By Kathianne Boniello
Nearly 100 people turned out at a Bayside Historical Society panel discussion last week to find out just what it was like for city firefighters and police officers to travel from “Ground Zero to Ground Zero” in December.
The panel discussion, held at the Officer’s Club at Fort Totten in Bayside, featured the firefighters and police officers who made the trip as well as several journalists who accompanied them.
The “Ground Zero to Ground Zero” tour was a special humanitarian airlift that brought 90,000 pounds of supplies to Afghanistan after the United States began its military campaign in the South Asian nation. The tour, which featured four firefighters, two police officers and three reporters, was sponsored by Guinness, the Irish stout company.
Participants in the “Ground Zero to Ground Zero” tour included: Officers Tom McDonald and Jose Guerra, Fire Chiefs Don Hayde and Larry Connors, Firefighters Joe Higgins and New York Fire Department Chaplain John Delendick. Reporters taking part included Larry Cohler Essis of the Daily News, Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post, and Steve Kastenbaum of 1010 Wins radio.
Members of the Bayside Historical Society, which hosted last Thursday’s panel discussion, said the speakers touched the audience with tales from their journey.
Geraldine Spinella, executive director of the historical society, said: “I felt honored to be in the same room with these people. It was a really great event.”
Bayside Historical Society member and TimesLedger historian Joan Wettingfeld said the audience responded enthusiastically to the speakers.
“It was wonderful,” she said.
The event also featured a booklet filled with written accounts of the trip, during which travelers talked to Afghan families and met with several hundred U.S. troops. Before leaving the United States for Afghanistan Dec. 18, the “Ground Zero to Ground Zero” crew paid a special visit to the site of the devastated World Trade Center.
Delendick, a Queens Village native who made the trip, said “this airlift to the other Ground Zero is the ultimate gesture of healing.”
In the booklet, Delendick described his motivation for joining the airlift.
“I was there during that tragic morning the Twin Towers came down,” he said. “During that time people all over the world poured out their hearts and offered support to New Yorkers and now it’s my time to give back some of that goodness to people who are really in need.”
Retired Fire Chief Lawrence Connors, officer in charge of FDNY operations at Fort Totten, also made the journey.
“I want to memorialize, in a very personal way, the ultimate sacrifice that so many people made on 9/11,” Connors said in the booklet. “This is for my nephew, Kevin Colbert, who worked in the World Trade Center and my firefighter brothers Charlie Heeran, Vinny Kane, Mike Roberts, Ryan McAlleise and Capt. Louie Montefiore — they are all gone.”
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
