Day 871

9/11 memorial #205

May 19th, 2014



The FDNY lost 343 men to the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, and Firefighter Michael Paul Ragusa was the final one of them to be given an official memorial service. More than a year after 9/11, with his family holding out hope that some of his remains would be identified so they would have something to bury, his parents discovered that they could retrieve a small sample of blood he had given years before when he signed up as a potential bone marrow donor. After several more months of waiting, his parents decided it was finally time to hold his funeral, and on September 8, 2003, they buried a coffin containing only that single vial of blood.


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