mobanmarketTAMPA BAY, FL — It’s more than a day on the calendar for many Tampa Bay residents.
Eighteen years later, they continue to carry the scars from their personal stories of the Sept. 1, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Among them is Tampa Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Mark Bogush.
In 2001, Bogush was a lieutenant with Tampa Fire Rescue and a member of FEMA’s South Florida Urban Search and Rescue Team. He and his K9 partner, Marley, along with recently retired Tampa Fire Rescue Lt. Roger Picard and his K9 partner Jessie, were among the search-and-rescue professionals dispatched to Ground Zero two days after the terrorist attacks.
“When you get there, you’re very overwhelmed by what you see,” said Bogush. “It almost looks like a movie set, like it’s not real. But you know it’s real. You smell it. You feel it. You’re walking on it.”
Bogush and Marley worked the night shift for seven days straight searching for victims’ remains. As he entered and exited the site, Bogush would purposely take Marley through an area designated for the victims’ loved ones.
“Lots of hugs, lots of tears. The dogs, of course, are always a big hit. They loved the dogs to death, and it really did those families a lot of good just to know that people were still searching,” he said.
Bogush recalls the moment a photographer took a picture of him kneeling down beside Marley in the midst of the debris at Ground Zero.
“No cameras were allowed there by any of the workers or observers for security reasons,” recalled Bogush. “But FEMA had a photographer there to document the work and the devastation that occurred at Ground Zero.”
That photographer was famed film producer and photojournalist Andrea Booher, the senior photographer for FEMA at the time. Booher’s iconic image of Bogush and Marley was chosen this year to be featured on a series of limited-edition collection of four MetroCards distributed by the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, paying homage to the heroes of Ground Zero.
“You look back on the photo and it just brings everything right back as if it had just happened a week or two ago,” said Bogush. “I think the picture says it all. It shows the mud, the dirt, the mess, the rubble, the destruction. It shows the fatigue. I think it represents all of the men and women working that site for many, many months.”
Bogush said he was glad to see the image of Marley and himself included in the commemorative MetroCards because its pays tribute to the black Labrador retriever who brightened the day of the many loved ones who anxiously awaited word outside the recovery site.
Marley, who also worked search and rescue following Hurricanes Charley and Katrina, was 12 years old when she died on Feb. 4, 2009.
The release of the 250,000 commemorative MetroCards preceded the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial Glade May 30, the 17th anniversary of the official end of the recovery effort at the World Trade Center. The memorial pays tribute to the tens of thousands of rescue workers who died or became chronically ill from the toxins in the air after the attacks.
The Glade’s design includes a pathway flanked by six large stone monoliths, ranging from 13 to 18 tons, that are inlaid with World Trade Center steel accompanied by an inscription at either end of the pathway. Their design incorporates steel from the original World Trade Center site.
The memorial is located in the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, just west of the Survivor Tree, roughly where the primary ramp that was used during the rescue and recovery effort once stood. In the history of the World Trade Center, the ramp played an essential role in allowing victims’ families to access the site following the attacks.
“The Glade is honoring all those rescuers who have since lost their lives because of exposure to dangers of that particular site and even remembering those that are still with us today, such as myself,” said Bogush.
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Bogush was able to return to Ground Zero for the unveiling.
“It was a very, very tragic event for America as a whole. But one of the things I took away as a positive was to see how America came together during that period of time,” said Bogush.