FOLLOWING FOOTSTEPS OF HIS 9/11 HERO KIN
Finest says pain is still there
The anniversary of 9/11 leaves NYPD Officer Joseph Safatle thinking of footsteps.
The footsteps taken by his uncle, Officer James Leahy, killed 19 years ago in the rubble of the World Trade Center while ferrying oxygen tanks to firefighters and steering people to safety as the 110-story North Tower collapsed. And a decade later, Safatle following his uncle’s footsteps into a job as a city police officer.
“There is still pain,” said Safatle, speaking one day before the anniversary of the attack that left 2,753 dead in Lower Manhattan. “I still see pain on my grandmother’s face. There is pain on the 19th year as there was the first year. I wouldn’t say it’s easy to deal with but you’re able to cope with it a little better.”
More footsteps: The 31year-old works in the Sixth Precinct, the same West Village station house where his uncle was on the job when the two planes hit the twin towers on the sunny morning of Sept. 11, 2001. His locker is directly alongside the one once used by Leahy.
“I definitely think about him,” said the 31-year-old Safatle, who was just 12 when the terrorists struck. “I think about the last time he walked out of the precinct. Did he walk out these doors? Did he walk through these doors? Did he know it would be his last time? I’m always reminded of him.”
On the anniversary of the attacks, Safatle will follow the same path inside the precinct with his grandmother and other relatives — another uncle works as an NYPD detective. The family will go to the 9/11 memorial to find Leahy’s name etched into one of the reflecting pools, and then visit his grave before returning to the home of Safatle’s grandmother.
Leahy made a phone call to his family before his death at Ground Zero, assuring everyone that he was fine.
“A voicemail for his wife and three boys saying ‘Dad’s OK. I’m here helping out with the firemen carrying oxygen tanks and everything’s OK,’” the nephew recalled.
Leahy, one of 23 city cops who made the ultimate sacrifice that horrific morning, was also was among the first responders in 1993 when a terrorist bomb killed six people in a parking garage beneath the WTC. The cop’s worried mother, in a call to Safatle’s mom, mentioned the prior terror attack as the family waited in vain for good news from the site.
“She had an idea that he could be down there because he was down there for the ’93 bombing,” recalled Safatle. “As the day unraveled, my uncle was missing.”
Safatle’s approach to the job was forged in the days after the attack by the kindness and compassion shown to his family by the NYPD. The community affairs officer carries that memory when he makes the familiar walk into work each day.
As the years pass and some memories fade, Safatle — now the married father of his own 2-year-old son — offered a straightforward message to New Yorkers as the sad anniversary looms.
“It’s as simple as it gets: Never forget,” he said. “Simple as that. Just never forget.”