Saturday, October 4, 2014 workout is dedicated to Jonathan Ielpi, FDNY, Squad 288, who was killed on September 11, 2001. In the first photo, Jonathans father, retired FDNY Lee Ielpi, holds his sons helmet. Jonathan Lee Ielpi, 29, of Great Neck, was a New York City firefighter assigned to Squad 288 in Maspeth, Queens. He phoned his parents to let them know that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Jon, please be careful, his father told him. His body was recovered in the stairwell of the south tower on Dec. 11, 2001. Jonathan Ielpis youngest son, Austin, was just 3 years old when his father was killed. Through stories he heard about his father over the years, Austin has begun to know the man who gave him life, said Ielpis mother, Anne Ielpi of Great Neck. Wed go through a scrap book and hed ask what was he like at 5, at 7, and at my age, she said. Austin is now 13 and living with his mother, Yesenia Ielpi Major, and brother, Andrew, now 19, in Putney, Vt. The family moved there in 2002 and his mother later remarried. She and her new husband have a 4-year-old daughter. Anne Ielpi and her husband, Lee Ielpi, a retired FDNY firefighter and co-founder of the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, used to sit with Austin and talk to him about his father. Now, they chat on the phone. Jonathan Ielpi loved to fish. He loved to hunt. His dream was to purchase a tract of land so he could go hunting, his mother said. And, most of all, he loved the FDNY. These days, Ielpis parents, his three siblings and their children, continue to go camping, something they did since he was a child. His mother goes to his favorite spot at Mongaup Pond in Sullivan County and watches the bald eagles. She returned to the campground for the first time a few years after 9/11. I was down by the beach. I said, If youre really here with us, you have to show me, his mother recalled. A few minutes later an eagle flew down, right in front of me. Thats my way of knowing that hes here with us. The flowers are dried and blown away, the votive candles extinguished, and little more than written memorials remain at the shrine to fireman Jonathan Ielpi that bloomed so suddenly last month on the Saddle Rock Bridge. But each day, as on that first day, Ielpis retired fireman father still gathers his tools and drives from his home in Great Neck to lower Manhattan to climb the still-smoldering pile of Twin Towers remains and sift, and search, and wait for the heavy equipment to dig down to where he is certain his son is buried. Jonathan Ielpi wanted nothing more than to follow in the footsteps of his father, Lee, a Rescue Co. 2 firefighter legendary for his exploits pulling people from fires, collapsed buildings and even cars sunk in the inky depths of the East River. Both men were chiefs in the Great Neck Vigilants, and Jonathan, 29, a six-year veteran with Squad 288 in Maspeth, hoped to follow his father into his old Brooklyn rescue company. In Great Neck, he joined the Vigilants the day he turned 17, after the department lowered its minimum age for him. In the city, he inherited his fathers department number: 12642. From day one - 3, 4, 5 years old - he wanted to be a city fireman, and he does it quite good, if Im gonna brag about my son, Ielpi said yesterday morning. But if Jonathan Ielpi walked in his fathers footsteps, he did so to the rhythm of a newer generation, said Patrick Rooney, a fellow Vigilant and city firefighter. The younger man listened to Pink Floyd and Nirvana. He was accepting, a gentle teacher, someone everyone felt they could talk to. Lee was kind of a legend; John was a person, Rooney said. On Sept. 11, before heading to the Trade Center, Jonathan called Lee at home and told him to turn on his TV. He was last seen in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel, an area now jammed as much as six floors below ground level. The debris gets more densely packed, the deeper it goes. Time is wearing on us pretty bad, said Jonathans wife, Yesenia, of Great Neck. The couple has two sons, 9-year-old Andrew and 3-year-old Austin, who still cries for his father every day. I tell him that Daddys an angel and one of Gods helpers, but he wants God to give him back because its been enough time, she said. Lee Ielpi still insists on using the present tense when speaking of Jonathan, but slips up. He recalled the time his then teenage son had ridden with him in a Rescue 2 rig to an accident where four other teenagers, all speeding and not wearing seatbelts, had been killed. Amid the chaos, a paramedic waved Jonathan over to help give CPR to one of the girls, and the young observer had jumped in without missing a beat. He never shied from helping people. Jonathan loved, loved . . . Ielpi caught himself, paused half a minute to weep, then resumed. He wants to help people.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 03:20:01 +0000
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