9/11 health fund: Advocates honor living and the dead at film screening

Those born on Sept. 12, 2001, turn 24 next month. They are old enough to drink, drive and vote, but have no recollection of life in a pre-9/11 world. 

Informing young people whose knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks might come mostly from family recollections or history class was among the key messages Bridget Gormley wanted to convey in her 2021 documentary about the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

"You have at least 75 million people where they're going to grow up and 9/11 is going to be an event that is before them. It's going to be something they learn in school, it's going to be something they learn in textbooks," she said Wednesday evening at a screening near where the Twin Towers once stood.

"And I think it's very important that narrative includes that 9/11 didn't end on 9/11," she added.

Gormley's film, DUST: The Lingering Legacy of 9/11, examines the fight endured by survivors and first responders to ensure that the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund would be fully funded through the next seven decades. The fund provides financial support for responders and survivors in the case of physical illnesses or deaths related to 9/11.

On Wednesday night, a screening of the film at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan brought out longtime advocates who responded to Ground Zero, including John Feal, founder of the Nesconset-based FealGood Foundation, and Michael O’Connell, a retired FDNY firefighter from Huntington who contracted an autoimmune disease from his time at the pile after the attacks.

"I made a vow to myself at 25 years old that day when we lost those innocent human beings that I would forever try" to honor the memories of those killed on 9/11, including 343 firefighters, O’Connell told Newsday before the screening, which took place on the six-year anniversary of the permanent authorization of the fund, a coincidence, according to Gormley.

Of the ongoing work of caring for and looking after people like him — first responders still suffering from an illness now more than two decades old, O'Connell said: "We have a mission. We have always had a mission and we've never lost."

Gormley's documentary is also personal. Her father, William Gormley, was an FDNY firefighter who responded on 9/11, just after the second tower collapse.

In December 2016, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He died in June 2017 after it spread to his lungs, a result of his time spent at Ground Zero. He was 53.

She said her father had a difficult time talking about what he lived through since 9/11 until she and her brothers were older.

"I think by the time my brothers were of age he was feeling a little more ready," Gormley said. "Enough time had passed perhaps, or he was more comfortable to have the conversation."