From: http://www.witnesstowar.org./Simone.html

Simone Martell, 16, Mount Ararat High School, Maine, November 19, 2001

My dad, John, is a firefighter in Portland, Maine, and went to New York City to attend the funeral for Christian Regenhard of Ladder 131, a New York fire fighter who had died at the World Trade Center. He had planned to take me with him, but I was not able to go because he went with 45 members from his fire company. I especially wanted to go there to pay my respects to the families who had lost loved ones, because I can relate to what they are feeling.

It was also my birthday that week. I would have liked to have him home on my birthday, but I still also wanted
him to go because he and everyone in our family wanted to support the fire fighters in New York.

So he offered to take me the following week and he did; together we went back to attend another memorial service on November 2. It was for fire fighter Benjamin Suarez from Ladder 2.

I woke up that morning at a very early 3:30 am. Even though I was overpowered by sleep, I managed to get
up, get dressed, and was ready to go out the door by ten to five. The usually long car ride to Portland
went by very quickly, and before I knew it my Dad and I were boarding the bus that would take us down to
Boston. From there we rode four hours on the Amtraktrain to Penn Station, New York City.

No sooner had we checked into the hotel and saw our room, then we headed out the door and walked the busy city streets. It was my second trip to New York; last December I came down to see a show at
Radio City Music Hall.

Now it was different. I had heard of it all on the news, seen the pictures in the paper, but nothing prepared me for what I saw..

We ended up in lower Manhattan at the FDNY building at 225 Broadway, very close to City Hall. It sits right on the corner of the World Trade Center complex. It is the office for the Uniformed Fire Officers Union. However the building itself is home to many more offices than just this one.

I was astonished as to how the people treated us when we entered the office. They didn’t even know who we were, yet acted as though we were their honored guests. When we first entered we were greeted so warmly by the secretaries. They introduced us to Mike Currid who is a Union Official, and also a captain in the FDNY. He invited us into is own private office and discussed with us how he was thankful that we came down. He took interest in my Dad's experiences and they discussed at length the state of both their departments.

They felt it was their obligation to give us gifts, just to thank us for being there—my dad was given a watch.
I was given a FDNY baseball cap and a beach towel with the American flag on it. The heads of the office were so kind as to put in a call requesting tickets to a Broadway production of ""Kiss Me Kate"" for that night. I didn’t know how they could do it—give so much to others when so much had been taken from them.

For the past two months, these people had been working day and night dealing with an unimaginable disaster. The burden of their duties appeared to weigh them down. They were grieving, three hundred and forty - three of their brothers had died.

And everyone was preoccupied bacause this was the exact day that Mayor Guilani wanted to proclaim ground
zero as a construction site and cut back the number of fire fighters working at the scene. Of course the office was upset by this proposal because their brothers were still missing in the rubble. They felt it was their obligation and responsibility to recover the remains of their brothers themselves.

Still, my astonishment as to how we were treated was nothing compared to the startling scene I was about to
face. On the thirty - fourth floor of the building, a small balcony overlooked the devastating wreckage below, the remains of the World Trade Center. Fire trucks and cranes roamed the rubble beneath us. Dust covered what was left of the surrounding buildings. Large pieces of debris, chunks of the North Tower, were
driven into the sides of a structure across the complex. Fires still raged on after two months, all that was left of the one hundred and ten floor building was a
mere corner of its frame.

But something was even more horrific than the destruction that lay before me. Thousands of bodies, or what were once bodies, were still below, hidden or burned underneath the rubble. It was not like looking at a battlefield where you knew people had been killed years ago. The people were still down there, and were never going to come up again. It was a haunting feeling to be standing there.

Once again the fear that had overcome me the night of September 11 when I watched the news and saw the terrible attacks returned.

I couldn’t stop thinking, what if that had been my Dad? What if the attacks had happened in Portland instead of New York? What if instead of standing here next to my Dad, I was standing here alone thinking of him, like so many others are now thinking of the loved ones they lost that tragic day?

I knew I would never forget what I had just taken in, what I had just seen, just felt, just experienced.
Nevertheless, I took a picture, a reminder of what could happen when hate rules the minds of those who
seek destruction. And I know I will never forget.

Fire fighter Benjamin service was held at The Church of St. John the Baptist on 34th Street between 7th and 8th avenues.

A procession of fire trucks and fire fighters traveled down the street to the church. Benjamin Suarez was one of the men whose bodies were still missing. Because of this, they had no casket to carry him in. Instead, a brother firefighter marched behind the ladder truck carrying a helmet with Benjamin's number on it. Not even the helmet was truly Benjamin's for it too had been consumed in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Across from me on the other sidewalk, I noticed a lady crying. It amazed me to see that even though she had no connection with the family, she was still moved enough to shed a tear.

At the service, his sister's eulogy struck me the most. She talked about how even though she loved her brother, she always seemed to keep her distance from him and his family. In fact, on September 10, he had invited her to come and have dinner with him, his wife and kids. She declined saying that she was too busy. The next day, of course, the attacks happened, and she never saw her brother again. She said what was most painful was the last thing she ever told her brother was that she was too busy to see him. I felt that she was feeling guilty and wished that she could take back that moment. She wanted closure and to let her brother
know how much she loved him.

There are frequent times in life when someone walks out the door and we take for granted that they will return unharmed. For her, and many others, their loved ones did not return. They will live for the rest of their lives wishing that they could let their loved ones know how they felt.

From this I've gained the knowledge of what a fire fighting family really is. Of course I've met my Dad's co-workers and seen them on the job, but I never really understood the universal meaning of their "brotherhood" under a time of crisis. It wasn't until my trip to NYC that I saw how quickly one firefighter can treat his brother so warmly, even if they've just met for the first time.