had to put the finish outside, coming out of the tunnel. So it’s really snowballed. Every time we get frustrated with the many things we have to deal with, we also see all the good that comes out of it. It makes Stephen’s life mean something. Everybody in the family gets involved in some way. But it is really the brothers and sisters. The kids give out the shirts and things like that. But the determination is with the brothers and sisters.
My sisters all went out and got restaurants to donate food for the race. We have so many people who donate food that it’s almost like Jesus with the loaves and fishes—I’m talking about ten thousand, five thousand, two thousand servings of food from some really nice restaurants in Manhattan. We receive a tremendous amount of help in this effort from FDNY firefighters, who cook thousands of hamburgers and hot dogs. Initially, people didn’t charge us for a lot of things, but as time has passed, they have businesses to run, so now we’re paying for most of the food. My brother Russ has a lot to do with the writing of the PR material and press releases. My sister Mary is very good with the graphics and the writing too, so we kind of pulled it all together. I got the Web site going, which we needed the first year because there were so many people wanting to register other than by paper. And the Web site has taken over now, to the point where we do more registering online than we do by mail.
The Tunnel to Towers Run is held on the last Sunday in September. We had approximately fifteen hundred the first year; last year there were about twenty thousand. For volunteers, we have seven hundred firefighters, with a flag and a banner for each one, and about fifteen hundred civilians, so there are over two thousand people there before the runners even start. We also have a lot of spectators, because so many people come to see their family members or friends at the finish line.
All along the actor John Turturro has been helping us out, and most years he has been our emcee at the run, if he can make it. My brother Russ taught his brother Nick Turturro, and John has an apartment near Squad 1, where Stephen worked [in Brooklyn]. He has been emotionally and physically involved from day one. He also narrated a PBS film about our family called For the Love of Their Brother.
As far as the causes the run supports, we knew right off the bat that we wanted to help out children who had lost one or two parents, because Stephen himself had essentially been orphaned. And because Stephen had been involved with the Firefighters Burn Center in Manhattan, we wanted to support it. Over the years we’ve also gotten involved with the Staten Island Burn Center. When my sister Regina was younger, she worked at the New York Foundling, a Catholic orphanage, so she and I went to the Staten Island New York Foundling building to check it out, to see if we could help out. It looked like something out of Dickens’s Oliver Twist. It was an old, decrepit, crooked building. They needed new heating, so we went down and looked at this furnace, which could have been from the Hansel and Gretel house, so ancient it was ridiculous. The windows were all old and creaky. We sat down with the New York Foundling and said, basically, there is too much to do here, but maybe we could buy you new furniture so the kids feel a little better about their lives. We bought a bedroom set for all the rooms—new beds and dressers. After some time they came to us with a suggestion. They planned to knock the building down and rebuild it, and they wanted us to be part of a capital plan separate from our foundation. We agreed. We didn’t take from anything we raised at the race, but instead solicited politicians, businesses, and banks. They eventually constructed a new building and called it Stephen’s House. The front door is shaped like [one from] a firehouse.
We also got involved with the military, initially aligning with the Freedom Alliance, which is run by Ollie [Oliver] North and his group. Recently we have been trying to help a local military kid, Brendan Marrocco, who lost all four limbs, by building him a house adapted to his needs. Through a fund-raiser we’ve raised enough money to do that. And we’re expanding now, thinking of helping out two other soldiers from the Afghan and Iraqi wars in St. Louis and in Chicago. We’re going out to St. Louis to coordinate with the fire department there, and a lot of retireds, some active chiefs and captains, and regular firefighters are taking part. It is evolving. Lisa Bender, a teacher from North Carolina, called me up and said that she wanted to put a Tunnel to Towers race on in Wake Forest, which is now sponsored by the Franklin Academy there. They do a beautiful job. They feel what happened in New York happened to all Americans.
This year Gold Star Mothers, the military moms, want to put on Tunnel to Tower races all over the country, and we’re negotiating with them to try to figure out how to do it. It is a way for communities outside of NYC to do something meaningful to remember 9/11.
