Kewaskum, WI – September 11, 2001, was recognized in two dramatic speeches Thursday afternoon at the Wisconsin 9/11 Memorial in Kewaskum, WI. Retired assistant Milwaukee Fire Department chief Paul Conway opened the ceremony and shared names of people who made a difference and sacrificed on September 11, 2001. It was the following speaker, Julie Henneberry who stunned everyone into silence with her recollection of being 10 years old and losing her firefighter dad who went to rescue people in the North Tower.
This was the first time Henneberry, now a board member of the Wisconsin 9/11 Memorial, shared her story in detail. She was introduced by Julie Haberman Osmus, whose sister, Andrea Lyn Haberman who lost her life September 11, 2001. She was among the 69 killed on the 92nd floor of the North Tower.
My name is Julie Henberry and I’m here to tell you about my personal experience and the ripple effects September 11, 2001, have had on my life. These events of September 11th may have happened to our country and changed the world, but I have to live with the
aftermath personally every single day.
I’m here today to share my dad’s story, which also affects my own. I’m here today because as these events become more distant, more stuff of history books and close-to-the-heart memories.
I’m afraid that’s when we as a collective society start to ignore the lessons we learned from these events, like what happened on that clear-sky Tuesday morning 24 years ago. And those events start to seem less real, less impactful to our world today. We cannot let these stories recede into irrelevance. I am the daughter of Lieutenant Peter Lewis Freund.
My father was murdered on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
He was 45 years old. His time of death was approximately 10:28 a.m. when the
North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. I had my father for almost 11 years of my life. I’ve lived more life without him than I did with him. Yet, he continues to influence me every single day.
I didn’t get to know my dad as an adult, but I’m lucky he kept journals. I’m even luckier that I took those journals with me when I officially left New York for Wisconsin on September 12, 2013. Through his journals, I learned about him, who he was, his opinions, his likes and dislikes straight from him.
Even though he’s been gone for 24 years, through these journals, family members, and his friends, I am piecing together the person I call dad. Not just as the firefighter he died as, but also the person that he was.
My dad was born in Norfolk, Virginia on December 19, 1955. He was raised on Staten Island with his three siblings. He was the oldest. In college, he drove cross country with his buddies. He joined the FDNY in 1979. In his early 30s, he backpacked through Europe.
Eventually, he settled down in 1987 and moved with my mother to upstate New York. My siblings and I were raised in Westtown, New York, which was as far from the city the FDNY would allow its members to live at the time.
My dad loved astronomy. On our dead-end street, he painted a measured representation of the solar system. Every morning for the school bus, we waited at the sun he had painted. Way at the other end of the cul-de-sac was the tiny planet Pluto. Sometimes I wonder if those planets are still there.
He taught me the constellations. Still to this day, I can find the big and little dipper because of him. He rooted for the Yankees and Giants. He loved the Grateful Dead. He donated blood every chance he could, and he exercised vigilantly.
Growing up, we had a small black and white Jack Russell named Phoebe. Phoebe would get loose sometimes and dart around the street. And when Phoebe would get loose, there was my dad right behind her, sprinting barefoot to try to catch that little dog.
He loved to kick back and have a beer. I have a memory of being five or six years old and figuring out how to work a pop top on a can and opening like six beers at once and my dad going, “Well, now I have to drink them all.”
I remember being three years old and my dad picking me and my sister up from preschool and I had a bathroom accident in the parking lot and bawling my eyes out and my dad going, “I don’t know what to do.”
I laugh now as a parent myself. Here’s this man, 6’2, can tackle a fire, getting frazzled because he can’t figure out to what to do when a toddler has an accident.
My father was a member of the fire department of New York City. He worked at an Engine Company 55 located in Little Italy on the island of Manhattan. On the evening of September 10, 2001. My family last spoke to my dad on the phone. It was on one of those spiral-cord phones attached to the wall.
I remember the last conversation I had with my dad. I was telling him my supply list for the new school year. The last thing I told him was that I needed a dictionary. His reply was, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll get you a dictionary.” I can still hear the rolling of his eyes like what does a sixth grader need a dictionary for?
My dad was called to officially report to the World Trade Center only moments after the first plane’s impact. I have learned from firsthand accounts and video evidence of my father’s last hours on this earth before being crushed to death by the collapse of the North Tower. The same tower he watched a passenger airliner slam into.
