François Picard is pleased to welcome Richard Roeill, former New York Firefighter and 9/11 First Responder. His testimony reframes the legacy of September 11th not as a historical event confined to a single day, but as living history. The former New York City firefighter describes an anniversary that reactivates trauma, while the illnesses suffered by first responders make the consequences of Ground Zero ever present decades later. Yet Roeill’s testimony is not simply a narrative of sacrifice. He says that responders were misled about the dangers they faced, demanding accountability and long-term healthcare for those exposed to the very toxic air.
At the same time, Roeill resists ending with anger. His memory of September 12 – when, in his telling, distinctions of race, religion and gender temporarily receded before a sense of common humanity – becomes both an ideal and an implicit critique of the present. What he ultimately asks viewers to remember, therefore, is not only what was lost on September 11, but what solidarity looked like immediately afterward, and what we owe those still living with its consequences.
His account moves between vulnerability and duty: declining lung capacity, the deaths of colleagues and the emotional burden of repeated funerals coexist with his striking insistence that, knowing what he knows now, he would still have responded exactly as he had done. “Absolutely. There’s a lot of legacy firemen now, meaning that the ones that have passed from 9/11, that their kids are following in their footsteps, and it’s a really wonderful thing. I got to witness about six months ago at Rescue 4. There were a few legacy children and firemen there, and it was great to see that they had great camaraderie, and they all stuck together because they had another bond that other people didn’t. And it was really — it was beautiful to see, actually. It really was, knowing that they were there for each other and keeping their parents’ legacies alive.”
