Volunteering His Service, One More Time

By Tom McGinty | STAFF WRITER

September 19, 2001

Glenn Winuk rushed from the Broadway law offices of Holland & Knight last week along with the rest of the firm's staff.

But instead of running north, away from the carnage that was unfolding at the World Trade Center, the attorney took a mask and a pair of gloves from passing firefighters and charged toward the billowing smoke.

It was the same thing he had done in 1993, when terrorists set off a bomb in the center's basement. It was the same thing he had done countless times over 20 years as a Jericho firefighter. It was the last time his colleagues saw him.

"He was clearly on his way to go help," Winuk's brother, Jay, said yesterday. "He may have just jumped in and started working. He was there very soon after the planes, and probably sometime before the towers fell."

As Winuk's parents and two brothers endured a seventh day without word about his fate, his brother said he wasn't surprised by Glenn's quick action. He said Glenn had been drawn to firefighting since his early childhood, when he and his brothers would take turns on the fire pole at the New York City fire house where their uncle, Fireman Harold Einhorn, worked.

"He worked hard to be an attorney and a partner in a good law firm," Jay Winuk said. "But his passion, his real passion, is firefighting. From the time we were in grade school, sharing a bedroom together, this was his thing."

Jay Winuk was so certain of his brother's reaction to the terrorist attack, he immediately tried to call him after watching live images of the second plane striking the second tower. He wanted to warn him about just how dangerous the situation appeared to be, he said.

"My hope initially was that I would have a chance to talk to him before he went down there," said Jay Winuk, who at 43, is three years older than Glenn. "But if I had got him on the phone, it wouldn't have stopped him from going. There was no question that he was going down there immediately."

Jericho Fire Chief David Ginzburg said Glenn Winuk was not currently an active member of the department, but before leaving, he had reached the rank of lieutenant and was assigned to Guardian Engine Co. 2. He said Winuk was extremely loyal and always eager to help.

"It's no surprise to hear that he ran right in there," Ginzburg said. "I'm sure he probably tried to do whatever he could to help people down stairs. He probably just looked for somebody who needed help getting out of the building."

Winuk's parents, Elaine and Seymour, still live in Jericho, where their three sons, Glenn, Jay and Jeff, 48, were raised. Jeff, like Glenn, once was a volunteer with the Jericho Fire Department, and now lives in South Carolina with his wife, Dee.

Glenn received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Oneonta and attended law school at Hofstra. He is not married and has worked at Knight & Holland for 13 years. He lived in Manhattan.

His parents and brothers were gathered yesterday at Jay Winuk's home in Mahopac, a Putnam County community about an hour north of the city.

"Today, like most of this week, we're all together at my house, hoping for what now looks like a miracle," Jay Winuk said. "Each day it becomes a little more difficult to balance the reality and bizarreness of this. We certainly recognize that we are one of more than 5,000 families that are going through this.

"We take comfort in the fact that Glenn was doing a good deed," he added. "If he's not found, we know in our eyes he's an American hero. If anything, there's been a minor degree of comfort in that. But it certainly doesn't match the magnitude of our sorrow."