Jack Lynch got a text message late Sunday night. Peter Regan saw the headlines Monday morning. Sharon Engeldrum took a phone call.
Nearly 10 years after 9/11, terror boss Osama Bin Laden – responsible for the deaths of so many Bronx loved ones – had been shot and killed by Navy SEALs.
For Lynch, who lost a son on 9/11, and Regan, who lost his father, and Engeldrum, whose 9/11 responder husband later died in Iraq, the news was a welcome but sobering shock.
“Justice has been served,” said Lynch, 75, still mourning son Michael, a firefighter. “They reached the kingpin – the founder of Al Qaeda.”
But the terror leader’s death won’t bring back Michael, a Throgs Neck kid who rushed to the World Trade Center with Engine 40 from the upper West Side, his father said.
“That was my first thought,” he said, sadly. “It changes nothing for me. The grief exists forever.”
Lynch called the raid of Bin Laden’s Pakistani compound a “terrific blow” struck for America.
“We’re in a war against terrorism and we have to win,” he said. “I knew America would get Bin Laden eventually. It sends an important message to the terrorists – don’t fool with America.”
But reading about the raid, Regan felt no relief – just a pang for his father, Donald, a veteran firefighter who rode to the twin towers with the Bronx’s Rescue 3.
Minus Bin Laden, the terrorist threat lives on, he said.
“There were so many reports over the years – he’s dead, he’s not dead,” said Regan, who became a firefighter himself in 2004. “I’m glad he’s gone. You want it to be over. But call me a cynic – I think the work’s not done.”
Engeldrum is proud of the soldiers who took down Bin Laden and said her husband, Army Sgt. Christian Engeldrum, would have been, too.
A firefighter and former National Guardsman from Throgs Neck who reenlisted after working at Ground Zero, he was killed in Iraq in 2004. [NYDailyNews]