Artifacts pulled from the rubble of 9/11 become symbols of what was lost
Items left by victims of the attacks and those who tried to help them tell stories of bravery, loss, and perseverance.
Long Island resident Joe Hunter earned a business degree from Hofstra University, but he’d known since childhood that firefighting was what he really wanted to do. A television news video from the morning of 9/11 shows Hunter and other FDNY Squad 288 members, sober-faced and laden with gear, heading to the World Trade Center’s south tower to join the evacuation effort. When the tower collapsed, Hunter and his squad mates perished. Hunter’s helmet was found in the wreckage several months later.
Courtesy Bridget Hunter and Family
ByPatricia Edmonds
Photographs ByHenry Leutwyler
ARTIFACTS FROM THE 9/11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM
Published August 16, 2021
• 8 min read
What forces can sanctify an object, giving it meaning beyond itself? Selflessness. Courage. Endurance in the face of the unspeakable. The forces that Joe Hunter and hundreds of other people summoned on September 11, 2001.
Joe Hunter’s dreams rode on fire engines. At age four, he’d pedal his Big Wheel to the corner as the red trucks passed. At 11, he’d run fire rescue drills with a ladder and a garden hose, and if his pals didn’t take it seriously, he sent them home: “OK, you—out!”
He started as a volunteer fireman, graduated from the New York City Fire Department academy, took rescue training for terrorist attacks and building collapses. When his mother, Bridget, worried, he’d tell her, “If anything ever happens, just know I loved the job.”
Eighteen days shy of his 32nd birthday, Firefighter Joseph Gerard Hunter of FDNY Squad 288 died helping evacuate the World Trade Center’s south tower. He was one of 2,977 people killed on 9/11 when al Qaeda hijackers used passenger jets as weapons in the deadliest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil.
In February 2002, searchers at ground zero recovered a Squad 288 helmet bearing Hunter’s badge number. “Of course, it’s mangled,” says Hunter’s sister, Teresa Hunter Labo. But the family is grateful it was found because “it’s the only thing we have of him that was down there, that was with him.”
In the two decades since 9/11, memorials have been built at the crash sites in New York City, at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in a field in Pennsylvania. Artifacts in each place reflect the particulars of each tragedy: When United Flight 93 crew and passengers tried to retake the plane, hijackers flew it into the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at more than 560 miles an hour. Other than one section of fuselage and two crumpled engine parts, most of what remained was in small pieces.
At the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York, more than 70,000 objects help tell the stories of victims, responders, and survivors. Artifacts are as small as a sapphire-and-diamond ring and as massive as a half-crushed fire engine. Many are utterly common: a food container lid, perhaps from a lunch packed on what started like any other Tuesday. But some common items’ poignance is in the details: The unfinished knitting, still on the needles, was the hobby of an executive at Cantor Fitzgerald—a company that lost 658 employees in the north tower.
In Joe Hunter’s memory, his family has donated his helmet to the museum: “It belongs there,” his sister says. It’s preserved with the other artifacts, common but uncommon, in silent witness to history.
Sacred Dust
When he learned of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, New Jersey volunteer EMT Greg Gully grabbed some supplies and made his way to the twin towers. He handed out dust masks to evacuees, provided medical assistance, and for the next four days helped search through the rubble. After Gully finally returned home, he put his pants on a hanger with the dust still clinging to them, and he attached a handwritten note: “Pants worn on 9-11-01 at the WTC. Please DO NOT WASH. The ash is the remains of those that died. God Bless Them!”
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Witnessing the destruction inspired Gully and others to make their own “individual memorials,” says Chief Curator Jan Seidler Ramirez of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. When Gully donated his pants to the museum in 2012, he attached a singed shipping invoice that he’d snatched out of the blizzard of paper in the air and tucked in his pocket. It came from Marsh & McLennan, an insurance company that took a direct hit from the plane that slammed into the north tower. The firm lost more than 350 people.
