The Lost

Kathryn Wellin, Steve Zipay, Mary Voboril , Nick Iyer, Andrew Smith, Jo Craven McGinty

September 21, 2001

Mechanic Fulfilled Wish To Become a Firefighter...Risk-Taker Saved Lives As a Donor and Firefighter...Steamfitter Turned Firefighter 'Built' Towers...'Mr. Ladder 24' Just Wanted to Save Lives...A Caring Son Who Was His Mother's Right Arm...Firefighter Dad Followed In the Family Tradition...She Had a Few More Chapters to Live...'Everybody Loved His Smile'

EVER SINCE Sept. 11, we have had to deal simultaneously with the immensity of loss and with its appalling specificity. On one hand are the numbers - the armies of the dead and lost, so many that, were they all still alive and of a mind to gather for a cultural event, they would overflow the Metropolitan Opera or fill Carnegie Hall twice over. On the other hand, there are the facts of each disappearance, the final, phoned-in messages of love, the smiling vacation snapshots and the desperately itemized details that cropped up on "Missing" posters around the city.

In the past week and a half, we have had to find our way in a conceptual space that is new to us - the abyss between the enormous and the intimate, the historical and the grimly mundane. Already, we try to see these events as if from a distant future ("Sept. 11, 2001: The Day Everything Changed"), but keep coming back to the immediacy of loss. We watch as family members of the missing bring combs and toothbrushes to information centers to aid in DNA identification, transforming ordinary drugstore items into instant reliquaries. Where once was a son or sister, now there is only a strand of hair or a handful of cells.

Eventually, even loss of this scale and depth will become absorbed into the fabric of our lives. As our political leaders keep insisting, we can withstand the shock. We are, most of us, well built for grieving.

Mechanic Fulfilled Wish To Become a Firefighter

Vincent Morello spent 12 years as a fire department mechanic, but he wanted more. That's why he became a firefighter with Engine 283 in Brownsville and then Ladder 35 in Manhattan a year and a half ago.

"He wanted to be a fireman, plain and simple," said his brother Marc Morello, a firefighter with Ladder 147 in Brooklyn. "He didn't want to spend the rest of his life under fire trucks fixing them-he wanted to be riding them."

Vincent Morello took a $40,000 pay cut when he switched from mechanic to firefighter, but he "absolutely loved" his new job, Marc Morello said. His very first night as a firefighter, his entire unit received a citation for its work putting out a fire, he said.

Marc Morello said it is believed that his brother was searching for civilians in the World Trade Center when it collapsed. Vincent Morello, of Middle Village, graduated McClancy High School in 1985 and attended St. John's University for one year. He loved playing softball and was an avid Rangers fan. He has a wife, Debi; a son, Justin, 7, and a daughter, Paige, 5. His parents, John, a retired fire chief and 33-year veteran, and Patricia, are also from Middle Village. -Kathryn Wellin

Risk-Taker Saved Lives As a Donor and Firefighter

Carl Bedigian was a giver-and a risk-taker. About six years ago, Bedigian donated bone marrow for a child in either Italy or Greece who had leukemia, his wife, Michelle, recalled. "The child is still alive," she said.

She hadn't remembered the donation until she was asked for a DNA sample to possibly help identify Bedigian, whose team from Engine 214 from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was believed to be between the two World Trade Center towers before the collapse following the attacks on Sept. 11. "I remembered there was tissue at home."

Bedigian, 35, was born in Jamaica and grew up in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. He attended St. Cecelia's grammar school and Thomas Edison High School. After graduation, he worked as an electrician for the Transit Authority for 12 years, and about seven years ago, became a firefighter, assigned to Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He and Michelle were married a year ago in Sacred Heart Church in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and were looking for a home in that area.

Michelle Bedigian said that her husband was committed to firefighting. "He had contracted a virus that left him temporarily paralyzed a few years ago, and he had to retake the firefighter's exam to be re-admitted to the department."

A week after the terrorist attack, Michelle met with some of the firefighters who knew her husband. "I told them that all you guys are gamblers, and the odds are always against you. But you still do it. I'm not giving up hope." -Steve Zipay

Steamfitter Turned Firefighter 'Built' Towers

Thomas W. Kelly's 51st birthday would have been on Sept. 18. But one week earlier, he was lost in the debris of the towers he helped build.

"Tom was a steamfitter for Local 638 in 1970 and built the Trade Center," said his wife, Kitty. He joined the fire department in March 1984 and worked for Ladder 15 down on South Street the whole time.

"He was trained to deal with high-rise fires, they had the greatest training, but this wasn't just a fire," Kitty Kelly said. "This was an act of war."

The Kellys grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and moved to Livingston on Staten Island about 18 years ago. Tom Kelly attended St. Francis of Assisi grammar school and Nazareth High School. Kitty Kelly said that firefighters call every day, and she is very appreciative of the support from the mayor, the governor and everyone else.