Long Beach to hold 9/11 memorial services this weekend

Every year on Sept. 11, Long Beach resident Rob Carlo visits a memorial bench on the boardwalk between New York and Grand Boulevard in his brother Michael’s name, where he gathers with friends and family to remember the 34-year-old venerated firefighter from Engine 230 in Bedford Stuyvesant, who was killed when the first tower collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

“We have a bench with my brother’s name on it … and every Sept. 11, before the sunset, we go up there and celebrate his life,” said Carlo, who retired from the FDNY in 2005. “We started a tradition right after the first anniversary. I don’t get to see his friends from Queens too often, and they usually have a new story for me every time.”

It has been 10 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center, and Carlo and many others who lost loved ones that day say that their wounds can never fully heal. He vividly remembers their time spent playing volleyball on the beach — both brothers were avid players — in a city that they had just called home after moving to the West End from Whitestone.

“He actually moved to Tennessee Avenue in 2000, and I moved to Nevada in August of 2001, but we had owned homes on Delaware and Indiana,” Carlo said, adding that he is only three years older than Michael. “We were best friends, we owned a contracting business at the time, as well as being firemen. A lot of people didn’t know we were brothers — if you met us out you would think we were best friends.”

Michael’s name is listed on the Sept. 11 memorial at Virginia Avenue, and each year, Carlo decorates it with an American flag.

“It went pretty fast, it doesn’t seem like it was 10 years,” Carlo added. “September is always hard for our family, and I usually don’t think about it until Sept. 1. But with the 10th anniversary coming up, and the death of Osama bin Laden in May, September came early this year, and you have all the anxiety that goes with that, and I’ve been feeling that. [Michael] had a lot of friends in Long Beach, and they come out every year, people who have met him the past, and people who have never met him but want to honor him.”