Engine Company 55 arrived outside the north tower and walked into the lobby, which was now a command post. Windows were blown out and bodies were falling.
It is estimated about 200 people jumped from above the impact zones because there was no way to get out and smoke was filling the floors making it impossible to breathe. My dad along with firefighter Steven Russell, firefighter Chris Mazulo, and firefighter Robert Lane were told to start climbing immediately after entering the lobby of the North Tower.
With full gear and carrying hoses, they began climbing the North Tower. They climbed with every intention of reaching the fire above the 81st floor. They climbed up when everyone else was climbing down. A fireman in full gear and hoses can take about a minute to climb a single story. And these men were anticipating climbing over 80 stories just to get there.
It was while they were climbing that approximately 9:03 a.m., United Airline Flight 175 was purposely flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. My dad would have never seen the second plane, but he would have felt it. I’ve been told that it felt like an earthquake inside the North Tower.
According to firefighters who survived the collapse, my dad climbed as high as the 26th floor. He was last seen by a surviving member of the FDNY working on a civilian. I have been told that Engine 55 most likely stopped climbing to help someone who was having a medical emergency, an injury, a heart attack. We may never know exactly.
After the collapse of the South Tower at 9:59 a.m. and after the Mayday for the North Tower was called, my dad was told by a fellow firefighter, “Pete, we got to go.” and he responded, “We will leave when we’re done here.”
He unselfishly put people over procedure.
The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed at 10:28 a.m. From where his body was found, we can determine my dad was descending the North Tower. He made it down to somewhere in the teens. I’ve asked countless times both to myself and out loud, why did he not leave, why did he not leave at the very least when the mayday was made?
When I ask other firefighters this question, I always get the same answer. You can’t just abandon people.
I’ve been told that in the moments before death, when you know it’s the end, you’re overwhelmed with a sense of calm. I have been told that my father probably thought of his family as the North Tower began to collapse around him. His ultimate cause of death was
determined to be blunt for his trauma to the head.
It fills me with both frustration and pride that my dad stayed behind to help a stranger in need. He gave his life for people he did not know.
I was 10 years old on September 11, 2001, just a week shy of my 11th birthday. I understood my dad was a firefighter, but I never imagined what it really meant. I sat in my sixth-grade art class as my teacher turned on the TV. I watched the buildings on fire, but I did not understand the gravity of what was happening.
I had no panic. I had no fear. What was happening on the TV felt far away. I still had that childhood illusion that bad things happen to other people. It wasn’t until a few hours later when my mother picked us up from school that I realized something was very wrong. I saw the look on my mother’s face and knew something had happened to my dad amongst the throngs of other people picking up their kids from Mining Valley Middle School.
I saw my mother at the top of the stairs and asked, “Is he hurt?”
In June 2001, there was a fire that took multiple lives of members of the FDNY.
It’s often referred to as the Father’s Day fire. I remember shortly after that fire, my dad said to my siblings and I that his job is very dangerous and sometimes daddies don’t come home.
I remember asking him, “But you’re always going to come home, right?” And he responded, “I’ll do my best.”
But I don’t think my dad did his best to come home on September 11, 2001. I think he did his best to try to save other people instead.
As strange as it may sound, my family was one of the lucky ones who got my dad back, albeit in pieces.
Most of my father was found in late October 2001. I remember being in our living room and
some men came to the house. One of the firefighters assigned to help my family had his little boy with him. I remember the little boy looking up and asking his dad, “Did they find Mr. Freund?” They did find Mr. Freund.
When the body of a fireman was found at Ground Zero, all operations stopped. The company which the firemen belonged to was notified to come down to the pile to come get their guy. Covering the body in American flag, all rescue and recovery workers would salute as the remains left Ground Zero.
My father’s funeral was held October 30, 2001.
The funeral itself was a blur. I was so young. I remember crying heavily.
I have since tracked down and read the newspaper article that covered my father’s funeral. Quote, “The American flag hoisted 25-feet high by two ladder trucks formed an arch over the hill on Mount Hope Road. The shiny red Mac pumper carried Fry’s coffin under the flag as the honor guard of New York City firefighters, police officers, and others snapped to attention.
