Al Bucca has made six trips to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to get a look at the men accused in the plot that killed his brother Ron on Sept. 11, 2001.
A vigil that started with his first trip in 2015, has dragged on for over a decade with no resolution to the government’s criminal case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others accused of organizing the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
“I want to see the people that set 9/11 up,” said Bucca, 76. “I want to see them go to trial. It’s been going on for too long. They’ve got enough evidence. Let’s go to trial already.”
Ron Bucca: A 9/11 hero who made the ultimate sacrifice
Ron Bucca made it to the 78th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, higher than all but a few firefighters that day. His turnout coat would be found
near a woman he’d likely tried to save. He was 47, the lone fire marshal among the 343 the FDNY lost that day.
A 23-year-veteran of the FDNY from Tuckahoe, N.Y., Bucca served in the Army’s elite Green Berets regiment and later worked in defense intelligence, where his family says he took a special interest in the terror groups committed to taking down the World Trade Center.
His son, Ron Bucca Jr., said his father was among a handful in the building that day who, as they ascended the stairs, likely knew who was behind it. Bucca told his family that Al Qaeda would strike again, an intuition stemming from his work investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured Kevin Shea, a friend and firefighter who plunged several floors during the rescue.
“He would visit Kevin at the hospital, and he took that pretty personal,” Bucca Jr. said. “You know ‘Hey they bombed my city.’ People forget but we did lose people in the ’93 World Trade Center bombing and they injured his friend. So, there was this personal connection to it.”
Bucca Jr., 46, traveled to Guantanamo for 9/11 hearings in 2012. And, in the years after his father died, he enlisted in the Army and became a Green Beret, a way to connect with a father who died when he was a senior in college.
On the tenth anniversary of the attacks, he joined others who served with his father at Camp Bucca, a prison in southern Iraq named for his father. There they placed a cross fashioned from a piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center.
“It’s part of telling his story and keeping his memory alive,” said Bucca. “I forgot who said the quote, but a person dies twice. Once when they physically leave and then once people stop talking about them.”
Car rides become history lessons
The high school years had challenged their relationship. “The teen years were rough mostly because of me not him,” Bucca says. “We were constantly at each other’s throat just like a teenage boy and his dad are, however, he was always there to give me advice and make me more resilient when faced with adversity.”
Car rides turned into history lessons, even if at the time he was too young to get it. “Do you know about the USS Cole?,” his father would ask, referring to the 2000 suicide bombing in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors. “I have no idea (then) where Yemen is.”
The Bucca brothers — Al, Ron and Bob — were raised in a Queens housing project, a place where, as Bob said, “you gotta fight for your milk money.” They learned to watch out for one another.
Ron was four years younger than Al, seven years older than Bob. He was, to Al, a “fly under the radar, do what you gotta do” guy. “He wasn’t a bully, he was far from that, but he was tough in a lot of ways,” Bucca says.
All three would serve in the armed services — Al with the Army and Marine Corps, Bob with the Army’s 82nd Airborne. Together, counting time spent by their father and nephew, the Buccas served 90 years in the armed forces. Bob Bucca, 65, retired from the New York Police Department in 2011 after 25 years.
Not just another day
Al Bucca retired from New York City Transit in 2012 and lives in the Hudson Valley. There are times when he wishes his brother had not seen it his duty to climb as far as he did on 9/11.
“I sometimes shake my head, but then again I know how my brother is,” Bucca said. “Some of us are pretty complex. Some of us are not. We never know how we’re going to react in a certain situation. We may think we know how we’re going to act, but in actuality we don’t.”
He was planning to go to Guantanamo this summer but hearings were canceled. But he plans to return soon, joining the handful of families that continue to bear witness for the loved ones they lost.
“They believe in justice,” he said. “But you have to understand, too, that 9/11 is already relegated to history, like Pearl Harbor, the Alamo. If it has no direct impact on you, it’s just another day.”
Thomas C. Zambito covers energy, transportation and economic growth for the USA TODAY Network’s New York State team. He’s won dozens of state and national writing awards from the Associated Press, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Deadline Club and others during a decades-long career that’s included stops at the New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack. He can be reached at tzambito@lohud.com
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ron Bucca's family honors his 9/11 sacrifice from NY to Guantanamo Bay
