Photos/Bill Heath
There’s a lot of casual hometown pride running through Fair Haven and it has to do with a hero’s run in New York and a couple of longtime borough residents, friendship and many years of brotherhood in emergency response.
Call it a microcosm. Running in a hero’s shoes, helping those left behind in the footsteps of fallen heroes’ pace to help. Two Fair Haven friends and first responders took a run for a good cause … with about 30,000 others. They crossed the finish line having had a fine time and happy to have helped a cause dedicated to a 9/11 hero’s legacy.
On Sunday, Fair Havenites and first responders Bill Heath and Dan Kane, along with several (about five) other first responders from the area, took a trip into Manhattan to participate in what was dubbed the Tunnel to Towers Race to benefit the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Siller was a 9/11 hero, a Brooklyn firefighter who was killed on 9/11 after he went back to work to assist in the rescue effort.
The run, now an annual event, traces Siller’s route that fateful day, from his firehouse in Brooklyn to Manhattan. Its proceeds benefit families of fallen first responders.
Heath and Kane are both longtime Fair Haven Fire Department/First Aid Squad members, Kane the First Aid Squad’s present captain. Heath is a retired borough police officer and is also a squad member. Both are fire company members and former line officers in that realm as well. They grew up together. Both are Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School grads separated by a couple of years. Both love their hometown. Both still live in it and serve it.
The two ran what is termed a 5K, or roughly 3.5 miles, on Sunday in New York with tens of thousands of others from all over the world, Heath said, “including our new found friends from the London Fire Brigade. It was truly awe inspiring.”
Heath and Kane “merged from the tunnel to the streets lined with FDNY, NYPD, NYNJPA officers, members of each of our armed forces and cadets, each wearing a banner of a fallen hero as you approach the Freedom Tower was overwhelmingly beautiful, inspiring and sad at the same time,” Heath added. “May we never forget the fallen and those that continue to fall from the hideous diseases that come from their sacrifices during the days that followed.”
Good job, Bill and Dan! Thank you both for your longtime service and dedication to Fair Haven and its residents!
— Thank you to Bill Heath for sharing his glimpse into the day with the above photos he shared!
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