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Three men who worked for New York City's fire company 95 join in Pinellas Park's boot drive fundraiser.
By ANNE LINDBERG
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 7, 2001
PINELLAS PARK -- Raul Huerta was in a meeting when he got a call from his wife telling him that planes had hit the World Trade Center.
"I told the people, "I've got to go,' " said Huerta, a Seminole resident and retired lieutenant of the Fire Department of New York.
When the towers collapsed, Huerta knew from experience that firefighters would be lost, "but I never figured 300."
He cried. Almost four weeks later, his hands still tremble from the magnitude of the loss.
Leo Kassabian worked under Huerta before retiring to Clearwater in 1984. Kassabian and his wife were on vacation in New York on Sept. 11.
They watched the trade center collapse on television from their hotel room and remembered how they could look out the window of their home in Battery Park and see the Trade Center. Now their former neighbors are homeless until the area is cleaned of debris.
"I don't think I'll ever forget this," Kassabian said. "It'll always be in the back of my mind."
Tom Egan also worked for New York fire company 95 with Huerta and Kassabian. He still lives in New York, but he visits Dunedin every year. He was in New York when the terrorists struck.
Barred from helping at ground zero because of asthma, he has done the only thing he could do: He has gone to funerals. Lots of funerals.
"I went to too many funerals," Egan said. "You have to do something."
On Friday and Saturday, the three did something else. They and other retired New York firefighters joined with Pinellas Park firefighters for a boot drive to collect money for the families of the fallen firefighters.
It's something they felt they had to do for their "brothers."
"Brothers is a term we use," Kassabian said. "We all feel we're brothers."
Brotherhood speaks of a family relationship, and you do things for family members, they said.
"It personally feels like you're doing something for that family," Huerta said. And, if the deceased are "up there watching, they know."
Egan agreed that it's hard to feel as if they've done enough.
"When I was up there, I went to a lot of funerals. I still didn't feel like I did enough," he said.