Remembering the Long Islanders we lost on 9/11, 25 years later

A firefighter who followed his son into the towers. A bride of 94 days. A pilot who helped save the Capitol. GLI revisits 6 of the nearly 500 Long Island lives lost 25 years ago today

Twenty-five years ago today, nearly 500 Long Islanders kissed their families goodbye, boarded trains into the city, climbed onto firetrucks or buckled into airplane seats — and never returned home.

They were traders and firefighters, PTA parents and youth sports coaches, newlyweds and grandparents, representing nearly every community from Floral Park and Great Neck to Montauk and Greenport.

A quarter-century later, their names are still read aloud every Sept. 11 at ceremonies from Point Lookout to Babylon to Ground Zero. They’re part of memorial walls that keep continue to be filled with names as illness claims more first responders each year.

What follows below are the stories of six of those Long Islanders — a small sampling of the many, many residents of Nassau and Suffolk lost that day.

Joseph John Angelini Sr. and Joseph John Angelini Jr., Lindenhurst

Joseph John Angelini Sr., 63, was the FDNY’s longest-serving firefighter at the time and had reportedly dreaded retirement, according to his wife, Anne.

On light duty that September, the Lindenhurst dad was barred from active rescues. But when he learned his 38-year-old son, Joseph Jr., part of Ladder Co. 4, had been sent to the World Trade Center, there was no holding him back. He grabbed his gear and rushed in after his boy.

Joseph Jr., who considered his father a hero, had already helped form a human chain to free a woman trapped in an elevator shaft in the South Tower.

The Angelinis never made it out. They are remembered as the only father-and-son firefighter pair lost during the 9/11 attacks.

“In some way, I’m glad they were together,” Anne Angelini told the Daily News in 2001. “There is no way they could bear the heartbreak of losing each other.”

Today, Joseph Jr.’s son, Joseph Angelini III, carries on the family name as a working FDNY firefighter.

Kristy Irvine-Ryan, Huntington Bay

A Huntington Bay native and St. Anthony’s High School graduate, Kristy Irvine-Ryan worked as an equities trader for Sandler O’Neill & Partners on the 104th floor of the South Tower. She was 30 years old.

Three years earlier before she died in the attack on the World Trade Center, she co-founded the charity Secret Smiles with friends, anonymously delivering gifts to families in need each holiday season.

To this day, the organization lives on as Secret Smiles of Dayton, Inc. Named for her alma mater, it has provided more than 10,500 beds to children in the Ohio community.

Irvine-Ryan and her husband, Brendan Ryan, met when they were both 12 and told college friends she’d marry him one day. They were married for 94 days before she died.

“We always knew we would end up together,” Brendan said in 2001.

Brendan’s 1990s indie band, The Bogmen, returns to Webster Hall in Manhattan tonight for a 25th-anniversary tribute show, with Vapors of Morphine featuring Dana Colley as special guests. It’s a tradition the band has kept alive in Kristy’s memory since regrouping for benefit concerts just months after Irvine-Ryan’s death.

Michael Carlo, Long Beach

A bench on the Long Beach boardwalk carries the name of Michael Carlo, a 34-year-old FDNY firefighter with Engine 230 and a lifelong “adventure seeker,” according to his family.

Carlo kayaked, sailed, co-founded the FDNY’s volleyball team and had competed in the Police and Fire Olympics in Sweden.

He had booked a trip to the British Virgin Islands to earn his sailing captain’s certification, set to leave Sept. 12. His older brother, Rob, also responded that day and survived, later retiring from the fire department in 2005.

After Carlo’s death, his family found a Post-it note above his desk with a quote from Mark Twain. It’s now engraved on the boardwalk bench: “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones that you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Ana Fosteris, Coram

Ana Fosteris emigrated from Romania to New York in 1969 and, according to her husband, Michael, “considered it the best place in the world.” She made the grueling 4 a.m. commute from Coram to the Long Island Rail Road and into 2 World Trade Center for years, working as an insurance broker for Aon Corp. in the South Tower. It was a job she loved.

She loved shopping and dressing up downtown, too.

“She couldn’t put up with the dress code on Long Island,” Michael Fosteris recalled. “It’s so casual.”

Remembered by loved ones as funny, energetic and caring, Ana Fosteris, 58, was also devoted to opera. She had told her husband the weekend before her death that she wanted the aria “Ah, la paterno mano” played at her funeral. It was a request her family honored, playing the song in the car after her memorial service.

Brian Thomas Thompson, Dix Hills

Family called Brian Thomas Thompson the “weekend man” — a Dix Hills dad who lived for trips to Robert Moses State Park, football and roller hockey games, and karaoke nights, according to a 2001 Newsday report. He coached Little League, showed up for PTA meetings and had just bought a new hot tub.

At 49, he was executive vice president of human resources for Fuji Bank on the 82nd floor of the second tower. He was working in the same office when he survived the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

That September, he was focused on helping his 17-year-old daughter get her college applications together.

“He was so determined to make sure she was in the best place she could be,” his wife, Kathy Thompson, said at the time. “We feel robbed of so many could-have-beens … so many should-have-beens.”

LeRoy Homer Jr., Plainview

LeRoy Homer Jr. wanted to fly for as long as anyone could remember. Growing up in Plainview, he built model airplanes, watched takeoffs at the airport on weekends and earned his pilot’s license at 16. That was before he had obtained his driver’s license or received his diploma from St. John the Baptist High School in West Islip.

He served in the Air Force during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, joined United Airlines in 1995, and met his future wife, Melodie, on a blind date at LAX.

LeRoy was first officer aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11 — one of the passengers and crew members who fought back against the hijackers, forcing the plane down in a Pennsylvania field instead of its intended target, the U.S. Capitol. He left behind his wife and their 10-month-old daughter.

“People would say to me, ‘There was a Black pilot on that flight?'” Melodie later said. “That’s how little they knew about who was in the cockpit. And that’s a huge part of the story.”

Six stories among hundreds

These six are only a fraction of what Long Island lost on Sept. 11 — the region gave up nearly 500 sons, daughters, parents and neighbors that day, and every one of them has a story like these. GLI will continue telling them in the years ahead.

_{Top: A woman mourns at the September 11 memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan ahead of a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the National September 11 Memorial in New York on Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. (Dave Sanders /The New York Times via AP, Pool)}