PATH OF REMEMBRANCE

On Thursday, September 11, Dorie Pearlman and her husband Barry will travel a route they have become all too accustomed to during the past seven years.
The Howard Beach couple will start their day at the 9/11 ceremony at Ground Zero before heading to Beth David Cemetery to pay their respects to their son Richard Allen Pearlman, an 18-year-old volunteer ambulance member who died during the attacks on the World Trade Center. Before going home for the night, they will attend a ceremony honoring Richard at The Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps (FHVAC) - where he served for nearly four years in their Youth Corps and as a senior member.
“People start to forget,” said his mother Dorie. “Every year I go to Ground Zero there are less people. People should go on with their lives, but they should not forget either. People should never forget what happened.”
Richard Pearlman, like so many other men and women during that day seven years ago, never imagined that day would be his last. Pearlman was working at a lawyer’s office that morning and was bringing documents to One Police Plaza when the first plane hit the World Trade Center Tower.
Being with all of the police officers, Pearlman knew his Emergency Medical Services (EMS) training could be put to use, so, instead of returning to the law office, he went with the officers to the site.
“Anyone that needed help he was always there to help them,” his mother said.
Dorie did not hear from her son during the day, so when the morning hours turned to night, she knew the chances of him being alive were slim. She stayed up the entire night waiting for a call from her son that never came.
After the attacks, she saw a picture in Newsweek magazine of her son Richard helping carry someone out of one of the buildings. Dorie also learned later that Richard met up with a female police officer, and when a call for someone in need of CPR inside one of the towers came in, they rushed to help.
“As soon as he went into the building to give CPR, the building collapsed and that’s how he died,” Dorie said. Richard’s body was found in April of 2002.
Although the Beach Channel High School graduate’s formal training began when he was 14 as a Youth Corps member at the FHVAC, his mother Dorie saw from an earlier age that he had an interest in the police or emergency medical field.
“When he was a little boy, maybe three or four, he used to take his bicycle around the block and make siren noises,” his mother recalled.
However, when he got to the FHVAC, current President Alan Wolfe, who has been with the organization in different capacities for nearly 15 years, noticed Richard’s zeal and passion for his work.
“He was very enthusiastic; he was always interested in the EMS field,” Wolfe said. “He liked to listen to his scanners. He was a dispatcher and he liked to be involved in all of the different groups that met there.”
So, when the FHVAC found out that Richard had perished helping others during the 9/11 attacks, they wanted to make sure they remembered their fallen comrade as well as his family.
“It’s important to keep the name and spirit alive, and it’s important for the family to give support and show that he didn’t die in vain.” Wolfe said.
Dorie actually joined the FHVAC sometime in 2002, and she has served in different capacities within the organization since then. She will join some of her current colleagues as well as some of her sons at the ceremony at FHVAC headquarters on Thursday at 6 p.m.
Although Dorie said the anniversaries do not get easier, she sometimes asks what would have happened if her son did not return to the building to help the person in need of cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR).