Remembering John Vigiano Sr., Retired FDNY Captain
Today we pay tribute to John Vigiano Sr., a retired FDNY captain whose two sons followed him into service and were killed on 9/11. John Vigiano Sr. died this weekend after a battle with cancer.
Vigiano’s sons both became first responders. John T. Vigiano II was a firefighter and Joseph Vincent Vigiano was an NYPD detective. The Vigiano brothers responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Vigiano was a member of the Band of Dads, a group of fathers who searched for their sons, many of whom were first responders, in the wreckage of Ground Zero.
In this StoryCorps remembrance recorded after 9/11, John Sr. remembers his sons and reflects on coping with his tremendous loss.
“There’s not many people that the last words they said to their son or daughter was ‘I love you,’” said Vigiano. “And the last words [Joe and John] heard was ‘I love you.’ So that makes me sleep at night.”
By 9/11 Memorial Staff
Last week, the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened its new special exhibition “Comeback Season: Sports After 9/11” to the public. “Comeback Season” has received local and national media coverage to mark its opening.
A year following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Joseph Pellegrini, vice president of business operations for The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC), received a Brink’s U.S Global Services envelope recovered from Ground Zero. In 2001, the OCC used Brink’s to send correspondence back and forth between the company’s headquarters in Chicago and its New York office at 17 State Street.