Thursday, October 1, 2026
When the planes struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Jessica Ellerbe was a seventh grader sitting inside the chapel at Long Island Lutheran Middle School in Brookville.
She remembers the sudden seriousness that swept through the school. Students whose parents worked in the towers were taken from the chapel. Classes ended early, buses arrived and Ellerbe was left wondering why her father wasn’t home.
At the time, her father Leonard Ellerbe was a New York City ironworker with Local 40, working atop the Williamsburg Bridge.
“I just remember thinking, ‘oh my God, my dad is on one of the bridges’,” Jessica recalled after the planes hit the Twin Towers. “And when he works on bridges, he works all the way on the top, so I wondered if the plane got out of control — I didn’t know what happened.”
With cellphone service disrupted due to the high volume of calls Jessica, her sister, Victoria, and mother, Nicole waited at her grandmother’s house for word. Leonard finally returned that evening, to only leave again as the Uniondale Fire Department headed out to help the FDNY recover bodies as he was a volunteer and a Junior Fire Fighter adviser, leading to learn basic firefighting and rescue skills.
Jessica said he was always at Ground Zero.
“They were helping to recover bodies, and they were going over there for days,” Jessica said. “And days would turn into weeks that they were going back and forth.
“He found people that were alive and people that were not alive. I think as an adult now, realizing you were literally looking for people no matter if they were alive or not — it didn’t matter, as long as the family had a piece of them to just bring back.”
Since Leonard was going back and forth every day, he didn’t have time for himself. At home, his family made sure he had food and a proper mask to protect him from inhaling toxic fumes of the 400 tons of crushed concrete, which later affected survivors or volunteers with respiratory problems or cancer. Leonard had a collapsed lung. although he is alright now according to Jessica.
“My mom worked at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre, she always had masks and said ‘wear a mask. I don’t care what they tell you, wear it!,’ she said. “All of the ironworkers are in good physical shape because they have to be. He didn’t even know he has a lung collapse it was a few months later.”
Watching her father respond helped shape Jessica’s own path.
She had already planned to follow him into Uniondale’s junior firefighter program when she became eligible at 13. After Sept. 11, however, that desire took on a greater meaning.
“I was following his footsteps to begin with because that’s just natural,” she said. “And then after that I’m like, oh my gosh, we really need people to do this.”
After joining she became the first female chief at the department. Leonard rose to lieutenant as well. Now an ex-chief who remains active with the Uniondale Fire Department, Jessica is helping another generation understand the responsibility that comes with answering the call.
Becoming a firefighter herself has also given Jessica a different understanding of what her father did. As a child, she knew only that he kept leaving home. As a firefighter and she now understands what it meant to repeatedly enter an unprecedented disaster scene and work alongside others searching for strangers amid the devastation.
Today, passing those lessons to firefighters who came after her is part of what “never forget” means.
“I think it’s to like, remember that this can happen any day to any of us,” Jessica said, “and that we’re there to prepare the new generation of firefighters to be ready for any incident like this.”
To read more from the Herald's Remembering 9/11, 25th anniversary special section, click here.
