By Nick Buglione
In July, the 38-year-old father of three, who has worked primarily in finance since graduating college, landed a new job as a mortgage broker with the Franklin First Financial Bank in Franklin Square.
Just one month later, O'Neil and Steve LaMantia, his best friend since early childhood, had the time of their lives reliving memories of the old days with fellow East Meadow High School graduates at the class of 1981 reunion.
"It was a great time, a lot of laughs," said O'Neil. "It was like stepping into a time warp. Everybody was in a great mood."
Then in September, terrorists struck New York City, and the course of O'Neil's life over the next few months was turned upside down.
With best friend LaMantia trapped somewhere beneath the debris of the Twin Towers, O'Neil quit his job and joined the rescue efforts at ground zero--a selfless act that recently earned him the New York State Senate Liberty Award, one of the state's highest bestowed honors.
The morning of Sept. 11 started much like any other for O'Neil, who was on his way to work when he heard news of the attacks. "I was listening to 1010 WINS, and I heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center," he said. "Right away, I thought it was a small plane or something, nothing big."
Eyewitness interviews and a loud explosion audible over the radio confirmed O'Neil's fear that the situation was far worse than initially expected. His thoughts immediately turned to LaMantia, a 38-year-old employee of Cantor Fitzgerald who worked high atop the World Trade Center.
"I immediately went in to work and tried to call Steve at his job," said O'Neil. "Nobody answered the phone. Then I called his wife, and she hadn't heard from him."
Like so many others who had loved ones in the towers at the time of the terrorist attack, O'Neil hoped his friend was somehow fortunate to have escaped the towers. Perhaps he was late for work, or maybe he had stepped out of the office to run an errand.
Yet, the Twin Towers, with thousands still inside, eventually crumbled to the ground, and the day wore on with no word from LaMantia.
O'Neil and LaMantia shared a friendship that many people never experience. The two grew up just a stone's throw away from each other in East Meadow, LaMantia on Third Avenue and O'Neil in a Park Avenue house his parents bought just after World War II. While O'Neil still resides in that same home, LaMantia eventually moved to Connecticut, where he settled with his wife, Kim, and children, Craig and Emily.
The two met while in kindergarten about three decades ago and eventually became inseparable through their years of schooling together.
"We got our first scrapped knees together, we played lacrosse together, we started dating girls together, we got our first cars together," O'Neil said. "I don't think we ever had an argument. We used to laugh so hard we would cry at some of the stuff we used to do."
Often when childhood friends grow older, they drift apart, but not these two. Remaining close into their adult years, LaMantia was O'Neil's best man at his wedding.
Not knowing if his closest friend was still alive made Sept. 11 an understandably rough day for O'Neil, and an even rougher night. "I couldn't sleep. The next day, I thought, 'I have to do something.' I couldn't just sit there. I know Steve would do the same for me. So I got motivated, and I went in."
Managing to pass through the myriad of police checkpoints set up in the wake of the attack, O'Neil made his way down to ground zero and joined the hundreds of volunteers already working on the rescue operations.
"I didn't know how bad it was going to be. I don't think anybody really realizes it until you're down there and you're actually looking around," he said. "There were fires still burning. There was nothing there. It was just complete devastation. Just steel and dust."
Somewhere under that massive pile of rubble was LaMantia, and O'Neil figured he only had a week or so to get to him before it was too late. "I was hoping he was in an alcove somewhere," he said. "I couldn't focus on my job. I was more concerned with finding him and getting him out."
During his first week working at the scene, O'Neil kept in contact with the people at his Franklin Square job. "They said, 'You've got to do what you've got to do.' Based on what happened, they were understanding," O'Neil said. "But after about a week of being down there, I realized I wasn't going to be able to go back."
Quitting his job at the bank, O'Neil focused fully on the rescue efforts -- putting in 12-hour days, seven days a week for more than two months. He mainly worked on a human assembly line, removing debris from the site piece by piece.
"His feet had blisters on blisters and just huge chunks of skin missing," said Lisa, O'Neil's wife. "I wouldn't have been able to walk if that was me. I don't know how he just got up and put on his boots again the next morning.
"I didn't talk to him at all. He'd come home, and I'd ask him how it was, and he wouldn't want to talk about it. The phone didn't stop ringing because everybody was calling in to see if he found anything."
Unfortunately, neither O'Neil nor any other rescue worker found LaMantia. "When I was about two weeks into it, that's when all hope of bringing him out alive left, and then it became a recovery and cleanup operation," said O'Neil, who remained at the site working for the next two months. He took only one day off to attend his friend's memorial service.
Just before Thanksgiving, the city requested that many of the volunteers return home and resume their normal lives. Yet, for O'Neil, returning to normalcy was not an easy task. Now unemployed and with the country mired in a considerable economic slump, he started looking for a job in November but had difficulty finding one.
"I was out of work from November to January," he said, though he eventually obtained a position at Merrill Lynch for about a month before getting his current job at the Atlantic Bank on Wall Street. Ironically, he now works just blocks away from the site where he intensively labored for weeks in search of his friend.
After receiving a letter from LaMantia's sister on O'Neil's efforts, Sen. Kemp Hannon (R-Garden City) bestowed upon him the New York State Senate Liberty Award, one of the state's highest commendations, at an April ceremony.
"It was imperative that we honor those who, during the terrorist attack and its aftermath, acted on their own to help others," said Hannon. "[His] example challenges us all to give ourselves for the common good and provides us with role models to emulate."
Created a few years ago, the Liberty Medal honors those individuals who have merited special praise for exceptional humanitarian or heroic acts.
Despite receiving the award, O'Neil does not consider himself a hero. "The heroes to me were the guys who ran into the buildings," he said. "I don't feel like a hero at all."
