Main Line – April 21, 2015
by Cheryl Allison
It isn’t every day that a team of real-life heroes walks into your store, but that is what happened Friday morning at Norman Chaikin’s Norman Carpet One in Bryn Mawr.
Four members of the Fire Department of New York, all 9/11 first-responder survivors, visited the business at 574 W. Lancaster Ave. to make a special presentation and kick off a project to help some of their own heroes.
The retired firefighters from FDNY’s Ladder 118 in Brooklyn Heights were there to recognize Chaikin and Carpet One for their support of the Building for America’s Bravest program. The program is a project of the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation that builds high-tech “smart homes” for returning military veterans who have been catastrophically injured.
Carpet One Floor & Home and its manufacturing partner Mohawk have committed to providing flooring materials and installation for 46 of the houses, which each cost about $500,000 to build. Many of the veterans who will make them their homes have lost limbs during their service in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first home built through the program was for Army veteran Brendan Marrocco, the first quadruple amputee to survive his injuries, said John Sorrentino, one of the visiting firefighters.
In recognition of Chaikin’s support of the project, the group presented him with a shadowbox containing steel from Ground Zero.
With Sorrentino Friday were Lt. Joe Pisicolo and fellow firefighters Robert Forte and Edmund Greene. Pisicolo said they all were off duty on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when two planes under the control of terrorists flew into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. They heard the call, and, “like Stephen, we all went down there” to aid in rescue efforts, Pisicolo said.
Stephen Girard Siller, whose memory the Tunnel to Towers Foundation honors, was a firefighter with Squad 1, Park Slope, Brooklyn. He was heading home after a late shift on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he heard on his scanner that a plan had hit the first tower. “He turned around, went back to the firehouse, grabbed his gear” and started driving toward the Twin Towers, Sorrentino related.
He got as far as the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel but found it closed, like other tunnels and bridges. Carrying his 50 to 60 pounds of gear, he walked through the tunnel into Manhattan and to the trade center, a distance of 1.7 miles. He died in the collapse of the buildings. “His body was never recovered,” Sorrentino went on. “He left behind a wife and five kids.”
The youngest of seven children, orphaned at an early age, Siller was raised by his older siblings. After 9/11, they started the foundation “to keep alive his good will of helping other people.” Each year, a Tunnel to Towers Run retraces his steps; nearly 40,000 ran last September, Sorrentino said. Similar runs across the country raise funds for the foundation’s projects.
The houses are custom-designed, each different to meet the injured veteran’s needs. They include features like automatic doors and lighting, wider doors and hallways and special showers to accommodate wheelchairs, and kitchen cabinets and counters that can be raised and lowered. The technology is all “controlled from an iPad.”
Fourteen houses have been built, with another 15 in progress in various parts of the country, including one in Pennsylvania built for Marine Doug Vitale of Peters Township. Sorrentino said the goal is to build 200.
That will take many millions of dollars. In addition to companies like Carpet One and others in the building and home improvement industries that are contributing money and services, funds are being raised through donations.
Carpet One, which is part of a cooperative called CCA Global, is launching a campaign to raise awareness and funds for the cause, asking customers to make donations of $10 or more, Chaikin said.
Chaikin, whose store on the Main Line and store and warehouse in Conshohocken have been serving the Delaware Valley for 40 years, is known for his humorous radio ads. He is very serious, though, when he says of his New York visitors, “These are the real heroes.”
The cause is personal for the firefighters. “Our house lost eight men” on 9/11, Green said. On that morning, an engine carrying six firefighters raced to the World Trade Center, getting the call after the second plane hit. An image made iconic in a New York Daily News photo shows it driving the wrong way on the Brooklyn Bridge, as people run and walk out of the city. Billows of smoke from the burning towers rise in the distance.
Greene said some among that crew are believed to have made it to the 80th floor of one of the towers before it collapsed. All six perished, as well as two others who had worked at Ladder 118.
Describing the scene they witnessed on that day as “utter chaos,” Greene said after the attacks it was inspiring to see so many joining the military, willing to serve their country. As so many have come home with devastating injuries, “It’s important with the foundation to build homes for them so they can live their lives” as normal, and, with the homes’ technology, “This is as normal as it can get.”
Chaikin said information about the Building for America’s Bravest project will be available in the store and on its website. “This is the kickoff. It will go on the balance of the year.”
On Friday, one of the Bryn Mawr store’s staff, Bob Spano, a member of a chapter of the Marine Corps League based in Newtown Square, presented the visitors with a check for $1,000 from the organization to boost the campaign.
More information about the project and how to support it is available on the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation website at www.tunneltotowers.org or at www.ourbravest.org.
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