The attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania left an indelible mark on America’s psyche 24 years ago.
Nearly everyone over elementary-school-age then has some sort of memory of where they were when they learned America was under attack on Sept 11, 2001.
About the exhibit
The 9/11 attacks were also a call to action with multitudes of young and middle-age men and women rushing to join the United States military or to become police officers or firefighters.
A 60-something-year-old new Southwest Floridian was too old to re-enlist, so he rushed to Ground Zero. The toppled towers had been keenly familiar to Jerry Sanford.
A new exhibit at the Historic McSwain Home Museum & Gardens on Old 41 Road in Bonita Springs pays tribute to Sanford and his legacy.
Sanford’s life was devoted to public service. He was a Navy man, and briefly a police officer in New York City before spending the next decades as a firefighter with Fire Department New York, or FDNY.
Sanford rose up in the ranks, eventually becoming the press secretary at the headquarters of FDNY.
He first learned of a plane crashing into one of the towers while attempting to catch a connecting flight out of Pennsylvania from New York City early in the morning of Sept. 11.
Soon he’d learn that three of the eight firefighters he had lunch with the day before the attacks were killed on Sept. 11. He would learn of many, many more deaths. All told, 343 FDNY firefighters were killed trying to save the lives of those in the twin towers after the planes hit.
Sanford knew he needed to be back in New York City after the attacks.
“I called fire headquarters … and I got the fire commissioner on the phone. And I told him I was in Philadelphia and I wanted to come back and help and he said, ‘Yes, what ever you can get back here. We could use your help,'” Sanford is recorded as saying in 2018 when recounting the horrors of 9/11 to his close companion, Chris Griffith.
For the next two months, Sanford was an integral part of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s press team. He coordinated interviews with the press and collected and disseminated information on rescue efforts and funerals.
Sanford carried with him a slim reporter’s notebook. The pages are filled with field notes of the rescue and recovery efforts as well as contact information for media legends like Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel.
“So there'll be a page that has like the widow's name and five of her children,” said Griffith. “There's one page that has the top half that lists the members of Engine 7 Company, and it says they all lived. … But below them was a whole firehouse that was killed. And …it's like this laundry list of journalists throughout the book.”
After two months of working at Ground Zero, Sanford returned to Southwest Florida. He became an integral part of helping create the Collier County Freedom Memorial at Freedom Park. The memorial, which resembles a fluttering flag, pays tribute to the men and women who sacrificed their lives in the service of the country. It also pays tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Griffith unearthed Sanford’s notebook from 9/11 after Sanford died in March following a protracted illness related to his time at Ground Zero. He was 86.
Replicas of these never publicly seen field notes are central to the exhibit at the Bonita Springs Historical Society’s McSwain Home beginning with a private showing for members Sept. 5.
Included in the exhibit are a piece of the Pentagon, Catholic mass prayer cards, newspapers from the days after 9-11, a video recording Sanford made recounting the horrors and service of 9-11.
“Which together gives visitors a complete sense of his [Sanford’s] role and perspective on how it ties in to his life in Southwest Florida and the Freedom Memorial in Naples,” Griffith said.
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.