Waterfront Warriors Connect Vets to 9/11

While he enjoyed surfing, a fishing trip and a welcome parade and barbeque, David Crouse said the highlight of his recent vacation in Long Beach was a trip to Manhattan.

An active U.S. Marine who lost his left eye and hand in combat in the Middle East, Crouse is among 22 veterans who were welcomed as guest to the South Shore beach town through the Waterfront Warriors project from July 19-24.

The Long Beach organization assists wounded, ill and injured military personnel on their return to civilian life with an all-expenses-paid vacation with their families, and Crouse, a Connecticut native who visited Long Beach for the first time, brought his wife Nicole and daughter Alysia.

“I’ve wanted to do this for years,” Crouse said on Tuesday after he emerged from surfing in the ocean off National beach. “It was a great time.”

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While he found catching swells in the Atlantic fun, getting to meet firefighters involved in the rescue efforts after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center September 11, 2001 was special, something most wounded soldiers particularly anticipate.

Jerry Snell, co-chair for the Waterfront Warriors, said virtually all the veterans who have been through the program, now in its fifth year, enlisted in the military after 9/11. The first year of the program he and other volunteers discovered that the veterans wanted to visit where thousands of innocents were murdered that day.

“Ground Zero was more of a landmark that they wanted to see because of 9/11,” Snell said.

Each year the volunteers take the veterans to the former WTC site and Rescue Company 1 firehouse as part of their annual trip to Manhattan, which includes heading up to the observation deck of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center for a view of the skyline.

Last Saturday, NYPD officers escorted the soldiers to the site where a new skyscraper is on the rise amid the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, where the footprints of the former twin towers were transformed into a memorial bearing the names of the people who perished there.

During this trip, the soldiers met more than a dozen past and present Long Beach residents who are retired New York City firefighters and police officers, including Al Fuentes, an NYFD captain who was buried under the wreckage at the WTC and once worked for Rescue 1, the company that suffered substantial casualties on 9/11. They talked about their operations and experiences on that day, and the soldiers ask them many detailed questions.

“It was great to hang out with them and hear their stories,” Crouse said.

Crouse and the other soldiers involved in the Waterfront Warriors program are patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. All have been there since suffering their wounds and injuries in the Middle East and have yet to return home. While most are first-time visitors to Long Beach, some have returned because they have had to continue their long rehabilitation at Walter Reed.

“It breaks them from the tedium of being in the hospital,” Snell said of their trip to Long Beach.

He was quick to note, though, that the most rewarding part of volunteering for the Warriors is having the soldiers relax in Long Beach, whether they are surfing or riding on Jet Skis or playing beach tennis.

“It’s hard to express in words the generosity people have shown,” Crouse said. “They did more than I ever expected.”

This summer, after Hurricane Sandy crippled Long Beach last October, only half the residents who typically house the soldiers and their families throughout their tip were able to provide that hospitality this summer. The others continue to contend with storm-related issues at their homes. The Allegria Hotel, though, was able to accommodate some families instead.

James Lynch, a volunteer for Warriors, said that despite Long Beach’s post-Sandy hardships, many residents still contributed to the organization’s fundraisers that make the program possible.

“People know what this is about and they wanted to keep on doing it,” Lynch said. He added, referring to the soldiers: “It’s important that this event continues through all this devastation, but it pales in comparison to what they’ve been through.”