Chicago Firefighters I'll Never Forget Return To Ground Zero

CHICAGO — Ten years ago, I motored into Manhattan on my Harley-Davidson with 200 motorcycle-riding first responders making what would be a final mass pilgrimage to Ground Zero.

It was my second trip tagging along as an interloping Sun-Times reporter with a group of Chicago firefighters, some who became friends.

Chicago Engineer Stan Salata and Battalion chiefs Tom Maloney and Joel Burns each rushed to "The Pile" after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in what they hoped would be a search and rescue mission.

When they arrived, there was no one to rescue.

“I’m on my belly digging. There’s a hole straight down. You find a piece of clothing. You find a bra. You find a shoe. You find part of a skirt. You think, “Where the heck are they?” battalion chief Tom Maloney told me back then. “Literally, where are they? Then, you realize they are everywhere. They are all over.”

For nearly two weeks, they struck fires, manned bucket brigades and even preserved pieces of precious marble from the altar at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church without finding a single survivor.

Every September for the next decade, Maloney organized and led an annual motorcycle caravan to ground zero with stops in Shanksville, Pa., where hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed coal strip mine that’s now a national park, and on to the Pentagon with firefighting "brothers" from across the country.

“This ride drives me. I started it because I wanted people to see everything I saw. To feel everything I felt. To never forget, honestly,” Maloney told me in 2011. “But I think that it has to end. Life goes on. After 10 years, people don’t remember. The idea of having people never forget, it’s out of my hands.”

On the streets of Manhattan, they shared with me indelible memories that to this day remain embedded in all five senses. This weekend, Maloney, Salata and Burns each returned to Ground Zero separately to mark the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks for the first time in a decade.

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"Honestly, this year I just wanted to be on my own, you know?" Maloney said. He's 62, and just two months from taking a mandatory retirement. "It's more personal, for some reason, this year. There are no more motorcycles. It's just me and my memories … preparing for the next chapter in life."

Salata, a Chicago fire academy instructor, said he returned to Ground Zero to get a good look at how New York City, and America, has healed.

"To see all this, the memorial and us moving on, really is part of a healing process. I wanted to see the Freedom Tower in person," he said. "To know that [terrorists], excuse me, f----- with our country, and we built back bigger and better makes me feel really good, proud. We're walking past FDNY's Ten House right now. Their slogan is 'Still Standing.' That's important."

Chief. Burns made the 20th Anniversary trek to New York on his motorcycle with his wife, Lisa Burns, and pal, Chicago fire Capt. Patrick Mahoney.

"I'm taking them around to show them when we were here, 'That building was [destroyed.] And that building was [destroyed]," he said. "And to see them all rebuilt is kinda cool to see. Very cool."

Burns, a notorious tough guy, told me he got choked up visiting the 9/11 memorial museum when he saw a display of fliers, like the ones people searching for loved ones had handed him at Ground Zero in the days after the towers crumbled.

"The general public saw it on TV. They didn't know. We knew. We weren't pulling anybody out of the rubble. Not alive, at least. It was so hard to see those fliers at the memorial, the ones people were handing out when we were searching the rubble, that said, "Look for this person. Have you seen this person," he said.

"When I was walking through the memorial, it got me because I remember telling people, 'We'll try. We'll try, knowing full well they would never see those people again. That was tough. … [The memorial] reminds you of back then, right after the towers came down, when people were nice to each other, and gave a s--- about each other and tried to help each other."

Maloney, Burns and Salata all plan to gather at Ground Zero on Saturday.

"We were very lucky, I think, because at the time of the attack everybody wanted to help. We were fortunate enough to be able to do that. We didn't do anything that anybody else wouldn't have done at that time if they could," Burns said. "Obviously, it was a terrible event, but I'm proud to say that I was here and tried."

After so many years, I feel lucky, too. Any reporter could have shared those rides with them, and their stories with Chicago. But I'm glad it was me.

They're Chicago guys I'll never forget.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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