There is also a segment of the race called Brother for Brother, a name my sister Gina came up with. Firefighters from every state take part in the race, so we put three guys from each firehouse together, and whatever their combined time is, the top three get money sent to their local burn center. We even have 150 London firefighters who come each year now, and [they] have become buddies with New York firefighters.
The fire commissioner, Sal Cassano, has been instrumental all along. He’s been our right-hand man in taking care of problems. He’s been a very reliable and sensible friend, and has smoothed out wrinkles for us a number of times.
Where will we be in ten years? I d
on’t know. But with friends like Sal and the thousands who help the Siller family get this done, I think at some point in time we will be a much bigger foundation.
It took all of us siblings to create this event in memory of Stephen, and many a time we say that Stephen could have done it all by himself. He must be laughing, seeing how much work he left for us and how he continues to control and run our lives even in his death. I have given it my all, and every year I reach a point when I’m tired, and then a point when I become very excited. It’s taken its toll, but it surely has its rewards.
I’ve often seen the beauty of what we’ve done. When a house is built in my brother’s name and is going to help children for a hundred years—there is nothing like it. You know that it’s made a difference. The military things we do are so important. We see needs and we try to be responsive. A lot of 9/11 families, together with our organization, have sent down fifty tractor trailers full of things to New Orleans to help them out. We helped build a firehouse in New Orleans. We’ve done so many things that surprise us. We’re just blessed that we’re able to do it. But no one does anything by oneself.
And we all try to remember that the more you give, the more you get. There is a saying: “Brother, while we are here, let us do good.” That’s the name of our foundation: The Stephen Siller, FDNY, “Let Us Do Good” Children’s Foundation. We say the prayer of St. Francis before each meeting, as St. Francis has been the focal point of our lives. Sometimes we have as many as five hundred people at a meeting, and I’ve never seen one person be upset about praying, because it’s such a beautiful prayer. It’s religious but it’s really more about just being good to people.
Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
You know, a lot of people are just good in their bones. Sal Cassano, for instance, didn’t come to the first run as an honored guest. We knew who he was, as he was a high-ranking chief, but he registered just like everyone else and came to run to support us. We have a mass the Saturday night before the race and Sal comes to that service.
The firefighters are always so impressive. The first weekend after 9/11, many members of my family drove over to Squad 1, Stephen’s firehouse, at around midnight to say a prayer for him. The guys on duty were so kind to us, and the one person that really struck me, in retrospect, was Mike Stackpole. His brother, Timmy, had died in the Towers just after being promoted, and after going through years of rehab after being burned badly in a fire. Mike was consoling us, helping us, without ever mentioning that his own brother had been lost, which I only found out afterward. You don’t ever forget people like that.
So many people have told us that they use the run as an excuse to go down to Ground Zero. They can’t go there just to have a look, but they’ll go to honor the firefighters and experience catharsis—a little better-ness. You’re never going to be perfect after 9/11, you’re never going to get back to what you were, it’s never going to be the same, but you have to get on with your life. In our case, we’re not walking around wallowing in our grief and crying about Stephen, but we still care. We’re still proud of Stephen.
Stephen was somebody who was a hero, but he was a voracious reader and a very intelligent kid. He could have been a top guy on Wall Street or wherever. He had it all. Personality, brains. But he also had an incredible caring for other people.
My son made the high school basketball team, and at his first game he made his first shot, a two-pointer. I looked over at my brother Stephen, who had come with me, and he had a tear in his eye. I said, “What are you doing, Steve?” He said, “I know how much that meant to him.” That was so kindhearted and caring. It’s what brought him to run through a tunnel knowing that he might be running to his death. That’s what made Stephen truly remarkable: He had time to think about it, to think about his family. And he still charged in.
our family has stayed strong from those days of the dust
there has been plenty of sorrow, too much pain for all of us
why did God take him from us that way
it’s just too high a price to pay
–George Siller
Jay Winuk
Jay’s younger brother, Glenn Winuk, was a lawyer whose office was just two blocks away from the World Trade Center. He was also a volunteer firefighter/ emergency medical technician (EMT). On 9/11 Glenn followed his instincts and ran into the South Tower to help, and was lost when it fell. Jay Winuk was instrumental in creating the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance as a lasting memorial for all those who were lost on 9/11, and to his brother. The Web site he cofounded, MyGoodDeed.org, is a testament to this memorial day.
