At his kitchen counter, Tim Harrigan flipped through the yellowing, plastic pages of the scrapbook. Part is pictures he took at ground zero. The other part, clips of Newsday articles about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Ten years ago, he put the book together for his kids.
“I didn’t know how long I was going to be around,” he said. He didn’t know if he’d get to tell them his story.
The 46-year-old husband, father of four and retired New York Fire Department lieutenant is tall and built, composed and matter-of-fact. He paused between pages. Until recently, the book had been in his attic.
“It’s enough that it’s on your mind all the time,” he said.
He pointed at a picture of a void in the rubble of the World Trade Center’s south tower.
“We rescued somebody out of this hole,” he said.
He turned the page and pointed at another.
“That’s where we were when Tower 7 collapsed.”
Click here to read the rest of the story, which I wrote for the Tampa Bay Times and originally printed Sept. 11, 2011.