The sounds of Amazing Grace from the bag pipes mixed with the bitter wails of a young woman crying.
It would be later in 2005. I remember hearing my mother screaming on the phone with what I now know is what the medical examiner shouting, “And what am I supposed to do with an arm?”
I remember slowly closing my bedroom door. I learned in 2023 that my dad has come back in five pieces to date. The latest find of him was identified in 2010. The medical examiner has told me that it’s most all body. It took me nearly 20 years after the events of September 11, 2001, to start to piece together what happened to my father and have the courage to seek answers to my questions.
It was after having my little boy that I wanted to be able to tell him about his grandpa and how brave he was. and wanted to find out for me, for my son, and also for my dad, so his story isn’t lost to the history books. Because if we don’t know what happened, if his story is never shared, it’ll be lost to future generations.
So here I am to own this. And I’m not going to let it own me.
Over the years, I’ve realized as you age, your memory offers new perspectives. When I was young, I was so angry that my dad left us. As an adult, I still hold that anger, but there’s also a feeling of pride. My dad lost his life that day, but he showed us what was in his soul. By staying in that building, people needed help.
On September 11, 2001, my dad showed the ultimate act of selflessness and concern for the well-being of others. He acted with love for his fellow human being, for someone he didn’t know, and he knew he could not abandon them.
Our lives are all about the choices you make. My father chose to go into that burning building a plane flew into. He chose to go up those stairs and he chose to stay.
He stayed to help people in need. That choice also meant leaving his family behind. I’m sure he did not imagine what his absence would do to us, both as a family unit and to us individually. My dad gave his life trying to save strangers. It wasn’t the concern of race, gender, or religion. He saw a person in need and didn’t leave them.
Every day, every day I try to honor my father’s memory and remind myself whose daughter would I be if I didn’t try to help others, too. We all will experience loss and hurt in our lives. That is human nature, and it is unavoidable. Personal tragedies like 911 was to me can destroy someone or over time you can learn from and build upon it.
I have learned that there is no expiration on grief. It has been 24 years since September 11, 2001. And I can still feel that hurt inside that little 10-year-old girl wondering what’s going on.
This is not something to get over. It’s not something to forget. Just because time passes, it is something you learn how to live with. It becomes a part of your story as a whole. I have found myself searching for answers to questions like, “At what point are you supposed to stop reacting to this trauma?”
“At what point are you supposed to stop thinking about this trauma?” I’ve learned that it’s normal to have it there. The challenge is to not stop thinking about it. It’s to find a way to live life with it and not let it live your life for you.
Grief and sadness are not fun parts of being human, but they are important parts. We will all experience loss and sadness in our lives. But instead of running from it, it’s better to feel it, talk about it, and walk through it than spend a lifetime being silently poisoned by it.
Having the courage to face something as hard as grief does not mean fearing it or not feeling sad from it. Courage to face grief means recognizing it and resisting its urge to be a dark shadow over the rest of your life. From the moment of the loss to years later, it will still be felt fresh as the first day. And it may seem difficult at first and contradictory to the saying, “Time will not heal this wound.” But it does make it easier. but only if you embrace a life to be lived with it.
I have seen family members become shells of who they should have been under the weight of their untouched grief and sadness. And our lost loved ones wouldn’t have wanted that for us. So, I keep engaging with the struggle. I keep moving forward with this grief as a permanent state of being.
But instead of seeing it as an enemy, I embrace it as a friend. Because grief is a sign that
they were loved. Perhaps a way to cope with grief is allowing yourself the permission to
welcome this unplanned future wholeheartedly despite the sadness that follows you due to a tragedy.
It’s about giving yourself the permission to participate in, to cherish, and take chances in life. Give yourself the permission to appreciate joy again and think of your missed loved ones and appreciate the joy that those people brought into your life and try to pass it along to others.
As we remember those lost on September 11th today, the 24th anniversary, I hope you all take away from my story that these were real lives lost, real families affected. Even if the event happened what feels like far away and what may seem like a long time ago, for families like us, it feels like it’s only been moments.
Remember those heroes of 9/11 and try to set a good example of what America really means to generations to come.
My dad climbed almost 30 flights of stairs in full fireman’s gear for others. And he stayed to help others in need, even if it meant leaving his family behind. The least we can do is try to be kind to one another.
