SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR) — A Brooklyn native turned Central New Yorker has made it his life’s mission to share with others what he experienced for nine straight months at Ground Zero directly following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
71-year-old Michael Bellone still carries the impact of 9/11 with him every day, surviving eight heart attacks in the past 25 years, while carrying the weight of every first responder and victim who lost their life with him to keep their memories alive.
Bellone served on the recovery team as a medic and became an honorary firefighter in New York City with Ladder Co. 20. Any time human remains were found in the rubble, Bellone said he would hop on an ATV with a navigation locator because, where remains lay, more could be recovered.
Every time someone was found, an unsaid ritual of sorts followed.
“When they walked up the ramp, everyone would stand at attention that was in the pit; everyone goes over there,” Bellone said. “Everything was shut down, every machine, every hammer was put down on the ground, nobody made a move. You could hear a pen drop…and that’s how we did every recovery.”
It was a time of loss that never seemed to end. Bellone’s father passed away on Christmas Eve, and his mother shortly after, on the six-month anniversary of the attacks.
“It was horrible,” he said. “Horrible. I went to the funeral during the day, and at night, I went back to the site.”
During his recovery efforts, Bellone found the remains of people he knew, people he didn’t know, even a file attendant, and said the numbers would continue to pile up. But one day, a shining light found him amidst the darkness.
Bellone often slept in his gear in a pew, three rows away from the door, at St. Paul’s Chapel. One moment, he was fast asleep; the next, his radio blared in his ear to get to the site nearby. Julie, his future wife, was a volunteer at the same location he was heading to.
“You’ve got to remember, I’m staring at the ground, at the time it was December, so that’s got to be four months, and someone starts actually talking to you,” he said.
Over the years, Bellone said he has tried to turn the painful experience into a lesson for future generations. He opened a learning center in Seneca Falls, New York, and published a collection of personal accounts titled “Ground Zero: Behind the Scenes.”
“Whatever you saw was nothing,” he said. “The pictures that I got are not the pictures that you saw, and we weren’t going to show them to the kids, of course. We try to make it as simple as possible.”
There will be an open house scheduled for Friday at 38 Tall Oaks Drive, Seneca Falls. It is located one block from Mynderse Academy. Bellone said airline personnel who spoke with those who lost their lives during the attacks will be in attendance.
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