By JOSEPH KELLARD
Last September, Paul Grossman, a 20-year FDNY volunteer EMT-firefighter, e-mailed Feal seeking a link to the Web site of his organization, Fealgood Foundation, which assists 9/11 first responders who suffer medical problems related to their search-and-rescue efforts at ground zero.
Grossman told Feal that he would have been at ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001, if he hadn¹t been on dialysis and on a kidney recipient list. Feal replied that if Grossman needed a kidney, he¹d give him one of his own.
³He thought I was kidding,² Feal recalled about their e-mail exchange, a printed version of which now hangs on his refrigerator. ³After three or four days of convincing the man that this wasn¹t a cruel joke, we went to New York Presbyterian Hospital to see if we were a match, and we were compatible.²
Feal told this tale on Sept. 5 at another hospital, South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, following a pin ceremony that honored him and several other fellow 9/11 first responders ‹ firefighters, police officers, EMTs and even a demolition supervisor like himself ‹ who risked their lives after the terrorist attacks that left the World Trade Center in smoldering ruins six Septembers ago.
Feal was recovering from an operation less than a week earlier in which his kidney had been removed. After having his name called and walking through the hospital¹s lobby atrium to accept his pin, Feal stepped gingerly, due to what he described as perhaps the worst pain he had ever experienced. This from a man who walks with a limp after a multi-ton steel beam crushed his left foot at ground zero and left him in a hospital bed for 11 weeks, suffering with gangrene before half of his foot was amputated.
³Why wouldn¹t I?² Feal, 40, said matter-of-factly about donating his kidney, as if he were parting with, say, a favorite dress shirt. ³I¹m giving the gift of life. I¹ve never won Lotto; I don¹t know that feeling. But this feeling is pretty good.
³I¹d do it again,² Feal continued. ³If my body was like a Pez machine for kidneys, I¹d be popping them out.²
Feal was one of a few pin recipients who addressed the crowd at the ceremony, which drew mostly fellow first responders and their families. Among the speakers ‹ including state Sen. Charles Fuschillo, SNCH President Joseph Quagliata and Freeport firefighter Ray Maguire ‹ who thanked them all for their search-and-rescue efforts was a survivor of the attacks. Mark Goldberg was working on the south tower¹s 22nd floor for First Montauk Securities that morning. Last Wednesday, Goldberg stood in SNCH¹s atrium ‹ whose walls are adorned with memorabilia such as a 9/11 construction worker¹s jacket and paintings of nature scenes by children whose parents were killed that day ‹ and recounted how he and other WTC employees filed down a stairwell in terror.
³People were depending on each other to make it down,² Goldberg said. ³And on the left side, coming up the stairs, were people like you, emergency personnel.
³Saying thank you doesn¹t come close to the words that need to be expressed from the bottom of my heart,² Goldberg said.
One first responder, Scott Belten of Franklin Square, has always declined invitations to ceremonies that honor 9/11 workers ‹ except those hosted by Home Ground, a free counseling and outreach program for 9/11 first responders and their families, which hosted the ceremony at SNCH. ³I don¹t do ceremonies because it¹s sort of something I want to put behind me, and also I felt that people were honoring me for doing my job,² Belten said.
But he attends the Home Ground ceremonies because without the program, he said, he would be unable to function as well as he does today. Established with a federal grant in 2002 and sustained through the American Red Cross, South Nassau and private donations, Home Ground has worked with nearly 4,000 WTC rescue and recovery workers and their families.
³Going to Home Ground was the first step on this long road to healing,² Belten said.
A paramedic with Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, Belten and other EMTs used the neighboring Marriott as a shortcut to the south tower on Sept. 11 to avoid its raining debris. Seconds after a piece of debris hit Belten¹s hand, the tower came down on top of the hotel. Belten escaped, and helped assist others who were injured, but the injury he sustained proved serious.
Since 9/11, Belten has had multiple operations and has lost most of his fine motor skills, making it nearly impossible for him to tie his shoes, write or type, and he also has trouble breathing. ³Some days I can¹t function at all,² he said about his degenerative condition.
When he walked up with his wife and children to accept his pin, he said later, he had to hold back tears. ³It was a great experience,² he said. ³It¹s very moving, and I¹m humbled by it and that people still thank me after all this time.²
Alan Beach of Lynbrook, a retired FDNY lieutenant who spent 20 years fighting fires, awarded the ceremonial pins to each of the dozens of his fellow 9/11 first responders. Beach recalled the ³total chaos² at the WTC, to which he tried to bring some order by commanding a staging area.
Unlike Belten, however, Beach attends 9/11-related ceremonies whenever he can, he said. ³The situation is that, I feel, this country is starting to forget,² he said. ³It¹s like everything else after a while, and time mostly heals wounds. But this is a wound that shouldn¹t be healed because of a lot of the things that happened that day.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
