Man keeps brother's spirit alive by becoming firefighter

It's been two years, but when Jeff Taormina sees something funny on TV he still thinks of calling his older brother to share the joke.

"I know he's there, but he's not," the 36-year-old firefighter said Tuesday. "You know how amputees say after they lose their arm or whatever they can still feel it? It's like that. I feel him."

Dennis Taormina Jr., an East Rutherford native, then 36, was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. The oldest of four sons, husband, father of two girls and a firefighter. He was in the North Tower. Two years after the attack, Jeff Taormina is one of thousands of people whose lives have forever been changed by both the death of a loved one and the way he reordered his life to reflect the loss.

Dennis Taormina was one more than 3,000 people killed two years ago today when terrorists slammed hijacked planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field outside Pittsburgh, Pa. It was the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.

At 9:59 a.m., as thousands of people attempted to flee the burning skyscrapers, and as millions watched on television, the 110-story symbols of American financial power began to crumble. First the South Tower collapsed floor by floor, folding in on itself. Half an hour later the North Tower came down the same way, in a plume of smoke and soot.

On the ground, tens of thousands fled Lower Manhattan, as debris fell around them and monstrous clouds of dust |obscured the sky. Crowds were evacuated by ferry to Liberty State Park and Hoboken. Bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were sealed. All civilian airplanes were grounded.

Cell phones stopped working. Landline circuits were overwhelmed, as frantic relatives tried to reach family.

People came out of their homes and offices to stand in the streets, seemingly hungry for human contact. Houses of worship around the world opened their doors for impromptu services.

In London, Paris, Tehran and Istanbul- and in villages across the planet- people kept vigil at American embassies or simply lit candles in their public squares to express sympathy and solidarity with Americans.

In the following hours and days, as families papered the city in missing persons' posters, armies of volunteers, many of them union members, descended on the disaster site.

Within days, they reluctantly admitted the work being done in the 16-acre wound in the financial district was recovery, not rescue, and hope for survivors waned.

In the aftermath of the attacks, many reordered their lives, pledging to make a contribution to the public good or to honor the dead.

On Nov. 1, 2001, Jeff Taormina submitted his application to East Rutherford's fire department. It's something his brother had been asking him to do for 16 years.

"The only regret I have is that I didn't do this when I was 18," Taormina said, explaining that he had always waved his brother off, saying he was too busy with his rock band.

In the dark weeks after his brother's death, Taormina, his father and two younger brothers found solace at the Herman Street firehouse where Dennis and the others worked. When his grief subsided enough that he could think, Jeff knew he had to sign up, too. He wanted to honor his brother and he wanted to repay the firefighters who extended their friendship to him.

"When you write your article, make sure you put it in that when this first happened, when they invited me in, they kept me sane for the first year," he said Tuesday night, as other firefighters teased him about posing for a photograph.

For the next six months, Jeff Taormina trained to be a firefighter. The busy schedule of classes kept his grief at bay.

Before he could jump into his fire gear, Jeff Taormina realized he had a problem. His long hair, which fell halfway down his back, was not regulation.

He went home that night and asked his wife Christine to cut it all off, even though he'd had it since high school. His close-cropped hair is another constant reminder of Dennis, he said.

"Every time I see myself in the mirror I think of him. I've got to think of him, he changed my life so much," he said.

Now Jeff Taormina jumps into fire gear and boards the fire truck Dennis rode. Dennis' picture is taped to the dashboard so he can still respond to every call.
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