Syracuse, N.Y. — AJ Calabro isn’t sure what will stir inside him running out of the tunnel Saturday afternoon in Syracuse football’s home opener against Rutgers.
It’s his first time playing on Sept. 11, suiting up in front of thousands of fans on the most emotional day of his year.
His father, Sal, was killed 20 years ago when the North Tower collapsed at the World Trade Center, a month before AJ’s second birthday.
His grandfather stepped in and helped raise him and his older brother, becoming the vessel through which their father’s story was told when nobody in the family wanted to talk about it.
“He’s the most important person to ever come through in my life,” AJ said of his grandfather.
“He dropped everything going on in his life and made sure he was a father figure in our life. He felt he never wanted my father’s name to die either, so I respect him greatly for that and everything he did for us because he didn’t need to do half of what he did for us.”
AJ, a fourth-year defensive back and the unofficial team barber from New Jersey who joined the program ahead of the 2018 season, turned down money from smaller schools to pay for his schooling and play big-time football at Syracuse University.
He stuck his grandfather’s New York City detective badge to the prayer card from his funeral two years ago, reminding him, when football gets tough, why he rises for 6 a.m. summer workouts and throws his 5-foot-10, 195-pound body into players twice his size for little playing time in return.
When AJ picks up his phone, his grandfather’s photo is right there, arm slung around Sal’s shoulder with a smile that helps explain why he helped raise AJ and his brother.
They were the sons Francis Carillo never had. He took them to Dick’s and bought their sports equipment. He coached them and never missed a game. When AJ’s family moved from Staten Island to New Jersey, sure enough, Pappy moved into a nearby retirement community to be close to his grandsons.
He did all this because he understood how difficult it was for the boys’ mother, the same way Sal understood his mom’s struggle raising a family on her own by honoring her with a tattoo on his left arm with the date of her death.
Carillo loved movies and books centered around heroic figures, and Sal fit that image.
At first, he sized Sal up and was wary. He worked as a stock boy in a grocery store while taking up an apprenticeship as a jeweler. Carillo, retired NYPD before a second career in air freight, had a healthcare plan and pension that came with the certainty of a paycheck.
Sal joined the New York City Fire Department in 1987, passing a stringent test on his first try and fulfilling a dream he had since he was a boy. He married Carillo’s daughter two years later, and Sal and he instantly became close. They played on the same softball team, Carillo coaching the son he never had.
Sal always wore an American flag on his uniform. A history buff, he loved to cook and made wine in his basement. He skied, played ice hockey and joined the fire department’s football team. He spent all 14 years in the same firehouse, showing loyalty to a group of men he relished doing drill work with over and over again, passing on his knowledge to younger firefighters.
Sal was off the day of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. He wouldn’t pass up another chance to help eight years later.
He worked a shift the night before and was about to reach the Verrazzano Bridge heading home to Staten Island when he heard the news.
He called his best friend, a New York City bus driver: I’m going back.
“He didn’t have to do that,” AJ said. “He wasn’t even on the clock.”
AJ’s aunt and uncle were in the office that morning in Washington. They watched on TV from the US attorney’s office as the planes flew into the towers, then used a government emergency phone system to call Sal’s wife.
She told them Sal was on his way home, probably stuck in traffic. The details came fast, making the hours, days and weeks to come feel like a blur.
The uncle from DC went to the firehouse, collecting Sal’s toothbrush and comb from his locker. He drove Sal’s car home, bagged items for a DNA kit and nudged Sal’s wife to write up a missing persons report.
He watched as Sal’s firehouse friends dug through charred rubble with their hands, holding out hope they could lay to rest the man who suddenly hopped on the truck to join the seven-man crew on Ladder 101, riding toward the smoke billowing from the North Tower.
Rudy Giuliani called Sal a “war hero” at his funeral two months after the attack.
From there, Carillo spread his wings over AJ and his brother. He never tried to be Sal or replace Sal, and mentoring the boys came natural to him.
“He raised those kids the way he thought Sal would have raised ‘em,” said Eddie Schuyler, a family friend who served on Engine 202 in Sal’s firehouse.
Before one of AJ’s Pop Warner games played around the anniversary of Sept. 11, Carillo went out on the field and read a poem he wrote about Sal.
This is a saga about heroes,
written one infamous day.
About the heroes of Eleven-September.
This tribute to them I pay.
They rode into smoke and fire,
sounding siren and bell.
They arrived at “ground zero”
and charged into the flames of hell.
Hundreds of honored heroes,
the bravest of the brave.
On a perilous mission,
attempting to rescue and save.
Determined and eager they entered,
the towers of death and doom.
For anyone lacking courage,
There wasn’t one bit of room.
It was a furnace of flames and fury.
Thousands fleeing and running away.
But they entered the crumbling inferno,
and held their ground and stayed.
So dedicated and so valiant.
Standing so fearless and tall.
Sons, brothers, husbands and fathers,
all of them sacrificed all.
Duty, honor and courage,
a valued lesson we learned.
The respect of an entire nation,
these sainted-souls have earned.
From the ashes of death and destruction,
rose a nation united and proud,
saluting her fallen heroes,
and applauding them long and loud.
Tearful prayers rise up to the heaven.
In the churches eulogies said.
Their names are called by God himself —
in paradise — the honor roll read.
The Heroes of Eleven-September,
the world will remember them well.
Now near to their God in heaven,
now far from the flames of hell.
When AJ’s brother picked him up from the airport after SU’s bowl win in Florida three years ago, he broke the troubling prognosis for their 85-year-old grandfather’s throat cancer.
At the hospital days later, AJ visited with the man who talked his ear off about the New York Mets and taught him everything about sports, the man who left his Division I baseball team, served his country and later made sure a boy who couldn’t remember much about his father would never forget him.
“A lot through sports is how I try to connect with him now spiritually,” AJ said of his father.
“I feel like doing this, having the opportunity to play for Syracuse, big New York school, he was born and raised in New York. I feel like it’s the best way to connect with him in that way. I know this is exactly what he would want to do if he was in my position.”
When he wears a sport coat, he pins a New York City police detective mark to his lapel, a circle with sunburst edges and a blue center. And around his wrist is a red and black band honoring the city’s firemen, constant reminders of two men’s sacrifice and the surname he carries with him.
Contact Nate Mink anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-430-8253
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