By Brian Zanzonico
Firefighter Michael Kiefer, who grew up on Pine Street in Franklin Square, was 25 when he answered his last call. At the Brooklyn firehouse, his locker remains untouched, just as he left it before hopping aboard a rig headed to lower Manhattan.
"It's comforting to be with people who went through the same thing as you," Kerri Kiefer said.
The family went to the Prospect Heights firehouse on the first three anniversaries of Sept. 11, but ventured to ground zero last year, where Kerri's sister, Lauren, read Michael's name along with others'. This year, they brought back what has become a tradition. The firehouse visit affords the Kiefers an opportunity they seldom get with family members and friends -- an invitation to grieve.
Kerri said that many of the people who were in her family's life before and in the months after 9/11 are out of their lives. "Some people close to you just don't want to hear that you're still grieving," she said. "They don't want to hear it."
Kerri said her family always believed her brother was put on Earth to be a fireman. During his grade-school days at St. Catherine of Sienna in Franklin Square, Michael would stage fake fire scenes outside their home and appoint his sisters probationary firefighters.
When he was old enough, Michael bought a police scanner and responded to fire calls on his bike. He was taken home several times by police officers who saw him headed to fires in tough neighborhoods. As a teen, he joined several local junior firefighter programs and dreamed of fighting fires in the city.
After graduating from St. Mary's High School in Manhasset in 1994, Michael joined the fire cadet program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. College helped him get a job as an NYPD paramedic, but he still had aspirations of rushing into burning buildings. Less than two years later, he took the firefighters exam and, in 2000, became a probationary firefighter in Engine Co. 280/Ladder Co. 132.
His loss has created a void Kerri said the Kiefers will never be able to fill. Even as TV specials about 9/11 aired nearly every night in the weeks leading up to the anniversary, Kerri forced herself to watch, with the hope that she would catch one last glimpse of her brother before his death. Even when she went with her sister to see Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," she found herself straining to see Michael's face. Even though the film was just a re-creation, force of habit led her to look for him through the sea of actors playing firefighters. She said he was last seen in the south tower before it crumbled.
"We're so lost. I've lost my brother and parents, in a sense," she said. "We're not the same people."
As time goes by, and the nation becomes further removed from the tragedy, its collective sorrow, anger and fear will diminish. Kerri says it already has. And even if those close to the Kiefers may have turned their backs on them, she said, they'll always have the firehouse in Brooklyn.
"I know it's been made a big deal this year because it's five years," she said. "But whether it's five, six, seven or 12, it's still painful. As time goes on, it gets worse and worse."
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