Remembering from Las Vegas: Ex-NYC firefighter reflects on 9/11

When Ed Bergen woke up on his first day of retirement after 23 years as a New York City fireman, he walked downstairs to find his wife crying.

He looked at the TV and saw a second plane hit the World Trade Center, then watched both towers collapse. It was Sept. 11, 2001.

Bergen had retired the day before, with plans to move to Las Vegas with his wife and their then-3-year-old son. But those plans were delayed after the devastating attack.

After watching the collapse on TV, Bergen said, he grabbed his gear and drove to Manhattan.

“I just kind of witnessed everything; there was really nothing for me to do,” Bergen, 68, said. “It was kind of over, as far as rescues go.”

He said he ran into some people he knew and ultimately ended up at New York City Fire Department Ladder Company 3, known as “3 Truck.”

“When I got there it seemed very still, very complete — a catastrophe,” Bergen said, calling the attacks “the worst thing that could happen.”

“So I went back to my old firehouse, then over to 3 Truck, which lost the most guys, and I just was hanging around with the guys that showed up,” he said. “It was pretty solemn.”

He said the scene was overwhelming, and he wasn’t sure how he could help. He lost many friends that day, including firefighter Michael T. Carroll. He keeps Carroll’s memorial handout in his fireman’s hat, which is on display in his living room.

Bergen said he and his wife, Annette, had visited Las Vegas in May 2001 and ended up looking at real estate while they were in town. Despite no prior plans, they bought a house, decided he would retire and planned to move to Las Vegas in September 2001. He says the decision saved his life.

But the move was delayed so he could attend funerals and memorial services for his friends and colleagues lost in the attacks.

The department tried to get him and anyone else who had retired in the past six months to come back to work and help fill the void that was left after Bergen said roughly 10 percent of the force was killed that day, but he couldn’t do it. He needed a fresh start with his family, and they moved to Las Vegas on Dec. 5, 2001.

Many New York City firefighters retire to Colorado, New Jersey or Florida, Bergen said, but he doesn’t know of many who ended up in Las Vegas. While in town, though, he said he has become good friends with Danny Serrano, a captain with the Henderson Fire Department.

Remembering from Las Vegas

Serrano said Bergen has been one of his best friends since their kids started kindergarten together in 2003. He said Bergen, who was still recovering from the trauma of the attacks, was “a tough nut to crack” for the first few years of their friendship, but their wives brought them together because Serrano was in the first few years of his firefighting career.

As the families got closer, Serrano said, his friend started opening up and sharing his 9/11 story and telling stories of the men who died, whose photos hang in the garage of Bergen’s Summerlin home.

“I just remember him telling me, ‘All my best friends died that day,’ and that shook me,” Serrano said. “And he told me, he said, ‘Do me a favor, don’t ever forget.’”

So to keep the memory of the 343 firefighters who died that day alive, Serrano helped organize a memorial at New York-New York every Sept. 11 for about 15 years, and he said firefighters from departments across the valley were invited to march and hold a moment of silence to honor the fallen.

Each year he would invite Bergen, but it wasn’t until about the 10-year anniversary that his friend took him up on the offer.

“I’ve always had this understanding of, OK, Sept. 11 is coming up, so Ed is going to go into hibernation for a couple weeks,” Serrano said. “You’ve gotta give him some space. But out of the blue one year he said, ‘Hey, I’d like to go,’ and that was kind of a landmark moment in our relationship when it came to 9/11.”

Serrano remembers picking Bergen up to go to the memorial that year, and he was surprised to see his friend open the door in his dress uniform. When his wife picked up his hat off the shelf in their living room, she saw the photo of Bergen’s late friend Carroll inside. “Hi, Mikey,” she said before handing the hat to her husband and sending him off to the memorial.

“Seeing even a little moment like that, it’s just like, wow, and they just carry on,” Serrano said of the couple’s growth over the past two decades. “But they always tell stories about the men who died and keep their memories alive.”

Bergen said he has gone to a couple of memorial services over the years, but he usually stays home and remembers the solemn experience in his own way. And that’s the most he said he can ask of anyone as Sept. 11 approaches.

“Pretty simply, don’t forget,” Bergen said. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“Contact Alexis Ford at aford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow on Twitter.