'I Can't Forget the Eerie Silence' ~ First Responders Recall Their 9/11 Experiences

Photo: Taken by retired Det. Lt. Joe Capriotti

Even 13 years later, the memories of the Sept. 11 attacks still linger for Middletown police officers and officials.

Middletown Police Chief Craig Weber spoke to Patch about what it was like to be one of 25 officers called in for support by the NYPD, who were desperately requesting help from any first responders and departments over the police teletypes that were commonly used in those days.

“September 11 is a national tragedy that took a toll on everyone across from the country, but especially Middletown,” Weber said.

About a quarter of the Middletown police force volunteered that afternoon, departing by the same ferry that the residents of Middletown that the officers were hurrying to try to rescue had taken to New York City or work that morning. Weber was a patrol officer at the time, but no matter his role with the department, he describes himself as a lifelong Middletown resident first and foremost.

“We could see the smoke as we were crossing the water. It was emotionally difficult for every officer involved, knowing we were heading there to try to save our own people,” Weber said.

“We arrived in lower Manhattan, and the conditions were just horrific. It was just a severe image to see.”

Weber described how police worked tirelessly that day at Ground Zero at the remains of the World Trade Center, staying overnight with other first responders at nearby Stuyvesant High School. Over the next few days, officers would work endlessly, before heading home, and then volunteering in shifts to return the following day.

The image that won’t ever leave Weber’s mind is that of the fires still smoldering when they first arrived, and of the “foot-thick” soot and dust they were tramping through- a memory seconded by now retired Middletown Detective Lt. Joe Capriotti.

“We were standing right on top of what just hours ago had been the World Trade Center. It was just surreal. The eerie silence is something I can’t forget,” Capriotti recalled.

Capriotti and Weber described how volunteers were standing in a line at Ground Zero using 5-gallon spackle buckets to remove debris over and over again. Responders were working with all of their might to tunnel through the debris to reach what initially they hoped would be survivors, but all too quickly became a victim recovery effort instead.

“We realized that these remains, these were our own people we were recovering and placing in to body bags; you couldn’t help but wonder if any one of these could be Middletown residents.

It was a very intense, life-changing experience,” Capriotti said. “I didn’t know that I could do what I was doing at Ground Zero. People go in to law enforcement to make a difference, and to help, but it’s hard to prepare for something like this. No one ever knows if you can do it when you need to, until you have to and you just do it.”

A week after the attacks on September 11, Capriotti’s role changed to one of family-victim liaison for the Middletown Police Department, a position he said was the most difficult part of the whole experience for him.

“The procedure kept changing, because this was such an unprecedented event. At first, residents were asked to file a missing person’s report for their loved ones who didn’t return home after that day. With the number of reports that came flooding in, we realized very quickly we had lost a lot of people,” Capriotti said.

As the medical examiners in New York City would identify a victim, they would contact the Middletown Police Department and Capriotti was tasked, along with a few select officers, with telling the victim’s family.

“Sometimes years would pass. Most of these victims were just burned beyond recognition, so there was often nothing to identify for a long time. I think out of 37 victims from Middletown, only 17 or 18 were actually able to be identified, so this process would take a very long time. You would see residents who hadn’t heard anything yet about their loved ones, years later, and they had remained strong and healed as time passed. But then we knock on their doors and it tears open the wounds for them all over again,” Capriotti said.

“It was heart-breaking to do. These were people we had watched grow up in town, from kids, to teenagers, and then to adults, and now here we were telling their families that they had been lost that day.”

Committeeman Gerard Scharfenberger had not yet been elected to the Middletown council in 2001, but had lived in Middletown for over 20 years.

Scharfenberger says that the hardest part about his September 11 experience was watching kids in Middletown grow up without their parents.

“I found this baseball at the Middletown 9/11 Memorial Gardens one time, and it had a child’s handwriting scrawled on it, and read, ‘Dad, I hope you’re proud of me. I made the baseball team,’ “ Scharfenberger said.

“You see something like that, and know that this child is growing up without his father, and you just get infuriated all over again.”

But out of every darkness comes light. And although seemingly impossible, there were positive changes that came from September 11 in Middletown.

“Out of all of the despair and violence that was brought to us that day, I saw a Middletown that really came together and pulled through as one,” Capriotti said. “Residents were more caring, more respectful; there was a time afterward when Middletown residents were more tolerant of one another. Everybody felt this tragedy. We became more civil to one another because of it.”

Capriotti expressed disappointment that in the months after the tragedy, some people slowly went back to the mentality that they had before the tragedy, of “being impatient; complaining in supermarket check-out lines; yelling and honking at each other while driving. It was disappointing to see these behaviors return.”

That is why Capriotti, along with over 300 other current and retired members of law enforcement, take part in the Tour De Force, a memorial bike ride in its 10th year in honor of fallen police officers that gave their lives in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The “Tour de Force” was started in 2002, after Detective Robert De Paolis of the NYPD, now retired, decided to ride his bike to honor fallen officers. He was then joined by 7 other members of the NYPD and one member of the Bronx District Attorney’s Office and along with four volunteer support personnel, they cycled their way from the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, to Ground Zero, NYC.

This year, the riders are beginning their memorial journey from the site of another tragic attack, the Boston Marathon finish line, where they will hold a brief ceremony at 10 a.m. this morning, and then continue on through Washington, D.C. before ending at the NYC 9/11 Memorial site on Sunday. A brief moment of silence will be held by the law enforcement bicyclists at the site World Trade Center, before their journey is complete.

But for Capriotti, Weber, Scharfenberger, and so many law enforcement officers, council members, and residents, this memorial journey will never be finished. For every year, on September 11, we remember. They will never forget.