Timmy Tyler

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Lisa Chookasezian was at home on Long Island with her husband, FDNY firefighter Noel Maitland. He had just come off a 24-hour shift at Engine 4 and Ladder 15, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, and was due a couple of days off. Bags for a surprise trip to Aruba for his 35th birthday were already packed and hidden. When the first plane struck, they watched the news. When the second plane hit, Noel left for the city. By the time he reached his firehouse the company on duty had already gone. Almost all of them reached the upper floors of the towers and died when the buildings collapsed. Noel assembled what gear he could find and spent the rest of the day searching the rubble, often without a breathing mask, looking for survivors and for the men of his own company. Hours later he collapsed from heat exhaustion and dehydration and was taken to a hospital. Lisa had heard from him only briefly. The next morning he walked back through their door wearing hospital socks, borrowed clothes, and a wristband, his face and hair still gray with soot. He fell into her arms and said, “They’re all gone.” The months that followed brought funerals, long shifts at Ground Zero, and the weight of having come home when so many had not. While the couple tried for children, tests revealed kidney cancer. Surgeons removed the tumor and saved the kidney. Later, early prostate cancer was found; that, too, was treated successfully. In 2006 their daughter Rebecca was born; their son Marc followed three years later. Noel continued in the department, rising to battalion chief and retiring after roughly thirty years. A sweatshirt a hospital nurse gave him on that first day still sits among the family’s private reminders. Lisa has said the clearest thing she carries is that her husband came home. The photographs show Noel Maitland in his gear and at the site in the days after the attacks.