This patch from Fire Department of New York’’s Battalion 8, Engine 8, Ladder 2 Company was among the souvenirs La Verne firefighters brought back in November 2001 after going to New York to deliver $160,000 raised in their Fill The Boot campaign to help families of firefighter victims of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The local firemen also attended funerals and went to Ground Zero.LA VERNE >> They had planned to spend two hours at the city’s busiest intersection and then dash to the retirement luncheon for then-La Verne fire chief Bob Miller.
Driven by the feeling that all firefighters are “brothers” and the need to overcome helplessness by “doing something, no matter how small it might be,” Dave Bonanno and a few La Verne Fire Department peers began what they thought would be a simple and short “fill-the-boot” campaign for the families of New York firefighters killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Bonanno, now an engineer, was a firefighter/paramedic when he and the nation were shocked into what he calls “the harsh reality of a crime against America and humanity” and the significant loss of citizen, police and firefighters’ lives. He suggested they “fill the boot” for New York firefighters’ families.
He literally meant to fill a boot. It was placed at the intersection of D Street and Foothill Boulevard, where they solicited relief donations for grieving New York Fire Department families.
“We thought we’d get $1,000. In the first hour, we had collected $4,000,” Bonanno said.
Upon their return, battalion chief Ed Fenneman, now retired, urged, “Go back! Go back!” Everybody was out there, including Marty Lomeli who was city manager at the time.
“It seemed like money was falling from the sky, but it was really falling from people’s pockets and their hearts. People would drive to ATMs and bring back stacks of 20-dollar bills. Drivers were emptying ashtrays full of change into the boot. Children dropped coins in. We had a dozen 5-gallon buckets full of change,” Bonanno said.
By the time greater La Verne community had finished giving a week later, they’d raised $160,000.
A contingency of La Verne firefighters, including Feeneman and Bonanno — along with then-Councilman Patrick Gatti — flew at their own expense to New York in November 2001 to give the $160,000 check to FDNY Battalion 8, Engine 8, Ladder 2 Company. While there, they joined firefighters from around the world honoring their fallen comrades and serving as honor guards for New York firefighters’ funerals. They also visited ground zero. Current La Verne Fire Capt. Kevin Greenway was with the Vernon Fire Department in September 2001. He remembered coming back from a 5:30 a.m. emergency call and being astonished about America under attack.
“Everything was surreal. I was wondering why there weren’t many people on the street during the morning rush hour,” Greenway said. “Then the captain told us what had happened in New York City and Washington, D.C. at the Pentagon.”
Firefighters, like those in La Verne, moved into action to do what they could to support their FDNY family, Greenway said. Helping ranged from Bonanno’s “inspired fill-the-boot campaign” to staying on the West Coast to protect against another possible terrorist attack, he added.
La Verne firefighters said they felt a strange mixture of anger, sadness and pride, respectively, that the attack happened, sorrow at the loss of life and pride in the fact the first responders didn’t shrink from their duties, even if they had to make the ultimate sacrifice.
“It took Sept. 11, 2001, to remind us that we’re all one, we’re all brothers and sisters. We’re the human family,” Bonanno said.
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