Al Nelson never talked to his brother Peter about the heroics or day-to-day stresses of being a fireman. It was simply an unspoken bond the two shared along with their father as volunteer firemen in Long Island. The brothers, who shared a room their entire adolescence, would instead shoot the breeze in their younger days.
“We talked every day about just stuff. How many (baseball) hits did you get last night, just stuff you take for granted, you just talk,” said Nelson, a NASCAR hauler driver for Michael Waltrip Racing Sprint Cup driver David Ragan. “It could have been anything, ‘How’s your car running?’ We’d just talk.”
Nelson, of Trinity, N.C., still talks to his little brother when he visits New York, but not in that childhood room they shared or at the fire station, but rather at the Melville Cemetery.
“I talk to him a little bit, but I don’t know if he’s listening. I don’t know if he listened when he was here,” Nelson quietly quipped.
Peter Nelson, 42, who worked for Rescue 4, one of five elite rescue units of the New York City Fire Department, was one of 2,977 victims killed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Peter left behind two children, Ryan and Jamie, now adults, and his second wife Gigi, who was 8 months pregnant with their daughter Lyndsi.
For Al Nelson, 58, a married father of three adult children who has worked as a NASCAR hauler driver since 1998, life has continued to move forward in the past 14 years, but it’s the 9/11 anniversary’s that bring the painful loss of his brother to the forefront of his mind.
“It’s really difficult and I try not to show it,” Nelson said. “I keep it in. I just try to go about my business and stay quiet and do whatever I got to do. This year I think it’s the night of the Richmond race, I’ll have a couple of friends come here that are involved in the fire service in New York. I’ll be OK; I’ll get through it.”
Growing up in Huntington Station on Long Island, the three Nelson boys -- John, Al and Peter -- spent their days running around with other kids in the neighborhood.
“He was funny, but when he had something on his mind, he was dead serious about it. He was a normal kid,” Al said of Peter, who was just two years younger. “We’d go to the ball field and there were 25 kids waiting to play ball … we just all hung out together, right up until I started racing and started going away. It was the same group of kids, we were always together.”
When they got older, Al and Peter became volunteer firefighters at Huntington Manor Volunteer Fire Department along with their father.
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But while Al pursued his passions of short track racing and trucking, Peter stayed with the boys in the firehouse.
“He was an extremely gifted athlete. He could hit a golf ball a mile … never did any kind of training or working out, but he was always in good shape; a big strong kid,” Al said of Peter. “He was dedicated, very dedicated; he was always the first guy in, the last guy out, always willing to work hard. He was a damn good fireman.”
And that got Peter noticed. In 1986, Peter joined the New York City Fire Department working for Engine Company 305/Hook & Ladder Company 151 in Forest Hills. About a year or two before 9/11, he was appointed to Rescue Co. 4 in Woodside.
“Knowing Peter the way he was, he wanted to be where the action was,” Al said of his move to Rescue
4. “They go to everything — car wrecks, buildings falling down, a plane crash, anything.”
While Al said he knew the risks his brother faced every day, he never imagined anything like what happened on Sept. 11.
“I was getting my truck ready to go to the next race I think New Hampshire, I was working for (the former) FitzBradshaw Racing,” when the guys called him into the garage to show him a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center Towers. “I thought my brother will be in on that and I’ll find out what the deal is. Then the second plane hit and I thought, ‘woo that’s pretty big right there. I’ll call my brother later and see if he knows anything.’”
He continued his routine of stocking and cleaning the truck, now with the television set on in his rig. The South Tower fell and calls to Peter from him, his father and his other brother John went unanswered.
“It was a tough night. I guess it was the next morning I tried getting ahold of him again; no calls, no answer,” Al said. “I finally told my dad we need to go to New York because this isn’t looking good.”
“I went right to my volunteer firehouse,” to find out about his brother and to gear up and head down to the World Trade Center grounds to assist. “They said, ‘No you don’t want to go it’s a mess.’ I had other friends, city firemen that were in there. I felt like I had to be there, but they talked me out of going.”
Though the details of what happened while he was in New York are “hard to remember” it was for the most part a waiting game.
“We just sat around and waited for some kind of word, anything. There were stories he was alive and taken to a hospital, lost his leg and foot but was still alive,” Al said.
Three weeks passed and he was still in New York — no calls from Peter.
“After two weeks you knew. He wasn’t one who wouldn’t have called or found a way to call,” Al said. “There’s a pile of rubble there and he’s in there somewhere.”
Peter’s body was found at the end of that October, huddled on the first floor of the South Tower with his fellow firefighters, about 35 feet from the main doorway, Nelson said.
“They were all together, they found them all,” Nelson said of the men in Rescue 4. After receiving the news at that year’s Phoenix Race, he was soon on a plane back to New York for a memorial service.
“Everybody was real apologetic. It was a tough thing. Every year on 9/11 some of those guys” on his former race team “still text me, ‘thinking about you.’ It touched a lot of people.”
The Huntington Town Board renamed a local park the “Peter A. Nelson Park,” where he often played softball. Every five years, Nelson visits the cemetery. He has been to the 9/11 grounds in years past but he has yet to see the new 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
“It’s hard to get there and once I get there it’s a hard thing to do. It’s a tough place to go back to. It’s tough to go to the cemetery — my dad, mom are there, my aunt, brother,” Nelson said. “I have a tough time going to these places.”
As the world looks back and remembers the lives lost on 9/11, Nelson will remember his little brother’s sacrifice.
“He was always my kid brother. Now he’s my hero,” Nelson said.