As the FDNY goalkeeper, ” Lieutenant Joseph Laboint He went to hundreds of management ceremonies, the results of the firefighters funeral and about twenty anniversary on September 11.
On Thursday, his last one will be.
Days after reading the last victim’s name in the 9/11 Zero Memorial Service service in Lower Manhattan, Lapointe will retire After more than 20 years of running FDNY festive unit and over 35 years in the section.
Later this month, Lapointe is 65 years old, the mandatory retirement age for FDny. He indicated that he retired a year before the twenty -fifth anniversary of 11/19, a ceremony that was part of each year.
“If I have my choice, then I may stay another year,” said Laboint. “I have a feeling I will be there in a kind of capacity.”
As a long time for the celebrations, Lapointe has coordinated everything from the department to Line of Duty.
The role of Lapointe was never offered more than the weeks that followed the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001 when 343 They died in the rubble One of the towers of the World Trade Center that has sustained the kidnapped aircraft.
At the estimate of Lapointe, there were about 25 funerals per day in the weeks that followed the darkest day in the city. Lapointe not all went to them, but he went to more than most of them.
It was more than dozens, as he often planned for festive details, as he literally carried the hands of survivors from the moment when they learned the terrible news in the hospital until dirt hit a coffin in a quiet cemetery.
“We are honored to be able to spend the worst day in their lives and make it a little better,” said Laboint. “I didn’t say,” Oh, we must do this again. “This is what we do.
Lapuent said he lost many friends and co -workers on September 11, but significantly, no one was killed by what he considered his inner circle.
He did not suffer from this type of loss until 2008 when Fdny Lt. John Martinson, 40, He died after he became trapped in a smoking fire in Brooklyn Field apartments.
Martinson, like Laboint, was a citizen of Statin Island – and a former policeman.
Lapuent said that when a firefighter became two years later as a six -year correction officer with the New York police, he had difficulty amending.
“I liked to be a policeman,” said Lapointe, who was working on details in the bile boxes in the Times box in the 1980s. “For a long time, I was a policeman in the firefighters. In the end you are moving.”
The father of this Lapuent helped a firefighter.
Lapointe worked on his way to the highest ranks, and in 2001, he was promoted to the lieutenant, he was appointed to the 114 lame in Sunseet Park. He was out of service on Statin Island, where he lived, when he saw the smoke columns that rise from the twin towers. He continued with a local rescue unit, and went to the lower Manhattan on the phrase.
“While we were going, when the towers were descending,” he said. “It was a total chaos.”
Since 2007, Lapointe has been the leader in The festive unit, Organize every wake up for all FDNY Firefters & EMS employees and all those who died related diseases in the events of September 11.
He said: “Somehow seems to be before forever.” “Then it seems yesterday.”