On Sept. 9, 2001, Franklin Square resident Michael Kiefer, 25, completed the Town of Hempstead Triathlon, in Point Lookout, in just under 1 hour, 12 minutes.
Michael’s parents, Bud and Patricia, and younger sisters Lauren, 21, and Kerri, 18, were on hand to watch the newly minted New York City Fire Department probationary officer complete the grueling event without breaking much of a sweat. When he crossed the finished line and was greeted by his family, the joy they had seeing him complete yet another a triathlon, a hobby of his, was ultimately cut short: The probie, as he was affectionately called by his FDNY colleagues, had to report to his firehouse, Ladder 132 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for a 24-hour shift the next day.
“That was the last time we saw him,” Kerri recalled.
To honor her brother, Kerri decided to train for this year’s Town of Hempstead Triathlon on Sept. 10. Though the event was easy for Michael, Kerri has been swimming, biking and running for an hour and a half a day since she made the decision to compete in June.
“I feel his presence so much stronger than ever right now,” Kerri said. “It’s like he’s rooting me on, saying, ‘You got this’ and ‘You can do this.’ I’m just so glad I made the decision to sign up and do this.”
What made Kerri’s decision to compete difficult is that she has been battling multiple sclerosis for eight years, since she was diagnosed in 2008. What many might view as a hindrance, however, Kerri used as motivation to get healthy. To give her some added strength, she is using Michael’s bike, which he rode in his last triathlon.
“I literally followed in his footsteps that day,” Kerri said of what it would be like to cross the finish line. “It means so much to me, because as full of life as Michael was, that was last thing he did for fun, and then he went to work.”
Michael was coming off his shift the morning of Sept. 11 when the emergency call came in that a plane had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Michael stayed with his crew, threw his gear back on and hopped on a truck that headed into Lower Manhattan.
Kerri, a Nassau Community College freshman at the time, was told about the attacks by a professor. She was sent home, where she, her sister and mother huddled around the television. Bud, who worked with the Army Corp of Engineers in an office in the Federal Building in Lower Manhattan, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and eventually was able to contact his family and let them know he was safe. The focus then shifted to Michael.
Since he was based in Brooklyn, Kerri initially believed he would not be affected by the attacks. Soon, however, it became evident that every firefighter in the city was heading to the World Trade Center site. As the day went on and the magnitude of the devastation became clear, Kerri began to get a sinking feeling. “I went to bed that night sitting up in my bed,” she recalled. “When I woke up, I was wishing [that day] didn’t happen.”
Early in the morning of Sept. 12, firemen, still covered in soot, came to the Kiefers’ home and told them that Michael was missing, and most likely dead. “I felt like I lost all control,” Kerri said. “What I think made everything so hard was not only knowing that we lost my brother, but to see the pain that my parents experienced, and they still do to this day. That’s what’s hard.”
Confronting heartache
Fifteen years later, Kerri is able to appreciate the sacrifice her brother made — especially since he had always sought out danger. After the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, he and his best friend, Dominick Labianca, rode their bikes into Brooklyn and tried to hitch a ride on a fire truck into Lower Manhattan. They were told to go home. Michael never told his parents the story, but after he died, Labianca did.
After joining the Franklin Square/Munson Fire Department as an Explorer, a program for kids, Michael volunteered at the Malverne Fire Department when he turned 18 in 1992. After spending a little over a year there, he joined the Freeport department so he could go out on more calls, Labianca said. He ended up at the Hempstead F.D., where he stayed until he entered the FDNY in November 2000.
“He was always looking for fires,” said Labianca, who’s now a second assistant chief at Franklin Square/Munson. “Watching him in action, he had a natural way of [fighting fires], and he did absolutely so well.”
Landing at a firehouse in Crown Heights was a longtime dream of Michael’s, Labianca said, because he wanted to be where the action was.
The FDNY was his dream, Kerri said, and everything he did was in support of that. He was also a Long Beach lifeguard, and he trained extensively, ate healthy and avoided drugs and alcohol, and other teenage distractions. He even once called his mother and asked her to come and pick him up from a party because people were drinking there.
“It was all geared toward the fire department,” Bud said.
Growing up, Michael was worried that he wouldn’t qualify for the FDNY, either because of his stamina or his intelligence, but Bud always believed his son would not only make the cut, but excel once he got there.
“‘You’re so focused. You will make it, so don’t even worry about it,’” Bud recalled telling his son. And when Michael did, he added, “I was happy for him because I knew he was ecstatic. It was like he was walking on air that day.”
A brother’s legacy
For Labianca, the loss that he felt immediately after 9/11, with Kiefer gone, was difficult to deal with as he helped with the rescue effort. At first he thought he would be able to find his friend easily, but the magnitude of the devastation was more than he imagined.
“I was on a mission to find him,” Labianca recounted. “Once I got down [to ground zero] it became clear that this was a recovery, and not a rescue.”
What was most difficult for him was the senselessness of the atrocity. Firefighters routinely put themselves in dangerous situations, Labianca said, but perishing in a terrorist attack was not how he envisioned losing his friend. “This was just cold-blooded murder, and that’s what bothers all of us, because it shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“Every day goes by and I think about him,” he said of Kiefer. “I’m constantly reminded of him, and I like it that way, because I know he’s around. I carry on something that I know he truly believed in.”
For his service to the FDNY, Kiefer was posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor by President George W. Bush in 2002.
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