Retired Firefighter Recounts His 9/11 Experience With Chatham Students

CHATHAM, NJ — Robert Penn, a Chatham native and retired Bloomfield firefighter who was at Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, visited Chatham High School last week to discuss his experience with students, the school district announced.

Students were free to ask Penn questions about his experience during their lunch break, and he responded by sharing anecdotes and insights he learned as a result of his service.

“Bob Penn is a Chatham resident, father of a CHS graduate, and a retired NYC firefighter who served at Ground Zero in the wake of 9/11, giving him not only an inestimable value of experience to share, but an understanding of the audience he is sharing it with,” School District of the Chathams Social Studies Supervisor Steven Maher said.

Penn was a captain in the Bloomfield Fire Department at the time, and he volunteered in New York City during the rescue and recovery activities following the World Trade Center collapse. He and his entire department entered the city and went to the Javits Center, where they were given instructions for rescue and recovery activities.

Students questioned why the attack had occurred, and Penn said that the assailants' acts were the result of their failure to think for themselves and their acceptance of a destructive ideology fed to them by others.

Penn also emphasized how Americans of all backgrounds joined together and supported one another across New York City in the days following the attacks, and he stated that he had never seen a community come together as quickly as the tri-state area did in the aftermath of the attacks.

"Penn's visit provided students with a unique opportunity to talk with a person whose first-hand experience of 9/11 can help them appreciate both the gravity of the event and the tremendous response it provoked among Americans in its immediate aftermath," Maher said. "As a firefighter at the Towers site after the attacks, Bob's stories and answers to student questions gave us all a personal, ground-level perspective of individual experiences of a monumental event in our past. Imagine it's 1961, and you have a chance to sit down with a first responder to the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

Penn also left students with the idea that doing things for others and putting people first is how Americans can restore the trust that has eroded in the decades following the 9/11 attacks.

“Americans are at our best when things are at their worst,” Penn told students.

He noted that the current cultural moment is one of divisiveness and animosity, with Americans more divided than ever before, but he told students that if we remember that "there's room for everyone here" and that hatred is not the answer, we can treat people with respect and begin to turn the tide of our country's current cultural divisiveness.

“A prominent theme in Mr. Penn's presentation was the way the attack made differences among people disappear as everyone in the area united in their efforts to rescue victims and comfort their families. Students hear so much about divisiveness among Americans today; Penn's recollection of the way people came together at that time is an important and valuable message of the opposite," Maher said.

Thirteen Chatham residents died during the 9/11 attacks. They are Donald L. Adams, Dennis Buckley, Paul S. Gilbey, Gary R. Haag, Anthony P. Infante Jr.; Robin B. Larkey, Christian H. Maltby, Philip W. Mastrandrea, Peter C. Moutos, Thomas Strada, Kenneth J. Swenson, William R. Tieste and Peter M. West.