Joseph ‘Joe’ Bello’s name is engraved at 9/11 Responders Remembered Memorial Park in Long Island, New York. Courtesy of Marzena Feal

My earliest memories of 9/11 aren’t really memories at all.

They belong to other people.

To my parents who can remember exactly where they were when it happened. To the New Yorkers who watched smoke engulf Lower Manhattan. To my uncle who spent the months following working at Ground Zero.

I inherited all those memories.

Eventually, I inherited their consequences too.?

On Sept. 11, the United States will mark 25 years since nearly 3,000 people were killed in the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. For many Americans, the anniversary will bring memories of a day they watched unfold in real time.

I am part of a generation that did not.

Twenty-five years later, those who were exposed to the toxic dust and debris in the aftermath at Ground Zero are still being diagnosed with 9/11-related illnesses. Families are still losing loved ones. And for the thousands whose lives became intertwined with the attacks, like John Feal, an advocate for 9/11 first responders and the staff at the World Trade Center Health Program, Sept. 11 never ended when the smoke cleared over Lower Manhattan.

My family was among them.

Despite growing up in New York in the years following the attacks, Sept. 11 was never absent from my childhood. There were the moments of silence at school, the stories from my parents, regular train rides into the city that had fundamentally changed before I was ever born.

My mom, Janet Bello, won’t forget her first day of maternity leave, a hopeful first-time mom, waking up early on the day of Sept. 11 to check work emails.?

“The phone started ringing. Everyone was calling, like friends of mine,” my mom said. “‘We didn’t know where you were. You weren’t in the office. You’re safe.’ “I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’” And they’re like, ‘Put on the TV,’ and I put on the TV, and right as I did that, the first tower fell.”?

My aunt, Judith Bello, will always remember driving to school to pick up her own children, along with the children of neighbors who were still waiting for word about their father, Frank Schott, and bringing them home.

“I’ll never forget it,” my aunt said. “She’s like, ‘Oh my God, this is the best day ever,’ because she came home and had homework in my house and pizza and McDonald’s at Annmarie’s and baths at Annmarie’s, and and in my head I’m saying ‘Oh God, you have no idea this is going to change your life.’”

The fear didn’t end when the towers fell. It followed people into airports, onto airplanes and into everyday decisions about where it was safe to go. My cousin was terrified her mother would die if she boarded a plane.

“She starts hysterically crying,” my aunt said. “‘Don’t go, please don’t go. You’re gonna get on a plane and you’re gonna die like Frank.’”?

My uncle, Joseph “Joe” Bello, wasn’t just someone who remembered Sept. 11. He was there in the months that followed.

Before he became part of my family’s story about 9/11, though, he was just my uncle.

Joe Bello poses for a photo as a teenager. Courtesy of Janet Bello

He was funny. He teased everyone. He loved dogs. He was protective in a way that could sometimes be overwhelming, but always came from love.

And, according to his sisters, he had a talent for getting himself into trouble.

“He would annoy [my dad], and then when he got his license – ‘Dad I got into a little fender bender,’ and he comes home, and the car is like friggin’ towed, it’s trashed.” my aunt said. “‘I got into a little fender bender’ so [my dad is] thinking, ‘All right, little dent.’ Next thing you know, the tow truck comes for the car. It’s totally smashed. Like he’d do stupid things like that.”

Then there was a sunny Tuesday in the late summer of 2001.

What he witnessed on 9/11 as he ran out into the street was something he never talked about to me or my cousins. His walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge covered in dust and debris was a story I had only heard from my mom.?

“He said that would never leave his head, like when he would close his eyes at night, he would see this. He would see people jumping out of the towers,” my mom said.

Joe worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation on Church Street, just blocks from the World Trade Center. In the months after the attacks, his work brought him to Ground Zero as part of the cleanup.

The efforts were not over in a matter of days or weeks. Joe was there for about a year, the only thing shielding him from the aftermath, a bandana over his nose and mouth while he worked.?

Joe eventually left Ground Zero and went back to his life. The city rebuilt both physically and emotionally. For a while, Sept. 11 became something my family talked about mostly in the past tense.

In between that time there were birthdays and holidays and 14 years of my life calling Joe “Uncle.”

But in April of 2018, Joe got sick.

It started with acid reflux. When it became persistent, he went to the doctor and had an endoscopy. Doctors found a growth.

At Memorial Sloan Kettering, my family learned that Joe had esophageal cancer. We were told it was advanced.

He was 58 years old.

His diagnosis was devastating, but it also brought Sept. 11 back into the conversation.

“The doctor said, ‘Were you down at 9/11 at the cleanup?’ And [Joe] said, ‘Yes, I was.’ And [the doctor] said, ‘Well, we think that’s what maybe caused this,’” my aunt said.

Joe had spent roughly a year working at Ground Zero. Now, 17 years after the attacks, he had cancer.

Dr. Kristi Anderson, MD, Chief Medical Officer with the World Trade Center (WTC) Health Program, said Joe’s experience is part of a larger health story that has unfolded among people exposed to the World Trade Center site.

“There are conditions that people develop years and decades clearly after exposure, and they’re everything,” Anderson said. “They’re physical conditions, which seems relatively obvious to a lot of people, but not to everyone. But also mental health conditions.”

For people who were at Ground Zero in the days, weeks and months after the attacks, the consequences of that exposure did not necessarily appear immediately. Some illnesses took years to develop.

