'Every day is 9/11'

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] Steven Coakley is one of four New York firefighters memorialized in a shrine at Firehouse 217 in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. The flames burn day and night.

By STEPHEN NOHLGREN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 10, 2002

When firefighter Steven Coakley went into the World Trade Center on that fateful day, he never made it out. For the people who love him all that's left are memories, pain and an empty dream house that is suspended in time.

MADEIRA BEACH -- The family photograph shows him standing atop his beach house just after he removed the roof, hammer in one hand, crowbar in the other, taking quiet pleasure in his accomplishment. You can almost hear him thinking: "I did this. This is me."

Steven Coakley was a man of deeds, not words.

When he fell in love with a decrepit boat, he refurbished it from top to bottom, learning as he went. When he saw a woman putting a "For Sale" sign on a waterfront house, he grabbed the sign and cut a deal on the spot. The house was too small for his Florida retirement dream, but he figured he'd take off the roof and build up.

And last year, when the world turned mad on Sept. 11, he didn't think twice when his Brooklyn firehouse got the call. His shift had ended, but he was a firefighter, so he went.

He chased down the departing engine, jumped aboard and headed for the flaming World Trade Center.

Now he's gone, and the people who loved him are left with memories, pain and an empty house that is suspended in time.

Commuting to Brooklyn

Steven Coakley's passion was the blue water of Boca Ciega Bay

Mike Leavy, an old buddy from Engine 217 Firehouse, had retired to Madeira Beach on disability. When Steve came down for a visit, the sun and water hooked him like a hungry grouper.

He paid $130,000 for a concrete bungalow. It wasn't much as houses go, but what a view. From his dock, Steve could watch the sun rise and set. Just across the way, he could see Mike's house and the trees of Bay Pines Veterans Park.

Before long, he was living there and commuting to work. In New York, he would trade shifts with his pals and work straight through for two weeks, sleeping at the firehouse or his boyhood home on Long Island. Then he'd fly home to Madeira Beach for two weeks of faded Hawaiian shirts, fishing rods and loud music at Gators, a popular hangout on John's Pass.

[Family photo] Steven Coakley enjoying a proud moment after taking off the roof on his home in Madeira Beach.

His house was always a work in progress.

Off came the roof, up went walls. A contractor helped some, but mostly it was Steve, his father Vinny, and fellow firefighters from 217. For five years, they visited Steve on long weekends. Plumbing. Drywall. Electrical. You name it, and one of these firefighters could do it.

These were men who worked with their hands. At 5, Steve helped his dad put up a summer cabin in Pennsylvania. By his teens, he was restoring boats and cars that Vinny supplied. Taking off roofs and throwing up walls was second nature.

Steve told friends he would retire here as soon as he logged 20 years with the New York state pension system. He'd be 41, could pick up a job for extra cash, kick back and enjoy life.

Then Linda New dropped by Gators and rattled his timetable.

The 'L' word

Linda was a legal secretary from Atlanta, with a quietness that matched her gentle drawl. Friends say they clicked from the beginning. Whenever Steve came down, he and Linda spent nights on his dock watching the stars and weekends on his 25-foot restored Bertram, often camping on an island in Bunces Pass

[Family photo] Linda New and Steven Coakley pause at sunset after riding their bicycles on the beach near John's Pass in July 2001.

On Linda's one trip to New York, Steve took her to the World Trade Center at night. Buddies from a firehouse across the street talked the security guard into letting them up the elevator after-hours.

"We looked at the lights and the bridges coming in from all the boroughs," Linda recalls. "I couldn't believe the building was so high."

"I rarely used the "L' word. I could sense it was not right to push," Linda says. "I kind of regret it now. But I know he knows how I felt."

Steve's sister, Kara Walker, an architect who helped design his house, says her brother began calling for advice on relationships: How do you know when it's time to get married? How do you know if it's the right person?

On his last weekend in Florida, Steve told his best friend, John Kauzlarich, that he might retire soon and settle down. "He said, "She's the girl. I have to make sure this works."'

But he never told Linda.

On Monday, Sept. 10, exactly a year after their first date, he left for New York to pull an overnight shift. At 9 a.m., he was headed to his parents' house when firehouses outside Manhattan got called in.

Engine 217 arrived at the south tower just as desperate people started jumping from higher floors. One landed on firefighter Danny Suhr, crushing him so badly that he later died. Three of the 217 crew stopped to help, while Steve and Mike Leavy's cousin, Neal Levy, rushed into the lobby to redirect evacuees away from the jumpers.