Gift of Greg Gully, EMT
Buried Alive
Port Authority Police Sgt. John McLoughlin and four officers were taking rescue gear to the twin towers when the south one collapsed, burying them. A half hour later, the north tower fell. Under 30 feet of rubble, two of them survived: 21-year veteran McLoughlin and rookie William Jimeno. Before then, neither knew the other’s first name. Pinned some 15 feet apart, they shared family stories and urged each other to hold on. As night fell, they heard voices and shouted until rescuers found them. Jimeno was trapped for 13 hours; McLoughlin, buried deeper, for 22 hours. Only one other person was found alive in the wreckage after them. McLoughlin came out of the ordeal still wearing his sergeant’s shield—a prized possession, now framed—and these boots.
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J.J. McLoughlin says his father almost tossed out the boots, whose soles had dry-rotted years ago. Instead, the family gave them to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. John McLoughlin was in a medically induced coma for six weeks, had more than 30 operations, spent months hospitalized, and still has health issues. Now 68 and retired since 2004, he volunteers with the Boy Scouts.
Gift of John McLoughlin
Many of the recovered objects were distorted by force and fire. Investigators identified this fragment as a Boeing 767 aircraft wing-flap support, most likely from the jet that hit the south tower. It was wedged in a crevice between two buildings several blocks north of ground zero and wasn’t found until 12 years after the attacks.
Many of the recovered objects were distorted by force and fire. Investigators identified this fragment as a Boeing 767 aircraft wing-flap support, most likely from the jet that hit the south tower. It was wedged in a crevice between two buildings several blocks north of ground zero and wasn’t found until 12 years after the attacks.
WITH PERMISSION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK AND THE NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DEVOTION TO DUTY
Rosemary Smith walked down 57 floors in a dark, smoke-filled stairwell to escape the north tower—in 1993, after terrorists set off a bomb at the World Trade Center. Though she had fears about working in the building after that attack, Smith loved being a phone operator at law firm Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, so she went back to work at the same offices. On 9/11, as her co-workers began evacuating, Smith stayed to forward calls to the answering machine—and didn’t make it out in time. She was the only employee of the firm to die in the attacks. Smith’s watch was found with her remains, on Christmas Eve, 2001.
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On February 26, 1993, Smith was among tens of thousands of evacuees from World Trade Center buildings after a bomb in an underground parking garage blasted a hole 130 feet by 150 feet and several stories deep. To celebrate her survival and boost her courage as she returned to work in the north tower, Smith bought herself a present: a gold ring set with sapphires and diamonds. It also was found in the 9/11 wreckage. Her watch, encrusted with dust and missing its crystal, stopped seconds before one o’clock.
Courtesy Rosemary Kempton
Vow To Live
Joanne Capestro can’t forget what she saw after the plane hit the north tower above her 87th-floor office: People with no escape route, jumping to their death. Grim-faced firefighters climbing up as evacuees poured down the stairs. Her friend, Harry Ramos, delaying his own escape to help a sick man. Ramos didn’t get out; Capestro did, just as the south tower was collapsing. Once the dust settled, photographer Phil Penman took what became an iconic 9/11 picture: Capestro and a co-worker huddled close, dust caked and dazed. For months, PTSD paralyzed Capestro. Then, with small steps, she began to reclaim her life. When a bag from her office was found at ground zero, the items returned to Capestro included a damaged photo of her nephews.
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For Capestro—JOJO to friends—seizing her “second chance in life” is a work in progress. Once afraid to return to an office, she’s now an executive assistant to a CEO. Once guilt ridden that she was alive while many parents had died, she’s embraced the kids and grandkids of the man she married in 2018. Penman took the photos at their wedding.
Gift of Joanne “JoJo” Capestro in memory of Harry Ramos
Tune in for National Geographic’s 5-part limited series 9/11: One Day in America streaming now on Hulu.
Patricia Edmonds, senior director for short-form content, oversees the magazine’s EXPLORE section. Henry Leutwyler is a Swiss photographer based in New York City; he was there on 9/11. Hicks Wogan contributed to this report.
