Dozens of firefighters and other first responders took part in a special 9/11 remembrance activity at Innovative Field in downtown Rochester on Sunday.
The annual 9-11 Memorial Stair Climb & Family Walk/Ride is organized through the National Firefighters Association.
It has been held at the local baseball stadium before, as way to honor the first responders who gave their lives in the rescue efforts of 22 years ago.
The activities include having participants climb stairs in the stadium to mark the distance covered by first responders in the 110 stories of the World Trade Center.
There was also a family walk on Sunday, and on Saturday a memorial bike ride based out of the West Webster Fire Dept. was held.
Jack Gligora, a volunteer with West Webster, is the coordinator for the stair climb, and said it’s important to keep the memories of those who lost their lives in 9/11, alive.
“All too often, the younger generation coming up, they learn about it in school. We have a lot of young kids here today,” said Gligora. “They learned about it in school, but they really don’t know what it’s about. So today, we’re going to give them an education.”
Gligora noted that each participant pays tribute to the fallen firefighters, police officers and EMS providers.
“Everybody that comes in, whether they’re walking the stairs, or walking the field, they get a firefighter ID that they clip on them. And why do they do that? That’s to remember that firefighter. We like to say they symbolically are finishing the journey that firefighter may have started out that day,” said Gligora.
Bill Ingram is a New York City firefighter who was a fire marshal when he responded to Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001.
He came to Sunday’s event in Rochester, and said that he often thinks of the friends he lost on that day.
"They are on your mind all the time, I lost friends since then,” said Ingram who added that, “911 related illnesses are still a part of what we're dealing with. We're here for the Fallen Firefighters Foundation, and one of the friends that I worked with for 19 years is going to be put on the wall in Colorado Springs next week, from a 911 related illness.”
The money raised on Sunday will help provide support to surviving families from 9/11 as well as other services available to firefighters.
Ingram said the types of remembrances like Sunday’s stair climb are important for many of the first responders, particularly those who were involved in the response to the attacks that happened 22 years ago.
“It is cathartic, it’s a mental health thing for those of us who were there, those of us who experienced it from wherever we were, everybody knows where they were, and now for the young people to understand what that was, just as we always tried to appreciate the generations before us and what they went through.”
