Twenty-five years after the September 11th attacks, a local coach is still asking himself whether he has done enough to keep the memory of his best friend alive.

For Joe Stellato, the story begins with two phone calls from the 102nd floor of the World Trade Center.

His friend and former roommate, Marty Wortley, who was a graduate of East Stroudsburg University, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and called his brother shortly after the first plane struck the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001.

“He called his brother,” Joe recalled. “‘I’m okay. I’m gonna head downstairs. Tell Karen I’m fine.’”

About 20 minutes later came another call.

This one was much different.

“Screaming on the phone, devastated,” Joe said. “He couldn’t breathe.”

Marty would not make it out of the World Trade Center.

For Joe, however, Marty was much more than a name associated with one of the darkest days in American history.

He remembers a friend nicknamed “Grumpy,” despite being anything but.

“He was fun-loving, easygoing, laid-back,” Joe said.

The two had been football teammates, with Marty playing offensive tackle.

Searching for Marty at Ground Zero

Joe’s world changed again with a phone call around 2 a.m. on September 12.

He remembers arriving to see Marty’s father, a man Joe had always known as the fun-loving and “cool” dad.

“When you walked in, you saw him devastated,” Joe said. “I’ll never forget that.”

Two days after the attacks, Joe and several former teammates traveled to New York to search for their friend.

Joe brought a disposable camera. The photographs he took documented what he encountered as the group made its way toward Ground Zero.

“On the ferry, you could see this stream of smoke,” Joe recalled.

The devastation became clearer as they got closer.

“You turn, and you see Ground Zero, and it was disaster as far as the eye can see,” Joe said. “It was just like, ‘Let’s go find Marty.’”

Joe joined others searching through the debris.

“I looked down in those buckets a few times and saw some things that were pretty gruesome,” he said.

They never found Marty.

For roughly a decade afterward, Joe rarely spoke about what he had experienced. The memories were simply too painful to describe.

Eventually, his thinking changed.

“I’m thinking, ‘What good am I doing by keeping this story and not telling them and educating them?’” Joe said.

So, Joe started talking.

Turning memory into a lesson for students

As a coach and educator at Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Joe began sharing his firsthand experiences with students, including what he witnessed during those days in New York.

And students listened.

Their reactions convinced him that telling the story mattered.

“When they come up and hug me afterwards, say, ‘Coach, I’m sorry,’” Joe said. “That right there alone means everything to me.”

Now, approaching the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Joe is taking that effort another step.

Students will participate in a 2,200-step climb, designed to represent the height of the World Trade Center towers and help a generation with no personal memory of September 11th better understand what happened that day.

“What do you want kids to take from step one to 2,200?” 69 News Reporter Bo Koltnow asked.

“I want them to know what the firefighters went through, what the people in those towers went through,” Joe said.

Proceeds from the event will benefit the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.

For Joe, though, the climb is part of something that began long before the first step.

A quarter century later, he continues to measure what he is doing to keep Marty’s memory alive.

“What have I done in 25 years to keep Marty’s memory alive?” Joe asked. “One, two, to educate kids about not forgetting. Have I done enough?”