In memory of

Robert A. Ford

1961 2009
The Years AfterOctober 29, 2009

Died of it afterward.

United States of America

Their life

Born in Brooklyn on May 12, 1961, to Robert and Joan, Robert A. Ford was raised on Staten Island with his sister, Eileen. He settled down in Grant City with his beloved wife, Karen. He went to the Academy of St. Dorothy and Tottenville High School. He was a parishioner at St. Christopher’s Church. He earned a degree from DeVry Technical Institute. Bob was an athletic, outgoing child who loved playing baseball, football, and being with friends. He loved spending summers in the Hamptons, especially clamming trips with family. He worked at the Statue of Liberty and Dictaphone. In 1990, he was called to the FDNY, where he found a home with Engine 284/Ladder 149, lovingly known as “The Castle on the Hill.” His fellow firemen became his brothers, and the Fords still cherish those bonds. Bob and Karen were married for over 20 years. Inseparable from the day they met, they filled their life with love, laughter, adventure, and joy. Some of their fondest memories include summers at the shore, skiing, and sports games. Bob was a proud father to his children, Kayla, Tara, and Robert. He volunteered in the community and with their softball, baseball, and basketball teams, showing up with heart. Bob loved taking his kids to the movies, the beach, fishing, biking, and visiting the firehouse. One of their fondest memories was summers with friends at the Jersey Shore. He was a proud, goofy, loving husband and father. “Dad” was his favorite role. Bob could often be found driving his convertible, joyriding his motorcycle, or at a Jets or Yankees game. He enjoyed golf outings, softball with his firehouse, mountain biking, and fishing. Bob loved being a firefighter. He took pride in serving the city he loved. On September 11, 2001, he responded to the World Trade Center attacks and served in the rescue and recovery efforts for months. In 2007, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a direct result of his service at Ground Zero. After a long, courageous battle, Bob passed away on October 29, 2009, at home, surrounded by family.

Even in sickness, Bob never lost his joyful spirit. He made everyone around him laugh and smile until the end. If you ask anyone who knew him, they’ll tell you, “Bob was the best person I ever met.” If you were lucky enough to know him, hopefully you still hear his laughter or feel the love he offered. Bob was a devoted husband, father, son, brother, uncle, and friend. He left behind a legacy of love and honor. He lived each day fully and never took a moment for granted. The world would be a kinder place if we all chose to live a little more like Bob Ford.

How they died

Firefighter of the Fire Department of the City of New York, who died of an illness from the rescue and recovery at the World Trade Center. The department added the name to its World Trade Center Memorial Wall at the ceremony of 08 September 2011. He died on 29 October 2009, aged 48.

The Years After

September 11, 2001

For eight months after the towers came down, men and women worked the site. Firefighters, police, paramedics, iron workers, truck drivers, cleaners, volunteers. They breathed what was in that air, and many of them have died of it since - cancers, lung disease, illnesses that took ten years or twenty to arrive.

More people have now died of September 11th than were killed on September 11th. They are not a footnote to the day. They are the day, arriving late.

A man who walked down eighty flights and out into the street, and who died of a cancer in 2031, was killed by the same attack as the man who never got out. This gate holds them together, because the same morning took them both.

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September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001

On a clear Tuesday morning, four airliners were taken. Two were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one into the western face of the Pentagon, and one came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers and crew went forward at the cockpit door.

Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven people were killed. Three hundred and forty-three were firefighters of the New York City Fire Department. Seventy-one were law enforcement officers. Eight were paramedics and emergency medical technicians. One hundred and twenty-five died at the Pentagon, military and civilian together. The rest - some two thousand four hundred of them - had gone to work, or boarded a plane, and belonged to no service at all.

None of them began that morning as heroes. A great many of them ended it as heroes: men and women who carried strangers down stairwells, who stayed with people who could not walk, who held a door, who went back up. Four men on a flight over Pennsylvania, who had thirty minutes of telephone calls and knew what had already happened, decided where their aircraft would come down.

At Arlington, the nation set aside its own rules of eligibility and buried the Pentagon's civilian dead in national ground. It had decided that on this day the distinction did not apply.

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Media

Portrait of Robert A. Ford
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