One hundred and eighty flights of stairs stretched before her, more flights than either of the Twin Towers had before they fell. She had trained for this moment for months, awakening with the sunrise to practice running up and down and up the steps at Horton’s Point in Southold.
But the reality of climbing the entire One World Trade Center was now before her, and by the time she was halfway through, the 61-year-old woman began to doubt herself.
“Oh God, why am I doing this?” Debbie Horton remembers thinking to herself. And then, as she rounded a staircase, she saw a double amputee climbing ahead of her with a pair of prosthetic legs.
“He stopped at one of the landings and thanked me,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘What are you thanking me for?’ And that’s what made me want to do it again. Because if he can do it – if these veterans and first responders can do it – then I will do it beside them.”
Horton is one of a group of six local women who participated in last year’s Tunnel to Towers Climb, an experience that they described in turn as emotional, challenging and incredibly uplifting.
This spring, the group was able to snag six coveted spots in this year’s climb, which is limited to 1,000 participants and prioritizes teams from last year.
“It’s such an amazing way to say thank you,” said Edana Cichanowicz, 64. “Respect and affection are wonderful, but you want to make a contribution. You want to feel like you’re really doing something.”
The Tunnels to Towers climb raises money to build specially adapted smart homes for wounded service members. Last year’s climb raised enough money to build 200 homes.
Each climber needs to raise $350 in order to participate. As a team, the East End Warriors hope to raise $3,000 in total, and they are currently just $250 shy of that goal. (Click here to donate)
“It’s just such an amazing, amazing, amazing cause,” Cichanowicz said.
The climb is in honor of a firefighter captain who perished in the collapse of the North Tower after urging his men to evacuate the building. William “Billy” Burke refused to abandon a wheelchair-bound civilian that he was attempting to carry down the stairs and told his men, who were a few floors below, that he was “right behind them” and to go on without him.
Burke’s men made it out alive. Burke, along with the two civilians he was escorting, died in the collapse.
“For me as an American, why wouldn’t I do this?” said Donna Carnevale, who organized the team last year. “Why wouldn’t I give up myself to help someone else? How many of those people that day will never see their families again?
“As an American, we all have to come together and help each other,” Carnevale said.
The other members of the team have committed to the climb for similar reasons. Cichanowicz’s nephew was in the New York Police Department at the time of the attacks, and her brother-in-law, a Suffolk County police officer, volunteered in the clean-up effort.
“For more than a year afterward, whenever I saw fire trucks out on the LIE, I knew they were going to a funeral or a memorial service,” Chicanowicz said. “I’m crying as I say this. It touched everybody.”
“If you’re an American, you know exactly where you were the moment it happened,” Carnevale said.
This year’s team consists of five of last year’s women and one new member, a man. All residents of the North Fork and most of them lifelong athletes, the group meets each week at Horton’s Point Lighthouse in Southold to train.
“It’s just killer on your leg muscles,” Carnevale said. “You need to make sure you’re in really good shape the day of.”
But for Carnevale, the process just drives home the cause they are all training to climb for.
“Every day we go to Horton’s Point, we just think about how lucky we are that we live in this beautiful town and that we get to start our day like this,” she said. “Just think about all the people who will never recover from the trauma of that day. That’s who we’re doing this for.”
