Brother of hero 9/11 firefighter relives heartbroken moment he knew hero sibling had died: Sick to my stomach

In the haze of confusion and fear on September 11, 2001, Frank Siller felt certain of one thing.“I turned to my mother-in-law and said, ‘I think I just lost my brother.’ I was sick to my stomach,” he told me of that fateful morning.His brother, Stephen Siller, had just gotten off duty as an FDNY firefighter and was driving home from Park Slope to Staten Island when he heard the North Tower of the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane.He turned his truck around, donned 60 pounds of equipment and ran through the closed Brooklyn Battery Tunnel toward the horror unfolding in Manhattan.Frank would later receive confirmation from his brother’s friend and fellow firefighter Richie Obermeyer, who phoned him from Ground Zero with the grim news.In his new book, “Let Us Do Good,” Siller recounted Obermeyer’s chilling words.

“No one is coming home, Frank,” Obermeyer told him.“No one.”Stephen, a married father of five, never returned.

But his heroic final acts would become one of the defining and enduring stories from the terror attacks.“It was brutal, but that’s when our faith kicked in,” said Frank, a devout Catholic.His family faced an agonizing choice.

“Are we going to let that define everything — or are we going to take what Stephen did and thank him for his sacrifice?”The six remaining Siller siblings launched the Tunnel to Towers foundation, which was originally intended to help children who had lost parents in the attacks.In 2002, they held a 5k run retracing Stephen’s route through the tunnel.

It drew 1,500 participants; this year, they’ll have 30,000.And the charity itself has grown to meet the needs of first responders, veterans and their families.They build smart homes for injured veterans, provide housing for homeless vets, pay off mortgages for Gold Star families and provide scholarships for children of the fallen.The mission, Frank said, was inspired by their brother’s selfless action — as well as St.

Francis ...