Remembering FDNY Brothers From Seaford, Lost on 9/11

SEAFORD, NY — The terrorist attacks of 9/11 made a huge hole in the heart of the Haskell family. FDNY brothers Timothy (Timmy) and Thomas (Tommy) Haskell were killed that day, as their sister Dawn Haskell-Carbone reflects on 20 years without them.

“Each year hits me differently,” Dawn said. “I never want it to be this far away because that just takes me so much further from the memories that I have of them... It’s not like I’ll ever forget the memories that I have of them, but you have no other memories to replace it.”

The Haskells were graduates of Seaford High School.

Tommy was in the Class of 1982. Timmy was part of the Class of 1985 and was on the school’s wrestling, football and lacrosse teams. He also had a love of water, as you’d often find him in a boat or on water skis.

The Haskells were among five school alumni who perished on 9/11.

Unbeknownst to each other, the first responders were drawn to the Twin Towers like magnets. They met their fate at different towers.

Tommy worked for Ladder 132 in Brooklyn, and was acting as captain, but about to be named battalion chief.

“Tommy was very focused and driven,” Haskell-Carbone told Patch. “He always wanted to be a fireman.”

Timmy was with Squad 18 in the West Village but with renovations, they shared space with Ladder 20.

Tommy’s company was summoned after Flight 175 barreled into the South Tower.

Finished with his shift before heading to the subway, he saw smoke across the skyline from the World Trade Center. Timmy called his girlfriend and said that he needed to go back to work. As several firefighters already went home, he joined another colleague in a spare truck.

Haskell-Carbone, who still lives in Seaford, was a teacher for the blind, traveling to separate schools. Before starting her first class on September 11, her mom called about the first “accidental” plane crash into the Twin Towers at 8:46 a.m. Moments later, she saw the horror of a second crash, changing everything for her in a heartbeat.

“In my gut, I knew Tommy was there,” she said.

Haskell-Carbone also recalled that Timmy’s Squad 18 had been involved in terrorist training, including Anthrax on the subway.

By the time she arrived at her third school, the first tower had collapsed.

“But, never thinking that they would have been inside the building,” she said. “I was just thinking about all the crap they were going to see and the trauma that they were going to have to deal with.”

Tommy, who was 37, married his high school sweetheart, Barbara, and had three daughters. They were married in 1988.

Not only did Tommy love being a firefighter and spending time with his family, he also enjoyed playing football at Seaford High School and at St. John’s University. Tommy enrolled with the FDNY in 1985 before finishing college.

“He still completes and graduates in time,” Dawn said. “He was just that focused.”

Haskell’s father was a firefighter as well. He died before 9/11. Their mother Maureen is a strong woman, but losing two children “is definitely not easy for her,” Dawn Haskell-Carbone said.

As unthinkable as it was for the Haskell family, another FDNY brother was supposed to work but called out. It was his wife's first day back from maternity leave on 9/11/01 and Kenny had to take his newborn son to the pediatrician.

But Kenny and his firefighter cousin Frankie would soon be involved in the 9/11 recovery. They would go firehouse to firehouse, looking for volunteers, on a personal mission.

“I don’t think any fireman thought, ‘Let me stay home, watch this TV and see what happens,” Haskell-Carbone said. “Their mission was to find Tommy and Timmy, or whatever they could, as they were looking.”

That afternoon, as expected, Kenny got confirmation that his brothers went to the World Trade Center and he would tell their mom and Tommy’s wife Barbara.

Haskell-Carbone was calling Timmy's cell phone, nonstop in those first days, while staying with her mother.

“We’re thinking maybe he had it in his jacket and somebody would hear [it] ringing. But it was actually in his locker,” she remembered.

Early Wednesday, September 12, Kenny asked Dawn to come to his firehouse and relayed that it seemed unlikely that they would be found alive.

“Everything fell out of me,” she recalled.

Timmy’s body was found on September 15 with other firefighters from his Squad 18. He was 34 and joined the FDNY in 1993 after joining the Nassau County Sheriff’s Department at age 21.

“I didn’t give up on Tommy for a while,” she said.

Neither did his brother Kenny, who remained on “The Pile” for weeks, until Tommy’s wife had a semblance of closure with a memorial service in November.

Tommy’s body was never found.

“When they started moving everything to the landfill [on] Staten Island that was devastating to my mother,” Haskell-Carbone said. “That pulverized stuff is her son.”

While this is a milestone anniversary to commemorate her brothers, she manages to decompartmentalize the trauma.

“Maybe I can drive to work this year without sobbing hysterically,” she said. “But I still think it’s just as tough.”