September 11, 2001, didn’t start out much different from any other Tuesday for the Siller family of Brooklyn, New York. Stephen Siller had gotten off duty at Brooklyn’s Squad 1 Fire Station and was going to meet his brothers for a round of golf.
En route, however, 34-year-old Stephen, a father of five, heard on his scanner that airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center towers, and he immediately returned to the station. Upon discovering that his squad had already been dispatched to the site, he grabbed his gear, jumped in his truck and headed for the Twin Towers.
With heavy traffic blocking the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Stephen donned his 60 pounds of gear and ran to the scene of the attack. He had just entered the South Tower to provide aid to those inside when it came crashing down. He was never seen again.
Making It Matter
The Siller family soon established the Tunnel to Towers Foundation to honor Stephen’s life and sacrifice and ensure he was never forgotten.
“When we first started the Foundation, we didn’t know what we were going to do, to be quite frank with you,” said Frank Siller, chairman and CEO since the organization’s founding. “We knew we wanted to help kids who lost a parent or parents, and most certainly, first responder kids who lost a parent.”
How to fund such an effort soon became the main question. The first project was to organize a 5K run through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the World Trade Center site, retracing Stephen’s heroic steps. With between 1,000 and 1,500 people, including participants and volunteers, attending, the first annual Tunnel to Towers 5k Run and Walk NYC was a great success. Incidentally, the T2T run is still held every year on the last Sunday in September.
“Soon, we were able to start funding small scholarships to three schools where Stephen attended as a child, and also Rockville Centre, where Stephen was attending when he lost both parents at age 10,” Siller said.
The Foundation’s second project was to help the first-ever quadruple amputee who had ever survived any war. Sgt. Brendan Marrocco, a Staten Island native like the Sillers, didn’t know where he was going to go next when he was released from the hospital. After Siller met him at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he quickly knew what direction the Foundation was heading.
Siller told Marrocco that the foundation would build him a mortgage-free home anywhere he wanted to live. Subsequently, T2T built and gifted to Marrocco a “smart home” in Brooklyn with all of the necessary adaptations for someone with his particular needs.
“Then I met two other quadruple amputees down at Walter Reed, and soon after there were two more,” Siller said. “So, we made a commitment to build five of these houses for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. We delivered the first house on June 11, 2011.”
A few years later, a crazed gunman killed two New York Police officers just because he wanted to kill a cop. To help their families, the Foundation paid off their mortgages to ensure they wouldn’t lose their homes. Later, when five police officers were shot by a sniper in Dallas, T2T paid off their families’ mortgages, too.
“We made a commitment that we were going to pay off every mortgage of every first responder,” Siller said. “You could be a firefighter, police officer, EMS, Border Patrol, CIA, FBI, sheriff’s office—any first responder who dies in the line of duty that leaves a young family behind in America, we are going to make sure that their family is taken care of, and we’re going to deliver them a mortgage-free home.”
The Tunnel to Towers Foundation Today
The rest, as they say, is history. From those small beginnings, T2T has grown into a behemoth of a nonprofit, helping thousands of American heroes and their families annually.
T2T now provides over 200 mortgage-free homes annually to families of fallen first responders and military heroes. Given the critical adaptations required for many of these homes and the expensive areas where they are constructed, the price tag is not just a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
If those projects weren’t daunting enough, two years ago, T2T decided to do its part to eradicate homelessness among America’s veterans.
“In the first two years, we’ve got over 10,000 homeless veterans off the street and are getting them all the comprehensive services that they need to help them assimilate back into society,” Siller said. “An American would never leave another American while serving on a battlefield, so we can’t leave them on the streets of America.”
To accomplish this task, the Foundation is buying and renovating hotels all across the country (15 have been purchased to date) and using them to house homeless veterans along with the services they need to succeed.
Providing all these services to thousands of heroes and their families each year comes with a very high price tag—in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The Foundation has about 3,000 events, ranging from runs to golf outings, put on by volunteers each year. T2T also relies heavily on several large corporate donors, estates left by individuals and wealthy individuals making significant contributions for financial assistance. However, everyday Americans who feel a deep responsibility to support first responders and their families actually cover the biggest portion of the Foundation’s expenses by donating $11 a month.
“Those big contributors donate to us, but the majority of the money comes in through $11 at a time,” Siller said. “Many people, when they go to sign up, do more than $11. But we ask for $11 a month, and that’s how we’re able to do it all.”
We Salute You
In the end, Siller, a man of deep faith, believes his fallen hero brother is proud of the significant work the Tunnel to Towers Foundation has done to help others since his heroic death on that fateful day in 2001.
“I’m sure he sees all the good that has happened because of what he did,” Siller said. “There’s no doubt that he’s proud of it. There’s no question about it.”
T2T does far more good things than we were able to describe in this brief report. To learn more about everything from the Foundation’s 9/11 Institute to its Never Forget Mobile Exhibit, visit t2t.org.
Tunnel to Towers By The Numbers
2001: Year the Tunnel To Towers Foundation was founded
200: Number of mortgage-free homes provided annually
93: Percentage of annual expenses that goes to programs
$1 Billion+: Amount committed to programs to date
Major League Tunnel to Towers Support
Hundreds of celebrities donate time and money to the T2T Foundation, but we’d like to offer a big hat-tip to the following past and present New York-based ballplayers that go above and beyond: Aaron Judge, Pete Alonso, Andy Pettitte, David Wells, Tino Martinez, Lee Mazzilli and John Franco.