 TEARFUL TRIBUTE: Kim Moran puts her arms around her sons Dylan (left) and Ryan yesterday at a Queens memorial service for her husband John Moran, a fire battalion chief. - Dennis Caruso |
September 29, 2001 -- On the morning of Sept. 11, minutes after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, Fire Department battalion chief John Moran got a call on his cell phone at the scene of the disaster.
It was from his brother, Michael, a Manhattan firefighter, who offered words of caution and a promise.
"John, be careful," he said. "And I'll see you there."
It was not to be.
"I didn't see him that day. But I do see him now all the time," Michael Moran told hundreds of mourners who gathered at St. Francis de Sales Church in the Rockaways yesterday.
"I see him when I look in my mother's eyes. I feel him when I share the grief of his beautiful wife, Kim. I hear him when I speak to my beautiful sisters and I know he's not gone when I look at his boys Ryan and Dylan."
Ryan and Dylan, heartbreakingly beautiful blond-haired boys in matching outfits, clasped their mother's hands. Before them were their daddy's hat, his helmet and a picture of the man friends called the "gentle giant."
The Bravest of the Brave.
Rest In Peace, BCM.