25 years later, honoring 9/11 memories from his hometown

In the early hours of Sept. 11, 2001, Kissimmee Police Chief Chuck Broadway, then a New York Police Department detective, was in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he worked in the Street Crimes Unit until the wee hours of the morning. And that’s where he planned to be later that day.

Religious-zealot terrorists changed those plans.

Americans, especially New Yorkers, remember a day that the younger generation only knows about from whatever source they get their history— where they were, how they got there. And, as of this week, 25 long years, or short ones, have passed since the deadly 9/11 attack on American soil, which included a strike on The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and a number of heroes who helped take down a third plane in western Pennsylvania that military intelligence experts later said had targeted the White House or the U.S. Capitol.

Broadway shared with the News-Gazette his first-hand memories of that day, and how it shaped his next few months—and ultimately his life.

“I think it has to do with educating our generation that just 25 years ago, the worst attack on U.S. soil ever happened, and a reminder too to our generation, of the heroic actions of our first responders rushing into the World Trade Center, uncertain about their own personal safety,” he said.

“Risking their lives to save countless of others … literally doing just what’s programmed in their head to do, firefighters going up 80 some flights of stairs. And just the uncertainty of them thinking about all those flights, and how long it’s going to take for them to get to people who were trapped and couldn’t get out. I don’t imagine any of them thought that those buildings were going to come down.”

After getting home from a shift that ended at 2 a.m., Broadway said he was jostled out of bed by a call from the squad to report back to work after the first airliner crashed into the WTC, with a directive of, “Turn your TV on.”

“I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’,” he said. “At that moment, you capture things like, you weren’t expecting to see people to be falling out of buildings. I think my wife saw something too, and she just freaked out.”

With such an event already playing out that few had a playbook for, in a pre-social media world, he reported to the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge to help manage traffic trying to leave Lower Manhattan and send incoming traffic away from the developing tragedy.

“You didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “When it first happened, a lot of people just thought it was an accident. Then the second (plane) hit, and it was just crazy. When you’re on that detail you think, if they hit the buildings, could they hit the bridges?

“I’m directing traffic and this young man comes up on a motorcycle, holds up this photo and asks, ‘Have you seen my wife?’ You’re not even sure what to say in that moment.”

Days later Broadway came face-to-face with the devastation when his unit was assigned to “Ground Zero” on what he hoped to be a search and rescue effort, but turned out to be a recovery effort, recovering and collecting human remains and belongings of the thousands who perished. As engineers worried the weight of trucks, cranes and other big machinery would cause the wreckage of the fallen towers to shift and collapse again, he was part of a “bucket brigade” of firefighters and police, passing five-gallon buckets of rubble to best clear the area while fires and smoke smoldered around them for the days that turned to weeks.

“Many times, I believed I heard banging from survivors, which raised our hopes, only to be met with heart break, when we found nothing,” he said. “Steel that does not bend was curved from its original shape as if it was elastic. Broken glass, office equipment, documents, debris everywhere in the twisted buildings. I remember coming home smelling like burnt rubber and my clothes covered in soot.”

Amid the response, heroes like Broadway never considered the dangerous building contaminants and toxins surrounding them. More of the men he served with died from that aftermath than the Sept. 11 attacks themselves. Men like Capt. Barry Galfano, who he worked with on the Brooklyn streets, who passed in 2011, and Sgt.

Stephen Scalza, a close friend and high school football teammate who died in 2014, both from inhaling dangerous toxic materials while participating in the rescue and recovery efforts. “He loved being a cop and loved his job so much that he inspired me and encouraged me to join this honorable profession,” Broadway said of Scalza.

He remembered Galfano for getting out of bed in the middle of one night to congratulate him on an armed robbery arrest.

“You didn’t see brass or high-ranking officers around that time of night, and he made it a point to come out and say, ‘Hey Chuck, great job on that arrest.’ From that moment, I said that’s the type of leader I want to be, to inspire my men and women and just be sincere and authentic and thank them and commend them when they do a good job. And that’s the kind of person he was.”

In spite of that loss, and seeing and hearing things that can never be unseen or unheard, Broadway said he’s lucky—in still having his health.

“Hopefully, prayfully, I thank God,” he said. “I get two annual physicals every single year, and I am on a list so that if I was to get sick and it is attributed to 9/11, the city of New York handles those medical expenses. It’s a shame because people are still dying every single year.”

It’s why, as an American, a police officer, and a New Yorker, 9/11 will always be “definitely deeply personal.”

“Just being there and witnessing what I saw that day and weeks after, and then I got to see our country really coming together, people putting the differences and political party aside, it didn’t matter your color, race or religion,” he said. “We formed communities and a nation together to help one another assist one another bring resolve to a horrific situation.”

It’s led Broadway to create a KPD culture that prioritizes mental health and talking to others when the struggles are real.

“Twenty-five years ago, it was, ‘Suck it up.’ I wanted to make sure that I created a culture here where it’s okay to not be okay,” he said.

“That starts at the top. I want to focus on when (officers) retire they have life after this profession, so that’s why we take care of them now and show that we have measures in place now for mental health so that when they retire they can enjoy retirement.”

Friday, Broadway will participate in a 9/11 memorial at Valencia College’s School of Public Safety in Orlando. He said he hopes to begin an annual memorial in Kissimmee next year. Meanwhile, the Twin Towers Memorial (he said he saw it “many years ago”) and the Freedom Tower built on the site now stand to remind generations to come about the horrors of that day, which to Broadway are vivid memories.

“But it also brings back memories that we’re resolute as a nation, we bounce back and continue to be a nation that will continue to address terrorism,” he said.

“And continue to be the home of the free.”