 Hi, I'm Mary with the A.B. and I'm here today talking to Gerard Chipporra from New York City, grew up in Stanton Island, and we want to tell the story of his brother, John. His brother was a Marine and a New York City firefighter as well as a New York City police officer. And it's very important that we tell his story and we honor him and those like him who have given their lives for our country. So Gerard, can you tell me a little bit, you, John joined the Marine Corps, you were his little brother. What led to that? What led to him joining? Well, it's funny, John started out always looking at like John Wayne character in his world as a young man. So he was a voice out to start. So that's I think what started his life of service. Rising to the rank of Eagle. And then he said, you know, what better thing than to be John Wayne and join the Marine Corps, you know, and define Leathernets and all those stories. So he thought, what a great way to continue his service. So in 1980, I was just going to high school, he joined the Marine Corps. Well, one of his first duty stations was in Beirut, and he was there in October of 1983. Can you tell me a little bit about that? It was an early morning and he was on the shift, so radio operators didn't get to sleep in at all. So they were, he was on his way to his post when the truck bomb exploded. So he was out of the barracks. Otherwise he would have been in the barracks and possibly would have perished. The person he stopped to talk to on the way to his post continued to the barracks and passed away. And John continued on to his post and did his job. And for a long time after that, it took me a long time to get to this, but he always thought that if he talked to that guy for one more minute, maybe he would have changed his future. And it always, I think it always had a, it always sat tough with John, but at the same time it made him more personal to people because if he was going to have a conversation with you, he took the time to spend with you and understand who you were. How do you think being a part of that experience affected your brother? Oh, it affected his world tremendously. I think, like I said, his contact with people changed, his contact with the world changed. He realized that we're only here for a short period of time. So make every moment count because you never know when the ultimate end is going to come. So live life as if it's super precious, which we know it is, but sometimes we get lost there. We don't realize how precious it is and we don't take the moment to spend with somebody or do something nice or kind. So John, his world changed. So he comes home, he does his time in the Marine Corps and I know enough Marines, once a Marine, always a Marine. He comes back and he decides that he's going to continue by becoming a New York City police officer. Can you tell me a little bit about that? He was in the neighborhood policing unit, so they would go and introduce themselves to the local people and what problems you have on this block. So he single-handedly cleared all the drug dealers off of one block because it was affecting the neighborhood. So adversely, and when the police department realized that, they immediately put him in the narcotics unit and he became a detective. Again, what's he doing? He's back in his old neighborhood trying to make people's lives better. Once he was through with the narcotics, he became a regular city detective wearing a suit and all those things. And he did that for 12 years until one day he decided, I guess, that the police department was too dangerous. And he told me, it's too dangerous for me. I'm going to come over to the fire department and be a fireman because in the interim of those 12 years, I had graduated from college and went to become a firefighter. So I was a firefighter ahead of him and he must have seen the impact I was able to do and have on people's lives. So he decided to change his career path after 12 years with NYPD and become a firefighter. So your big brother kind of turned around and followed your footsteps a little bit, you could say. Yes, yes. And I'll tell you, my father was also a firefighter. So we had a history in the New York City Fire Department. So it made an easy choice for him once I had done it. So September 11, 2001, your brother's on duty. Tell me about that day. It took about three hours for me to realize that he wasn't home and he was working. The realization came that now the towers are collapsed and my heart sunk because I knew a lot of my fellow firefighters and police officers and thousands of civilians were killed. I just, you have that feeling of being a firefighter. So as the enormity of the disaster unfolds and we start to realize the original list had thousands of firefighters on it, hundreds of police officers. One of my senior men had come in and he had said, your brother was in the latter 105 for the day and they haven't heard from them. And this is about three in the morning. And he said, you know, you should just go home. And I'm like, you know, I have to go. He goes, we've been there all day. There's nothing, there's no one to find, you know. And it was tremendous gut wrenching feeling for me. So I headed home and my sister had escaped. She was home. My wife was in midtown Manhattan. She had come home. John's fiance Gina, she got out of Manhattan. And so we all kind of made our way to my home and my sister Eileen and my sister Susan had come the next day. So we were all here to try to make heads or tails. I figured out and it took until the spring of 2002 where we had finally made a recovery. John was the only recovery from his whole company working that day. So it was very traumatic for the other families. Again, we're thinking about them that not everybody came home. You know, only John did. When he passed, it was a very challenging time because I knew I was lost as a person, as a firefighter. And coincidentally, the photo of the three firefighters raising the flag in much like the Iwo Jima flag. I knew all three of those people. Two of them I put in my best friend category. So I heard the story before it hit the papers and it was pivotal for me because I knew that they were doing it because they knew John. They were lifelong friends and that flag went up for John. And I'm thinking, wow, that's amazing. So that kind of that day cinched it for me that I had a purpose to continue on serving people. And with John's memory of service in there, if you say somebody's name over again and you say it every day, then they never really die.