When the North Tower collapsed on 9/11, Thomas Gambino III had a hunch that his father, Thomas Gambino II, an FDNY firefighter, had been killed.
At his father's funeral, he knew what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
Gambino, who was 20 years old at the time, is one of more than 75 sons and daughters of 343 New York City Fire Department members who died on 9/11 or later died from Ground Zero-related illnesses who became firefighters or medical personnel.
“I was actually supposed to go surfing with some friends, but for some reason it got late and I couldn't get up that morning,” Gambino III, 43, told The Post.
“I heard the phone ringing in my kitchen. I was still living at home. And the phone kept ringing. I thought, 'OK, time to get up.'”
It was a call from a friend telling me to turn on the TV.
“When the buildings collapsed, when the South Tower collapsed first, it was just heartbreaking,” Gambino III said. “Not just the sheer magnitude of it all. I immediately had a strong suspicion that my father had been there.”
Later that night, the family received confirmation that their father, who worked with Rescue 3 in the Bronx, was “in the mountains somewhere below the North Tower.”
He had been considering attending undergraduate school for years but never fully decided, instead joining a band and completing a two-year degree at Suffolk County Community College.
“The real defining moment was when I arrived at the funeral,” Gambino III said, “I heard the bagpipes and saw the men lined up and it hit me.
“I was in deep grief and overwhelmed with pain, but at that point, I decided I was going to do this,” added Gambino III, who has been with the FDNY since 2004 and works out of Ladder 126 in Jamaica/South Ozone Park, Queens.
The NYPD lost 23 officers in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but Detective Jillian Suarez is known for being one of six who followed in their parents' footsteps in the police force.
Her father, 45-year-old NYPD transit officer Roman Suarez, who rescued two people, an asthma patient and a woman who was seven months pregnant, from the North Tower before being killed in the terrorist attack, was posthumously awarded the NYPD Medal of Honor.
Her father's death “made Jillian want to go into law enforcement and wear the badge in her father's honor,” her mother, Carmen Suarez, recalled.
Jillian joined the NYPD in 2018 and now works as a detective in the department's Crime Scene Unit serving five boroughs, her mother said.
“I'm really proud of her,” Carmen said. “Of course it's scary. There's a lot of danger in the police force. Sadly, some people forget that police are more than just people wearing blue uniforms. Behind the uniform are people just like you and me.”
Brothers Joe and James Vigiano followed in the footsteps of their father, NYPD Detective Joseph Vigiano Sr., and their mother as New York City police officers.
James was six years old when his father was killed on September 11 while trying to rescue victims as part of the police's Emergency Services Unit Two.
Her son, now 29, remembers seeing teachers crying in the hallways as a student at school and then being escorted into the cafeteria, where he met his brother and the children of police officers and firefighters.
James said in a video produced by the NYPD that it was later that day that his mother, Cathy Villano, a now-retired police officer, told him and his son Joe that their father would not be coming home.
“Honestly, ever since I could talk, I wanted to be a police officer,” he said. “I had two dreams: I wanted to be a Marine and I wanted to be a police officer, and I achieved both.”
James currently works at the 75th Precinct in East New York, the same precinct his mother once worked at, while Joe, now 31, is a member of the NYPD's 7th Emergency Services Squad in Brooklyn.
A third son, John Vigiano, a U.S. Marine stationed in Hawaii, also plans to become a police officer, his mother told The Washington Post, though it's unclear whether he'll join Gotham as a police officer.
“He's been going back and forth,” Cathy said, explaining that he plans to join either the NYPD or the Suffolk County Police Department.
“The kids were so young, we never really talked about what they were going to do when they grew up,” she said, “but I think he would be so proud.”
