Dying Hero's Plea:
Pass 9/11 Bill >>
NY Daily News
11/19/09
It’s
time for Congress
finally to make sure
the sick and dying
heroes who answered
the call are given
the help leaders
promised them in the
days after the
worst-ever terrorist
attack on America,
the 48-year-old
ex-firefighter hoped
to say.
He couldn’t make it
from New York to the
rally in Washington.
He’s dying himself.
“I was a 46-year-old
firefighter, working
at my job in April
2006,” said the
husband and father
of two teenage boys
and a 9-year-old
daughter.
His doctor thought
he had gallstones,
but it was
pancreatic cancer, a
deadly illness more
common in older men.
The fire department
eventually agreed
the cancer was from
9/11, and he
retired.
He beat it once.
Then came the
relapse last
November — and more
treatments.
His doctor can’t do
any more.
“They just
determined last week
it wasn’t working.
As of right now, I’m
not on anything. At
this point, I’m just
seeking second
opinions,” Ryan
said.
He doesn’t want to
ask how much time he
has left.
“I don’t believe in
deadlines,” he said.
But he wanted to do
what he could to
push Congress to
pass an $8 billion
measure
named
after another of
Sept. 11’s growing
number of fallen,
NYPD Officer James
Zadroga
It would reopen the
Sept. 11 victims’
compensation fund
and provide for the
families of the ill
and dying.
So Tuesday night he
packed some gear in
the car of his
friend and fellow
firefighter, Keith
Palumbo, and went to
the Engine Co.
320/Ladder 167
firehouse in
Flushing for a party
that Palumbo
arranged so Ryan’s
department brothers
could see him again
before it was too
late.
“It was
overwhelming,” Ryan
said.
But he got violently
ill, and it was
obvious to his
friends that Ryan,
who’s lost 50 pounds
to his illness,
couldn’t make the
trip to Washington.
“Keith, he took my
bag out of his car
and he said, ‘You’re
not going.’ He said,
‘You can’t, you’re
not physically able
to,’” Ryan recalled.
It’s almost the way
he felt about the
months he spent
digging through the
voids in the
wreckage of the twin
towers, searching
for the fallen.
He tried to explain
it to his wife,
Magda, when she
asked why he wanted
to swim in that
toxic devastation
for so long.
“I told her I don’t.
It’s the last place
in the world I want
to be, but right
now, and it’s kind
of hard to put it in
words, but right now
it’s the only place
in the world I want
be,” Ryan
remembered.
There was no
internal conflict
about going to
Washington
Wednesday, except
that he couldn’t.
“I felt horrible
because it’s not
only about me,” he
said. “It’s about
all the guys who are
going to come after
me, and there’s
going to be plenty
of them. … I don’t
think you’ve even
seen the tip of the
iceberg yet.”
The Zadroga Act is
sitting in Congress,
held hostage by the
health care reform
debate. The House
version is all but
ready to go. The
Senate’s has yet to
be discussed in a
committee hearing.
Palumbo and others
carried the message
for Ryan, visiting
lawmakers in their
black turnout
coats.He hopes
legislators heard
it.
“We’ve got eight
guys in the
firehouse who have
cancer,” Palumbo
said after walking
the halls of
Congress, knocking
on doors.
“Hopefully, we
prodded them with
our tale.”
