9/11: No, they’ll never forget

It never gets easier for John LaBarbera to hear his fellow firefighters’ transmissions from 9/11.

They were friends, he said, and most didn’t make it out alive.

A battalion chief with the New York City Fire Department, he travels the country with the 9/11 Never Forget Mobile Exhibit, which stopped at the Kansas Star Casino over the holiday weekend.

The line to go through the exhibit went through the door on Monday.

“It’s very, very powerful,” LaBarbera said Monday. “There are pieces of trucks where I had friends, and to look at the big photo of the 343 firefighters who made the sacrifice. We can’t have guys go on consecutively. They need a break because it’s just too emotional.”

The free exhibit is a project of the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a nonprofit founded in honor of Stephen Siller, a firefighter killed in the wreckage of the Twin Towers on that day.

There are dust-coated uniforms, pieces of shrapnel from the World Trade Center and other artifacts from 9/11 on display.

About 70 FDNY firefighters who were there that day travel across the country with the exhibit to tell their stories.

“Most of the guys are retirees, but again, they were there and they do bring an interesting perspective,” said LaBarbera, who will have been an FDNY firefighter for 38 years this September.

LaBarbera was not on duty when the towers were hit; he was working in Brooklyn at a gym, he said.

“When the second plane hit, I knew it was no accident,” LaBarbera said. “I jumped in my car and got to the (World) Trade Center, and the towers were already down. I assisted in the rescue effort.”

The foundation sponsoring the exhibit is named after a man who also was technically not on duty when the towers were hit.

Siller had just gotten off duty when the news broke. He went immediately back to the station to grab his gear and drove to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which was closed.

Siller ran through the roughly 2-mile tunnel and to the site of the Twin Towers, where he was killed in the rescue efforts.

The foundation, which has a four-star rating from Charity Navigator, every year hosts a run that follows Siller’s path through the tunnel.

The mobile exhibit exists entirely in a semitrailer truck that folds out into a 1,000-square-foot walk-through gallery.

LaBarbera said it’s intended to educate people who may never get a chance to travel to New York.

“We also felt that schoolchildren need to know what happened that day,” he said. “That’s basically why we’re getting out to all the different states – state fairs, air shows and places like this great casino to tell people what happened.”

The exhibit had a profound effect on a Sedgwick County firefighter who walked through it on Saturday. He refused to be interviewed, saying he could not put what he was feeling into words.

LaBarbera said it has that effect on many people, even when they do not have any direct connection with 9/11.

“We think it’s very important people never forget, especially on our 15th anniversary,” he said.

To learn more about the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, including its project to provide smarthomes to severely injured veterans, visit www.tunnels2towers.org.

This story was originally published July 4, 2016 at 5:18 PM with the headline "9/11: No, they’ll never forget."