PROGRAMMING ALERT: Watch Tunnel to Towers Chairman and CEO Frank Siller discuss his new book "Let Us Do Good," on "The Five" on Sept.1 on Fox News Channel at 5 p.m.
ET.There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after.For me, one of those moments came on September 11, 2001, when a firefighter calling from Ground Zero told me what I already feared but was not ready to hear: my younger brother Stephen was not coming home.
In that instant, my family’s life changed forever, and so did the course of mine.Even though I knew that it was probably an exercise in futility, I also kept trying to call Stephen from my Nextel phone, on September 11, hoping that perhaps he had somehow already made it over the Verrazzano Bridge and back to Staten Island.We had the same phone; it was both a cellular phone and a walkie-talkie, which was popular in the early 2000s.I kept pressing the button on the walkie-talkie part while I called out for Stephen.
He did not pick up.I called again, and again, and again.
There was no answer—only an eerie silence.I wound up doing that all night and well into the next few days.I LOST MY WIFE ON 9/11.
PLEASE LET THIS 25TH ANNIVERSARY BELONG TO THE FAMILIESOnce I got home to join Pat, early in the afternoon, family members began to straggle one by one through my front door.All we could do was sit in my living room and watch the news, just as hundreds of millions of our fellow Americans did that day.
I felt like I was dreaming.It was all so surreal, especially since much of the carnage had occurred in my beloved New York City.Frank Siller and his siblings in an undated photo at his annual July Fourth BBQ on Staten Island, New York.
Pictured are Stephen, Russell, Janis, Gina, Frank, Mary, and George Siller.Stephen, the youngest sibling, is in the center of the second row.
Frank is pictured in the second row on the far right.(Stiller family photo/HarperCollins)While it was tempting to excuse myself to go shed a few tears, I...