Long Beach remembers the fallen

“I went to ground zero for the very first time two weeks ago, and when I went into the temporary museum, it was as if it happened yesterday,” said Noreen Costello, who lost her brother, 44-year-old former Long Beach resident Patrick O’Keefe, on Sept. 11, 2001. O’Keefe, a firefighter with the New York City Fire Department’s Rescue Company One and the father of two, died in the collapse of the World Trade Center’s north tower.

“The only thing that I feel now is that I really, strongly hope that people don’t forget this incident, [and] that it could happen again,” Costello said.

She launched a nonprofit organization, the O’Keefe Foundation Inc., in her brother’s memory. It awards scholarships to high school students who have lost a parent to a tragedy or to immigrant students starting over in the U.S.

The O’Keefe Foundation hosted its annual Spirit Rider Regatta and Brotherhood Walk in Long Beach last Saturday, along with a memorial service and paddle-out in Atlantic Beach on Sunday. Members of the military, fire departments and police departments turned out for the memorial mass. The crowd included U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen, U.S. Military Academy Cadets as well as Marines.

After the mass, Costello said, more than 200 people took part in the paddle-out to sea, including residents of Long Beach and neighboring communities, firefighters and police officers. “We did these things because [Patrick] was an avid sailor and surfer, and we just decided to do things that he loved to do, in his memory,” she said. “Not that everybody wants to keep old wounds open, but the reason that you try and keep the memory alive is so that it never happens again.”