Exclusive | Retired FDNY chief constructs touching handmade tributes to honor 9/11 Bravest

A former FDNY battalion chief who worked for weeks on the smoldering Pile is now spending his retirement constructing touching handmade tributes to honor 9/11 Bravest.Retired Fire Department honcho John Ricketts has spent the past five years making 78 to-scale models of the Twin Towers that encase rusted steel recovered from Ground Zero.Much of the artwork is being gifted to the FDNY heroes who rushed to the World Trade Center during the terror attacks 25 years ago and survived, as well as to the loved ones of those who perished.“There was one chief I worked with who had, on his locker, left a note: ‘Tell my wife I love her and tell my family’ ” before heading to the WTC to help with rescue efforts after the attack, Ricketts said.“He didn’t know if he was coming back.

And he didn’t.“It’s a special group of people in the Fire Department,” Ricketts told The Post from his Plainview, LI, workshop, where he has spent countless hours sanding, cutting, measuring, gluing and crafting the dozens of pieces of his emotional art.The idea to honor the heroes began to take shape just ahead of Ricketts’ December 2021 retirement, when then-FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro accepted his handwritten request for steel recovered from Ground Zero to make a few keepsakes for his family.Ricketts expected a small slab but was gifted a rusted 0.5-inch-thick plate the size of 1.5 manhole covers.He then spent months sanding the steel down and slicing it into sticks that he perfectly wedged into the 8.25-inch-tall wooden towers, which he planted on a stand that slants to replicate West Street in Lower Manhattan.All the towers appear exactly the same in size and stature, but each has its own unique steel size and wood type.Ricketts sourced the timber from personal, well-loved sources across the Big Apple, including his family’s furniture, discarded blocks scavenged from Steinway & Sons and even branches from the Sycamore tree that graced his childhood home in Bayside...