Franciscan Father Mychal Judge, a chaplain with the New York Fire Department, is pictured in an undated photo wearing his helmet and bunker coat. Father Judge died while giving last rites to a firefighter in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people in New York City and Shanksville, Pa., and at the Pentagon. (OSV News photo\/courtesy Holy Name Province Franciscans)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAhead of the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in recorded history, friends of Father Judge shared memories of his life and loss, and reflected on his legacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople would often say about him, when you talk to him it was like you were the only person before him,\u201d said Father Kevin Mullen, a Franciscan friar of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe and former president of Siena University in Loudonville, New York, where he currently teaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe engaged you fully; he was not looking around for who he could talk to next. He was fully present to you,\u201d Father Mullen told OSV News. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what made a difference to a lot of people about Mychal Judge \u2014 they could talk to him, bare their souls, share their good news, share their bad news. And he was going to be there for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018He was there. He was present\u2019<\/h4>\n
On the morning of 9\/11, Father Mullen, stationed in a parish approximately 15 miles from midtown Manhattan, was responsible for a funeral liturgy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was aware before I started the funeral that the first tower had collapsed,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAnd when I finished the funeral, I was told the second tower had collapsed. So I knew things were getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
That afternoon, he heard a radio announcement reporting an injured fire chaplain at the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd my gut said, \u2018That\u2019s Mychal Judge,’\u201d Father Mullen said. \u201cHe was right across the street from a fire station that responded immediately.\u201d The church where Father Judge ministered and the friary where he lived, St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street, neighbored New York City Fire Department Engine 1\/Ladder 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I had no doubt he was down there,\u201d Father Mullen said, referring to the disaster area.<\/p>\n
To confirm his suspicion, he called the regional head of his order.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as he answered the phone \u2014 he didn\u2019t even say, \u2018Hello, Kevin\u2019 \u2014 he just said, \u2018It was Mychal.\u2019 And I said, \u2018I thought so.\u2019 That\u2019s how I learned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Mullen said the already crushingly tragic day immediately became painfully personal. But nonetheless, he still found himself certain of one thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt that if Mychal was given his choice of how he would go out of this world, that would have been his choice: to be with the firefighters, literally going with his boots on. He was there. He was present.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018He resided deeper in you than you understood\u2019<\/h4>\n
The first introduction Michael Daly \u2014 journalist and author of \u201cThe Book of Mychal: The Surprising Life and Heroic Death of Father Mychal Judge\u201d from St. Martin\u2019s Griffin \u2014 had to the priest was the sound of his and others\u2019 laughter.<\/p>\n
And it was coming from, of all places, a hospital burn unit.<\/p>\n
Accompanying Patrick \u201cPaddy\u201d Brown \u2014 an FDNY captain who later died on 9\/11 \u2014 Daly was there in 1994 to visit FDNY Captain John Drennan, who had been critically burned battling an apartment fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I go in,\u201d Daly recalled, \u201cand there\u2019s all these guys laughing because of something this priest said \u2014 and I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Who is this guy?’\u201d<\/p>\n
On 9\/11, Daly, a Catholic, was at the scene of the attack for the New York Daily News when the north tower collapsed. He remembers running for his life as a massive cloud of debris \u2014 chokingly dense with pulverized concrete, glass, metal and the contents of countless offices \u2014 rolled like a tsunami through the surrounding streets.<\/p>\n
He admits he was afterward \u201chazy about timing and hours and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he does know the air had finally cleared when FDNY Deputy Fire Chief Peter Hayden told him Father Judge was dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd my knees just went,\u201d recalled Daly, overwhelmed with shock. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect that; I didn\u2019t know Mychal had been down there. Someone had called over the radio for the fire chaplain earlier. But I didn\u2019t hear any response. And then \u2014 he\u2019s gone, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he just \u2026\u201d Daly paused, searching for the right description. \u201cHe resided deeper in you than you understood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A genius priest\u2019<\/h4>\n
Daly described Father Judge walking the streets of New York City in his brown Franciscan habit, greeting homeless people by their first names, praying with them and distributing neatly folded cash.<\/p>\n
Daly also recalled Father Judge often worked 16-hour days ministering at blazes and rescues \u2014 counseling firemen, their families and victims \u2014 and that he gently tended AIDS patients in an era when medical staff would not make physical contact.<\/p>\n
After Father Judge\u2019s death, close friends and associates revealed he was gay \u2014 but by all accounts, maintained his vow of celibacy. The response of Kevin Shea, a firefighter at FDNY Engine 40\/Ladder 35 in Manhattan\u2019s Lincoln Square, apparently typified the reaction of other first responders. \u201cHe said,\u201d Daly recalled, \u201cWell, if you tell me Michael Judge was gay, I\u2019ll tell you I just had my first gay friend.\u201d<\/p>\n
While not \u201cout\u201d in the fire department, Daly said Father Judge told Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, who was struggling with his son\u2019s gay identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, he was a genius priest,\u201d said Daly. \u201cHe just was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I sat with his body for about an hour\u2019<\/h4>\n
Father Christopher Keenan, a friar of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe, entered the Franciscans more than 60 years ago at Father Judge\u2019s urging and became a FDNY chaplain after his friend\u2019s death. On 9\/11, he was helping in the emergency room at St. Vincent\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n
About 2 miles from ground zero, St. Vincent\u2019s staff were caring for the dust-caked and dazed people who had outrun the collapse of the towers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was connecting with their families to come pick them up. And about 2 o\u2019clock in the afternoon, it kind of stopped. I left at 5:30 to walk home from 12th to 31st Street,\u201d Father Keenan recalled. \u201cI had a shift of confessions at 6:00. I came out of the hospital, and there\u2019s doctors and nurses and staff with stretchers \u2014 still waiting for all the people that never came.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Keenan had been looking for Father Judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when I arrived at the firehouse across the street from St. Francis of Assisi Church, I asked the guys, had they heard from Mychal? And they said, \u2018He died \u2014 and his body is in the back of the firehouse here.\u2019 They had set up sheets and cordoned off a section, where his body was in a black bag. And so I sat with his body for about an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Judge had been moved to Engine 1\/Ladder 24 after temporarily lying in front of St. Peter\u2019s altar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the friars came from across the street. And the firefighters gathered that were there \u2026 and we friars sang the Blessing of St. Francis \u2026 and then an ambulance took him to the morgue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Keenan noted that six from the firehouse had also died.<\/p>\n
Victim 0001<\/h4>\n
Father Judge was later numbered victim DM (Disaster Manhattan) 0001-01 of 2,753 souls eventually tallied in New York City after the World Trade Towers crumpled into an infernal landscape of fiery and smoking rubble. Father Keenan himself would spend seven months assisting in that rubble with recovery efforts, afterward contracting several forms of cancer.<\/p>\n
In Washington that day, 184 were killed when hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Another 40 aboard United Airlines Flight 93 died when a fourth hijacked plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 25th anniversary is going to be a very solemn time,\u201d Father Mullen said. \u201cAnd I hope we have that consciousness still alive in our country \u2014 that this is very, very painful, especially for the families,\u201d he shared.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause a lot of people have just taken this event for granted: \u2018Well, that\u2019s history \u2014 it happened, it\u2019s over,\u2019 he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s never over for those families. Never, ever, over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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