SPRING HILL — When the twin towers came down, the radios went silent.
John Lightsey was listening. A dispatcher for the New York City Fire Department on Sept. 11, 2001, he had spent that morning sending firefighters toward the burning World Trade Center. Many of them were his friends.
“When the towers came down, there was nothing but dead silence,” he said.
Lightsey shared that account 25 years later as program director of a Sept. 11 remembrance ceremony at the Edward W. Noll VFW Post 10209 in Spring Hill. A large crowd gathered there to remember the 2,977 people killed in the terror attacks and those who have died in service to the country since.
The parking lot filled, cars lined nearby side roads, and people gathered under tents and around the post entrance for speeches, wreath layings, a rifle salute and patriotic songs.
Retired members of the FDNY and the New York Police Department, in dress uniform, joined Hernando County fire service cadets and active first responders. Signs planted on the grounds each honored a New York first responder who died that day.
Some of those taking part had not been born in 2001. Children from Notre Dame Catholic School sang. The youngest may not yet grasp what happened that day, but a theme running through many of the speeches was that they will.
Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis, Hernando County Fire Rescue Chief Paul Hasenmeier and Post 10209 Commander Timothy Stokes were among the speakers.
Of the 2,977 people killed in the attacks, 2,753 died at the World Trade Center and in the surrounding area. At the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, 184 died: 125 people in the building and 59 passengers and crew members aboard American Airlines Flight 77. Another 40 were killed when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The toll does not include the 19 hijackers.
Among the dead were 412 emergency workers, including 343 members of the FDNY. It was the deadliest day for emergency responders in U.S. history.
In the years since, many more firefighters, police officers, recovery workers and others have died of illnesses linked to the toxic dust and debris at ground zero.
‘We knew they were gone’
Lightsey gave his account in the ceremony’s closing remarks.
It was a beautiful morning, he said, and it was around shift change when a battalion chief reported that a plane had hit one of the towers. A second alarm sent about a dozen fire units. Ladder 10 was next to the trade center, he said, and a third alarm sent more units. More alarms followed, and soon about 100 pieces of equipment were at the scene.
The number of firefighters who went is harder to pin down.
“It was hard to tell because they were just changing shifts,” Lightsey said. “So the guys on the night shift and day tour, they went together. Nothing was going to stop them from going.”
Friends called him, asking, “John, send us down there.”
“These guys knew the procedure, but we sent them anyway,” Lightsey said.
He paused. Those were the men he spent time with, he said, and they didn’t come back.
After the towers fell, nothing came in over the radio.
“We were trying desperately to get somebody on the radio to give us some kind of information about what was happening down there,” he said.
He stayed on the job. “We spent four days straight in Manhattan,” he said, working the radios.
The morning after the attacks, he was answering phones. Firefighters’ wives called, crying.
“They were looking for their husbands, or their sons, and we’re not allowed to tell them anything,” he said. “We knew they were gone. We had them on the phone. Multiple calls, one after another.”
Children called, too, crying and looking for their parents.
“It’s a day that – I’ll never forget,” he said. “It’s burned into me like it was yesterday. After my four tours, I was down on ‘the pile.’ Just really trying to find somebody. We’ll just leave it that we didn’t find anybody alive.”
Firefighters and other first responders always have each other’s backs, Lightsey said, pointing to the FDNY retirees, the Hernando County crews and the volunteers in the crowd. He said the “343” group works with the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and the USO to keep the memory alive and to help where it can.
“We’ll never forget Sept. 11. We’re not going to forget the NYPD, the FDNY, the military, but most important, we’re not going to forget the civilians who passed away on that day,” he said. “And we continue to pass away. Members of the fire department and police, they’re still passing away now from illness and cancer.”