Minutes later, the tower collapsed.

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] Carol Coakley, Steven's mother, examines pictures and prayer cards of various firefighters that she has collected.

How do you find peace?

Vinny and Carol Coakley still live in a fog. Carol can't absorb what happened.

"People don't understand that we never got anything back. We didn't get parts. I don't know who that was in that casket."

Every night, she stays up until 1 a.m., trying to make herself tired. "I sit in Steve's bedroom and talk to him. I go to bed crying and all of a sudden I go to sleep. The minute I wake up, it's the same thing. You think it's a dream. He's at work. But he's not."

They waited for months as clean-up crews sifted through the rubble. By November, with still no word, they went ahead with a memorial service.

On Christmas Eve, parts of Steve's gear were recovered. They were wrapped in an American flag and taken to the medical examiner, then firefighters from 217 brought the dusty flag to Vinny and Carol.

The Coakleys scheduled a funeral and Kara flew up from Charlotte. But the medical examiner wouldn't release the remains. A piece of jawbone, thought to be Steve's, was found separate from the clothes. Maybe he had lent his gear to someone else.

They had to wait, unable to bury their son, until a DNA match led to a service this May.

Their grief is intensely personal. Yet there's no separating that from the broader trauma suffered by their community and the whole nation. Iowa farmers sent the Coakleys a hand-stitched quilt that "felt like they were giving me a hug," Carol says. The Coakleys treasure Thursday nights, when they gather with dozens of other Long Island parents who lost sons.

But how do you find peace when every day's mail brings a letter with a heart or a package with a teddy bear? Newspapers and television screens are full of year-after commemoratives. "I don't care about 9/11," says Carol. "Every day is 9/11."

One day, they came home to find tiny American flags dotting the neighborhood, including their lawn. It was a real-estate sales pitch.

"A year ago nobody put the flag out. Now because of death we are putting flags out," says Carol. "I'm tired of looking at flags. It doesn't help."

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] Vinny and Carol Coakley have left their son's bedroom in their Long Island home untouched. Steven had just returned from a trip to Florida on Sept. 10.

Steve's dad Vinny is angry. Steve was his best friend. At 17, Steve joined the Wyandanch Volunteer Fire Department where he pulled a woman from a smoky stairwell. Twice, he was firefighter of the year.

When Steve tried out for the coveted job of New York firefighter, Vinny helped him prepare. They simulated a firefighter's 80-pound gear by pouring sand into a life jacket. Two or three nights a week for a year, they would race to an old two-story train station, raise a ladder, roll out hoses and practice rescuing a 160-pound dummy.

"The only consolation I have is they saved lives," Vinny says. "You save a life, you know how many other lives you affect? Look how many people Steve's death touched. Steve and his guys saved so many lives by their heroic actions it's mind-boggling."

"I don't care about hero," Carol counters. "What good is hero if he's gone? You want a hero coming home."

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] Linda New, right, and Julie Kauzlarich, inside Steven Coakley's unfinished home on Maderia Beach. Once a week, New goes by the home to air it out. Steven introduced New, his girlfriend, to Kauzlarich.

'I can't go down there'

Linda New airs out the Madeira Beach house once a week. She has drained the fuel from the Bertram and neighbors are cutting the lawn. Otherwise, the house is just as Steve left it: rumpled clothes on closet floor, deck shoes and Laguna flip flops lined neatly by the bed, plastic lawn furniture piled in the family room, where he stored them away from the rain.

Linda waits for Steve's parents to decide what to do with the house, particularly Vinny, who spent months down here, working with Steve. The house looks finished from the outside. But inside, the decor still runs to concrete and plywood.

Vinny chokes up just thinking about the house. It dredges up memories. Changing anything would be like letting Steve go.

"I can't go down there," he says. "I have no idea what I'll do. No idea. That was his blood."

Kara Walker feels just the opposite. The house connects her to her brother. She couldn't wait to make a pilgrimage to Florida. "It's all him," she says. "Linda and I stayed upstairs on the couches. We watched the sun set, then watched the sun rise."

Linda's brother-in-law once asked if Steve would consider selling. Even unfinished, the house has probably tripled in value. Linda was getting her real-estate license and thought she and Steve could make a living fixing up houses and selling them. Linda says Steve's answer was unequivocal:

"He said, "No way.' That was his dream. He said, "No way. I'm going to die here."'

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