My family, at least my generation, originated in Brooklyn. In 1961, the same year Glenn was born, our family moved to Jericho, Long Island. For much of his career my dad was in sales and management in the electronics components industry. At some point he gave all of that up and bought an automotive repair shop, and he made a successful go of that. He was also an inventor of sorts—a great mind, very bright. He invented a battery-operated burglar alarm that you could affix to your door, a device to water hanging plants, which sold very well for him, and a certain kind of innovative paper clip.
Glenn and I spent a lot of time together, because we shared a bedroom all those years growing up in Jericho. A happy coincidence for us was that most of my best friends had younger brothers who were also three years younger than they were, and so there was a lot of kinship between my friends and Glenn and his friends. Ultimately, Glenn went to the same undergraduate college as I, the State University of New York at Oneonta, where we overlapped for a year, which was very nice. Oneonta lost, I think, seven alumni in 9/11, and an artist that the university contracted with built a mini–Twin Towers there in tribute to the alumni that were lost. It is very moving, and overlooks the whole campus.
All through college, and later, at law school—he went to Hofstra—Glenn was a volunteer firefighter in the Jericho Fire Department, along with my brother Jeff, who is five years my senior and was eight years Glenn’s. We had an uncle who had been a firefighter in Brooklyn, and who had died on the job. He was such a hero to us—it was so exciting to have an uncle in that job. We had another uncle who was a cop on Long Island, and that too was exciting. I think Glenn took great inspiration from both of them.
Firefighting was Glenn’s passion. The alarm was always sounding, “beep, beep, beep,” and he or Jeff would be off. He was always very enamored with fire and rescue, police, and, a little, the military, but it was the excitement of firefighting that caught his eye at a very early age. Whenever Glenn set his mind to something, he really went all the way with it, becoming kind of obsessed. He was a black belt in karate, and as a Cub Scout he got as many badges and gold stars as he possibly could. I remember speaking at the second memorial service we had for him, in October of ’01, which his law firm held at a beautiful synagogue in Manhattan. I talked about how Glenn would write away to Johnson & Johnson and other medical supply companies asking for free samples of bandages, tape, gauze, and other supplies to put in a homemade wooden first-aid kit that my father had built for him. He would have been happy to be a career firefighter, but I think he had bigger aspirations financially, and wanted to be more intellectually stimulated. Ultimately, he was able to do both: become an attorney and maintain a firefigh
ting career.
Glenn began his law career at Haight Gardner, which is world renowned for its maritime legal work. They merged with Holland & Knight, and Glenn became a partner there. When he really took on the responsibilities of being a partner, he had to reduce his activity as a firefighter. He was living in an apartment building at Thirty-fifth and Park Avenue, but most of his best friends were still on Long Island, and several of them were still in the Jericho Fire Department in one way or another. So on many weekends he would stay at my parents’ house, go to Hofstra’s law library to do some work, fight fires, do his laundry, and have a nice hot meal from my mom’s kitchen.
He had many friends who were FDNY and NYPD, but particularly FDNY, in part because some of the guys were also part-time firefighters in Jericho. Interestingly, he has since been recognized by the FDNY Honor Legion for his actions on 9/11. They tell me that he’s likely the first volunteer firefighter ever to be so honored.
I remember the night of September 10 well. I spoke to Glenn, as we usually did several times a week. We didn’t see each other as often as either of us would have liked. Although we were always together for the holidays, or I’d have lunch or dinner with him in the city, we both had really busy lives at the time of his death. On September 10 I went to New Jersey to pay my respects to somebody who had died, from our hometown of Jericho. Marty Schwartz, the father of one of my best and oldest friends, was for decades a member of the Jericho Fire Department, and, like Glenn, had at some point been a commissioner of the Jericho Fire Department. Glenn was going to go the following day, and so he called me when I got home to ask for directions and to tell me he was disappointed that he couldn’t have gone with me. He had arranged for flowers to be sent, which, of course, arrived on September 11. So the last time I spoke with him was the night before, to discuss the passing of a firefighter.