9/11 honor is denied

Bureaucrat’s bike nix

The parents of the youngest first responder killed on 9/11 were to get a special tribute this year — a motorcycle parade past their Queens home in honor of their son, Richard Pearlman.

But Betty Braton (lower inset), the head of the local community board, put up a roadblock on a route change for Sunday’s annual “Run for Richie,” upsetting his family and parade organizers and leading to a petition calling for her ouster.

The annual mo- torcade began in 2016 to benefit the Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps and to pay tribute to Pearlman (upper inset) and others killed in the terrorist attack. Some 2,000 motorcyclists have participated along with emergency response vehicles on a route that usually goes from Aqueduct Racetrack into Manhattan.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, organizers wanted to detour the motorcade past Pearlman’s Howard Beach home, where his parents still live.

Pearlman, 18, had just graduated from high school and was working for a lawyer who had sent him on an errand to 1 Police Plaza on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. While there, he heard an “all hands needed” announcement over the public address system about a plane hitting the World Trade Center.

Pearlman, who volunteered with the Forest Hills ambulance corps and was a first aid instructor, went to Ground Zero with NYPD Officer Moira Smith, who would become the

only female cop to be killed that day.

Pearlman’s body was recovered six months later.

Pearlman’s sister, Lisa Pearlman Mason, 41, said she and her husband would participate in the annual parade on a motorcycle. Her parents, Dorie and Barry Pearlman, are usually at the racetrack starting point, but not this year because of COVID.

“I would love for my parents to see everybody come by. It’s 20 years,” she said. “My brother’s now dead longer than he was alive. It’s like a nightmare that we live every day.”

An organizer, Paul “PJ” Marcel, said the NYPD told him before Labor Day that the route change was authorized and was just awaiting one last approval.

But Marcel said after the holiday he learned Braton had raised objections. by