On September 11, 2001, John Feal was running toward the World Trade Center. Six blocks away, I was escaping in the opposite direction.
A construction supervisor from Long Island, Feal volunteered at Ground Zero to help clear the smoking wreckage in the hope of finding survivors. My husband and I fled our apartment in Lower Manhattan, only to be swallowed by the massive dust cloud that rolled across Battery Park when the Twin Towers collapsed.
Neither of us imagined that dust would still be shaping our lives a quarter century later.
For Feal, the consequences came quickly.
After six days working on the pile, an 8,000-pound steel beam fell and crushed his left foot, costing him half of it and nearly his life. Enduring two months of surgeries plus a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress and GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease), he started going regularly to group therapy sessions for 9/11 responders. There, he heard stories that sounded increasingly familiar: chronic coughs that wouldn’t go away, respiratory diseases, cancers, digestive disorders. Since the government had declared that the air was “safe,” rescue workers were burning through their savings to pay for medical care while struggling to convince anyone that their illnesses were connected to the terrorist attack.
“Up until now, there hasn’t been much organizing or community action,” Feal recalls in his newly-published memoir, I’ll Follow You Anywhere. “I intend to change that. I’m not a counselor, a lawyer, or a lobbyist, but I get a reputation as the person to call to take down your story and connect you with others in the same situation.”
The more stories he heard, the clearer the pattern became, inspiring Feal to start the FealGood Foundation in 2005. What began as a grassroots effort quickly became a lifeline, helping families get to medical appointments, pay bills, and, increasingly, fund funerals.
Feal became one of the defining voices of the 9/11 health fight, a fierce advocate in Washington and a leader in a community with few others willing and able to fight as relentlessly on its behalf.
He has spent the past two decades pushing Congress to recognize those who had breathed the toxic dust—and the impact it had on them. It was rarely an easy sell. He faced skepticism about the science, questions about who should pay, and lawmakers who sometimes dismissed him outright. But he doggedly persisted, bringing sick responders with him and refusing to let their illnesses be separated from what they had endured at Ground Zero. His persistence helped secure and repeatedly renew the World Trade Center Health Program and the Victim Compensation Fund.
“There is no legislation without John Feal,” attorney and longtime 9/11 advocate Michael Barasch told the Daily Beast. “The 9/11 community owes him a debt of gratitude.”
While Feal dedicated his life to fighting legislative battles in D.C., I was rebuilding mine.
When my husband and I were finally allowed back into our apartment on September 23, the dust was still there. For months, as the cleanup continued downtown, it seemed to find its way into everything. Each morning I would wipe it from tables and countertops, stuffing wet washcloths beneath the windows, hoping to keep whatever remained outside from coming in. But the dust never completely disappeared. When we moved out in 2005, I was still finding traces of it in the nooks and crannies of our home.
We still have a home a few blocks from the World Trade Center and I’ve worked as a New York City tour guide since 1995, regularly bringing visitors to Ground Zero. I first met Feal through the 9/11 Visionary Network, a 9/11 Museum-sponsored group dedicated to keeping the story of September 11 alive for future generations.
But I never imagined that, 24 years later, I would become part of the story I had spent so long telling.
In January 2025, my doctor called. “You have uterine cancer,” she said. The words knocked the air out of me. There was no history of uterine cancer in my family. I couldn’t understand how, or why, this had happened. Within months, I underwent a full hysterectomy.
Then came another surprise. Doctors certified my cancer as related to my exposure to the World Trade Center disaster. Suddenly, the dust I had spent years wiping from my apartment wasn’t just a memory. It was a diagnosis.
When the Twin Towers collapsed, they released a toxic cloud of pulverized concrete mixed with asbestos, jet fuel, glass fibers, heavy metals, and hundreds of other hazardous substances. These microscopic particles settled over Lower Manhattan, coating skin, clothing, food, homes, and lungs. The dismantling of “the pile” kept the toxins circulating in the air. Responders, residents, office workers, students, teachers, and anyone nearby breathed it in, oblivious to the damage it caused years or even decades later.
In an instant, Feal’s story overlapped with mine. Until my diagnosis, I had never given much thought to how the 9/11 funds came into existence. Now I can’t stop. The care I receive today exists in part because Feal fought to make it possible, including expanding the list of illnesses recognized as 9/11-related. Uterine cancer was added in 2023, making me one of the people who directly benefited from his efforts.
To this day, Feal still watches Washington the way some people watch the stock market, alert to every proposal that could weaken the programs he fought to build. And for good reason. Since returning to office in January 2025, the Trump administration has repeatedly disrupted the 9/11 funds, cutting staff, firing its longtime administrator, imposing a hiring freeze and delaying research and decisions on new 9/11-related illnesses. Some of those cuts were later reversed after bipartisan pressure, and Congress has since secured long-term funding. But the moves have been both damaging and unsettling. To those ends, Feal has a pointed warning in his memoir’s epilogue, a reminder that advocacy has no finish line:
I will not let this administration undo what thousands of people have given their lives for. You will not destroy a program and those it serves with your nonsensical rhetoric and reckless actions. While you have clearly shown those who wish to destroy this country that you have forgotten about the sacrifices the 9/11 community has made since September 11, 2001, I will show those same people that there are people with spines who will stand up for each other in need and in an instant.
Every September, Americans promise to “Never Forget.” Most of us think that means remembering the nearly 3,000 people who died on September 11, 2001, and it should. But on this 25th anniversary, a seventh bell will toll for the first time, honoring all who have died from related health effects and complications, reminding everyone that 9/11 didn’t end on 9/11. I will be listening to it chime at the Memorial Glade section of the memorial, a space dedicated to the 400,000 who have been exposed to the toxins, knowing I am part of that unfinished story.
And that’s what “Never Forget” means to me now.
