'Don't Look Back': Joe Calderone Revisits 9/11 In Debut Novel

This Sunday marks the 21st anniversary of 9/11, a tragic and earth shattering event of epic proportions that led to America’s longest war, among other things, and has continued to shape the way in which we look at — and in turn are viewed by — the rest of the world.

Yet despite its global ramifications, at its heart, 9/11 was also a distinctly regional tragedy and one that touched New Yorkers of all political and socioeconomic levels, from CEOs with offices at the very top of the Trade Center towers, to the blue collar laborers who spent months cleaning up the smoldering remnants of the attack and, tragically, the first responders, including 343 firefighters, who lost their lives on that fateful day 21 years ago.

In his new — and first — novel “Don’t Look Back,” part-time Hampton Bays resident Joe Calderone revisits the attacks of 9/11 and its aftermath. For 25 years, Calderone, a Queens native, worked up and down the East Coast as a reporter for various print publications, including Newsday and the New York Daily News. For the past 20 years, he has been an adjunct professor at New York University where he teaches investigative reporting.

But in “Don’t Look Back,” Calderone examines the events of 9/11, not as a journalist on the ground, which, in fact, he was on that day, but as an author offering a fictitious story exploring what happened in the years that followed the attack, specifically, the quest for definitive answers from a city government that was not eager to give them.

Calderone’s protagonist is a community organizer and the mother of an FDNY rookie killed in the attack, who sets out to find out what really happened to her son and the other 342 firefighters who perished that day. Sarah teams up with an investigative reporter to take on City Hall in her quest to unearth the failures of the response on 9/11.

Using fiction to pursue a story about one of the most well-documented events in modern history is an interesting tactic, but as Calderone explained in a recent phone interview, it was one that allowed him to approach the story and his characters in a way that pure nonfiction could not.

“In the first chapter, the opening scene was inspired by a photo that ran on the front page of the New York Daily News,” Calderone said. “An amateur photographer on the roof of the Jehovah Witness building in Brooklyn snapped a photo of Ladder 118 going over the Brooklyn Bridge with the Trade Centers burning in the background. Everyone on that rig perished.

“I went the fiction route because I wanted to get inside the heads of the key players — the firefighters and their families who, for months and years, fought for answers,” he added. “I wanted to make it into a story people could relate to.”

On September 24 at 1 p.m., Calderone will be at Hampton Bays Library to talk about the writing of “Don’t Look Back,” which began, he explained, with his experience as a reporter.

“When 9/11 hit, like every reporter in town, we were all checking in with our sources,” Calderone said. “I gravitated toward the FDNY because I had sources there and had done stories on them. When they first told us they lost more than 300 guys that day, it’s an unbelievable number. We talk about firefighters being heroes, but everyone wants to come home to their family at the end of the day. To lose that many guys, even as the result of an unbelievable attack, it’s still beyond anyone’s comprehension.”

The loss hit all levels of the FDNY that day, from the newest probies to the most seasoned of chiefs.

“Every level felt the loss. That stuck with me,” said Calderone, who was working as the investigations editor at the New York Daily News on 9/11 and covered the FDNY in the aftermath of the attack, including the problems firefighters had communicating via radio that day.

“We were hearing early on that there were problems with the radios — communication problems,” Calderone explained. “Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. We did stories along those lines and it took weeks to confirm. Nobody was in the mood at the time to reexamine the response, for good reason. The search and rescue was still going on and there were months of funerals, one after the other, for both civilians and first responders.”

But the story of the utter failure in communication at Ground Zero continued to haunt Calderone in the years that followed.

“It’s one of those stories that stuck with me. I always felt the story of what happened to the firefighters was not fully told, though it was one of the biggest events in the history of the world and New York City,” he said. “Those firefighters were rushing in when everyone was going out. I wanted to tell that story and the story of their families.”

As his entry point into “Don’t Look Back,” Calderone turned to “The 9/11 Commission Report,” which was published by the federal government in 2004 and examined in detail both the international and national implications of the attacks.

“The city’s response is covered in chapter 9. There was difficulty with command and control at the scene,” said Calderone. “The attack occurs just at the shift change. Firefighters were supposed to get off duty as the attack happens, but instead they jump on rigs. They don’t want to miss it. There were a lot more responders than maybe was good. Very few people read chapter 9 of ‘The 9/11 Commission Report’ so I decided to take those issues and put them in a story the public could relate to.”

The response problems were many that day — not only given the compromised functionality of the firefighters’ radios, but also due to communication issues between the police and fire departments which often didn’t share information with the other.

“The battle of the badges is kind of famous. Does it still go on? It probably does,” said Calderone “That’s the job of the city to try and make sure uniform services are cooperating and at the very least, know what is going on.

“Tom Von Essen, the FDNY Commissioner, had written a book and he admitted the commanders in the lobby of the Trade Center had less information than the public who saw what was happening,” he added. “The repeater that boosted radio signals was on one of the lower Trade Center buildings that was destroyed. It was unprecedented.”

In telling the story of “Don’t Look Back,” Calderone decided to steer clear of real-life protagonists involved in the response and instead created a cast of characters who represent a composite of those he met as a reporter.

“Most of the story is after the attack, so I tried to take readers into City Hall, and then tell the story of the families and how they were dealing with it,” he said. “But I want to be clear, it’s not journalism, it’s a fictitious account and an attempt to bring these issues to life. I had never written a novel before, it was definitely not easy.

“One of the main characters is Juan Gomez, a reporter for a fictitious tabloid. He’s covering the disaster and through his sources at City Hall and the fire department, he’s hearing rumblings about the problems with the radios,” Calderone said. “There are also two strong female characters, one is Sarah Murphy, a community organizer whose son is a probie killed on 9/11. She becomes determined to get answers and becomes a public face on that issue. Another is Mary Sullivan who is inside City Hall and worked as top aide to the mayor when her husband perished in the attack. At first, she’s reluctant to get involved because of her career, but eventually she learns about some of the problems and assists Juan in unearthing the story.”

As a journalist who covered the aftermath of 9/11 firsthand, Calderone recalls that at the time, the city had a coordinated message to share which was, “Don’t blame us. The terrorists did this.”

“The official sources all kind of adopted a ‘Don’t look back’ motto — the title of the book was the line the government spokespeople adopted. ‘Don’t blame us.’ There were so many other people who wanted that truth to come out, there were certainly lots of folks in government who were willing to help tell the story.”

When asked if, more than two decades later, there are still unanswered questions related to the 9/11 response, Calderone said, “I think there’s a question about what the communications are today and if, God forbid, something like this happens again, would we be ready?

“It’s still a very raw memory for those of us who lived it. It seems like yesterday, but we’re almost 21 years out. I think it’s about the right time to take a look with a historical lens,” he said. “I hope my former sources will see the larger issues I was trying to bring to light.”

Author Joe Calderone discusses his book “Don’t Look Back” on Saturday, September 24, at 1 p.m. at Hampton Bays Public Library, 52 Ponquogue Avenue, Hampton Bays. For details visit hamptonbayslibrary.org or call 631-728-6241.