Joe’s took 17.

“For the physical health conditions, a lot of these have long latencies,” Anderson said. “So cancer in general – it tends to be a disease that people will, if genetically predisposed, will develop later in life, but also for people who have environmental traumas to include 9/11 and environmental exposures to include 9/11, those latency periods can be pretty long.”

Twenty-five years later, the WTC Health Program continues to enroll and treat people for conditions associated with their exposure. And the list is longer than some might expect.

According to Anderson, those 9/11-related illnesses include respiratory diseases, aerodigestive disorders, cancers as well as mental health conditions.

The health effects of the Sept. 11 attacks extend far beyond those who died that day.

2,977 victims died on 9/11. Since then the death toll has only climbed; the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s website stated that over 8,000 people enrolled in the WTC Health Program have died, though it’s noted not all deaths were directly linked to World Trade Center site conditions.

Currently, nearly 150,000 are enrolled in the program.

Joe’s cancer progressed quickly.

Joe Bello poses for a photo with the family dog, Daytana, in 1994. Courtesy of Janet Bello

In the span of a year my uncle’s condition, which he rarely complained about, worsened to the point that he was constantly weak, unable to eat or swallow and was throwing up blood. My once tough and tenacious uncle called for help, no longer able to fight the vicious cancer that seemed to follow him home in 2001 and wait near two decades to appear.

“And I remember this one day. He called me at work like, ‘Can you come?’ And that was not like him,” my aunt said. “‘Can you come? I need you.’ And I remember I was gonna go that night. And he’s like, ‘No, no, no. Tomorrow morning. Don’t come tonight.’ But I should have went that night because when I went the next morning, it was a disaster.”

Joe was hemorrhaging badly when my aunt and dad called 911 for an ambulance. The ambulance that took him to Sloan Kettering Memorial one last time. The hospital he would never return home from.

“He didn’t want to die. He was afraid to die. It’s not like he embraced it,” my aunt said. “He kept saying, ‘I’m gonna beat this, right? Like I’m not gonna die from this, right?’”

It was my mom and aunt who sat at Joe’s bedside night after night.?

“He was also afraid to be in the hospital by himself,” my mom recalled. “Just like when he was a little boy, he was afraid of the dark.”

From left to right: Judith, Joe and Janet Bello pose for a photo in their childhood home in Marine Park, Brooklyn. Courtesy of Judith Bello

I can remember that year’s Easter, sitting around a table with my family at the pizzeria down the block from my house, a stark contrast from the usual home cooked meal we’d gather around at every holiday. We had spent the day in the hospital with Joe, saying our goodbyes, and as we sat together for the last time as a family inside the sterile hospital room, Joe tiredly raised his hand to his heart and mouthed the word “Family.”

Two weeks after being admitted to the hospital and a little over a year after his initial diagnosis, Joe passed away at the age of 59.

His death was not the end of his story with 9/11.

When I told John Feal, a longtime 9/11 responder advocate, about my uncle, he stopped me.

“He’s on my wall,” Feal said.

In 2014, Feal helped build the 9/11 Responders Remembered Memorial Park on Long Island, a memorial dedicated to responders, volunteers and others who have died from 9/11-related illnesses. Joe’s name is among them.

Feal told me that 345 more names would be added to the wall this year on Saturday.

It was a coincidence I never could have planned for: I had called Feal to talk about the people who were still living with the consequences of 9/11, and my uncle was already part of the memorial he had built for those who didn’t.

Feal was a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero when a steel beam fell on his foot, requiring partial amputation. After spending 11 weeks in the hospital recovering, he was denied compensation for his injury; after that, Feal made it his life’s work to advocate for people like Joe.

“It was anger,” Feal said. “It was anger which fueled my empathy.”

Since starting the FealGood Foundation in 2005, Feal has spent two decades working with people who became sick, lost loved ones or were left trying to navigate a system that did not always recognize their illnesses as consequences of 9/11.

He has spent two decades walking the halls of Congress, pushing lawmakers to provide health care and compensation to people who became sick after their exposure to the World Trade Center site. Feal said lawmakers often had to be re-educated about 9/11 as new members of Congress took office, forcing advocates to repeatedly explain why people were still getting sick decades later.

“They think they can outlast you, but we showed them endurance and longevity,” he said.

Feal has helped pass 20 pieces of legislation including the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 which provides health monitoring, compensation and benefits to first responders, volunteers and survivors. He’s worked with thousands of people affected by the attacks and said he has attended more than 200 funerals.

“I literally talk to somebody every day who lost a loved one [since], or lost a loved one that day,” Feal said.

For Feal, Sept. 11 is not just one Tuesday from nearly three decades ago.

“To many people it’ll be the 25 year anniversary or the 25 year remembrance, but for all those of us directly impacted by 9/11, it’s the longest day in history that hasn’t ended,” he said.

For most of my life, Joe was simply my uncle.

He was the uncle who teased everyone, loved dogs and somehow managed to turn a “little fender bender” into a totaled car. He was the uncle who spent a year at Ground Zero with a bandana over his face. He was the uncle who got sick at 58 and died a little more than a year later.

I was too young to remember Sept. 11, 2001.

But I remember Joe.

And 25 years later, I know his name is on the wall.

Joe Bello holds Olivia Rinaldi on the day of her baptism in August, 2005. Courtesy of Janet Bello