9/11 First Responder Fights For 'Unsung Heroes'

Before 9/11, Marvin Bethea was in peak physical shape. At 41, the former athlete, who had ran 25 miles in a typical week in high school, worked three very physical jobs as a paramedic, a role he took great pride in.

It was that passion that propelled Bethea to save numerous lives while risking his own when the Twin Towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, but, nearly a decade later his life remains forever changed. 

Like so many first responders who answered the call without hesitation that day, Bethea, now 51 and a resident of West Hempstead, suffers with physical and mental health conditions.

"Every day is a constant reminder," he says.

He can't run down the block or even sit outside on a humid or cold day without putting himself at risk of having an asthma attack. He has an oxygen tank in his home along with a countertop full of medications, 15 in total, for everything from restricted airway disease and sinusitis to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Worst of all for the self-described "workaholic," was having to give up his job because of his new physical limitations.

"[When] the doctor said to me, 'You're done, No more work,' I was devastated," Bethea said. "I went home and I cried."

On the morning of Sept. 11, Bethea, his partner and one paramedic student were on their way back from a Queens hospital and heading to a deli for breakfast when a Signal 40 came over their radios - a plane crash.

"It was such a bright clear day. We didn't realize the magnitude of it," Bethea says.

Although Bethea worked for a for St. Johns Hospital of Queens, the private hospital was one of a number of area medical centers contracted by the City of New York to be part of its 911 response system.

At the time, he explained, "55 percent of paramedics like myself came from private hospitals."

His ambulance was directed to meet other EMS vehicles on the 59th Street Bridge, where he would witness the second plane strike the South Tower before making his way to the World Trade Center.

"When we arrived it was total chaos. Buildings on fire. Injured people. Sightseers. Everyone was screaming 'I need a medic! I need a medic!" Bethea recalls, sometimes stopping to catch his breath or let out a throaty cough.

He quickly sprang into action, treating a group of injured people inside a bank located a block and a half from the WTC. When he stepped outside to flag down an ambulance, he suddenly heard someone shout, "Tower! Tower!" and looked up to see the South Tower start to crumble.

"I told everyone to take shelter [inside the bank]," Bethea says. "It sounded like an earthquake getting louder and louder and then it was on top of us. I thought I was dead and said to himself, 'God, just get it over with.'"

Bethea survived the collapse, emerging from the bank gasping for air, covered with debris and feeling "like someone dumped a bucket of dirt down [his] throat."

He then remembered that his friend, Carlos, had gone inside the tower to search for his wife, unaware that she had already evacuated the building.

"I didn't realize that was the last time I would speak to him," Bethea says of the brief conversation they shared moments before.

The student was also missing, and after loading up several injured into their ambulance, he had to part ways with his partner too.

"As he drove off a woman came out of the North Tower crying, bleeding and saying 'I'm not going to make it!" Bethea recalls.

As he treated her, he heard a familiar rumbling sound. The second tower was falling. He grabbed her hand pulling her into a hotel in the nick of time, saving her life and cheating his own death yet again.

 "I felt like I was last person on earth," he recalled as he stepped back onto the streets again. "All you could see were vehicles on fire, bodies... I couldn't hear anyone."

Then, what seemed like a mirage at first, he spotted his ambulance driving toward him. His partner had found him. The two were directed to lower Manhattan to set up a makeshift hospital for the injured but after hours of waiting, the ambulances returned empty.

"There were no patients. They were all dead," he said.

Bethea had survived 9/11, but he would never be the same.

"I went back to work the very next day which I shouldn't have done, but I didn't want to be home," he said, admitting that he cried every single night for more than a month and hardly slept. "So many of us were in denial with depression because we had these tough macho jobs."

In mid-October, he suffered a stroke, which temporarily paralyzed him and deprived him of his speech, but remarkably, he pushed himself to make a full recovery so he could return to work.

By 2003 though, the breathing problems he had developed had worsened, doctors diagnosed him with asthma and after three hospitalizations, he was told he could no longer perform his job.

To make matters worse, the federal government continues to block his attempts to receive the benefits granted to the majority of 9/11 first responders.

He's been awarded plaques, successfully brought about state legislation on behalf of himself and fellow paramedics but finds himself in a stalemate with the U.S. Justice Department. Bethea, who co-founded the Unsung Heroes Helping Heroes foundation, says they are ignoring an application his lawyer submitted on behalf of himself and seven other paramedics (four from Long Island) who were employed by private hospitals but were directed by the city's emergency system to go to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

"We didn't have a choice on 9/11. We couldn't say it was too dangerous, because we could've faced breach of contract with the city, derelict of duty...criminal charges," he says. "We were very proud to do our job but don't send me into the fire and then tell me if you do get burned we don't know you."

The fight for the rights and recognition that Bethea believes he and his fellow paramedics qualify for has left him "enraged" and "insulted," and saddled with more than $25,000 in legal fees.

"I'm proud of the service I did. I am proud to be American...but we're being treated like garbage," he says.

While the money is important since he is unable to work, he says the recognition, including the Medal of Valor, are what he most desires. He hopes to one day place a replica of the medal on his late sister’s grave, adding, "She always said I was a hero."

Marvin Bethea will never forget 9/11. He lives with it every day.

"I went grocery shopping and some lady saw me struggling to carry my bags up a flight of stairs and asked to help, but pride got in the way."

After dismissing her, he huffed-and-puffed and barely made it up the stairs and then broke down crying.

"I could remember there was time I could've not only carried my groceries up those stairs, but I could've also carried her."