FDNY veteran Gerard “Jerry” Lennon dies from 9/11-related illness, honored in Riverdale service

Gerard “Jerry” Lennon served with the New York Fire Department for more than three years when both towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed in the 9/11 terror attacks. On Feb. 21, hundreds gathered at St. Gabriel’s Church to honor Lennon, who died in December at 59 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, linked to his recovery efforts at Ground Zero.

Lennon is among a rising number of first responders who have died from illnesses linked to rescue work after the terrorist attacks.  Since then, at least 3,000 deaths have been tied to 9/11-related illnesses. Among firefighters alone, the toll has surpassed 400 — more than were killed on the day the towers fell. According to the World Trade Center Health Program, responders on scene within the first 48 hours are 30 percent more likely to develop COPD, a severe respiratory condition that progressively restricts airflow to the lungs. 

Born and raised in Riverdale, Lennon attended St. Gabriel’s School and Mount St. Michael Academy. Public service, his sister Deirdre Lennon Goss said, was always part of who he was.

“Ever since he was a young, young man, he wanted to be a firefighter,” she said. “He was so compassionate and empathetic. He loved life. He loved people.”

Lennon’s father joined the FDNY in 1962, part of a long line of police officers and firefighters in the Lennon family. At one point, nine of Lennon’s relatives wore a uniform at the same time.

In 1986, Lennon, then 20, joined the New York Police Department, viewing it as a step toward joining New York’s Bravest. He spent more than a decade in the South Bronx, patrolling New York City Housing Authority complexes during one of the borough’s most violent periods.

His brother Hugh, who also served in both departments, recalled the intensity.

“I also worked in the 42nd Precinct in the South Bronx, where Jerry started in housing,” Hugh Lennon said. “The amount of the horrors that I saw in two years, I can’t imagine what he saw in 14. For him to leave and go to the fire department, that was just a huge relief because now everyone’s happy to see you — you’re there to save them and their property.”

At the start of his FDNY career, Lennon served on rotation, a standard practice in which firefighters move between companies during their early years to gain broader experience. One assignment placed him at Engine 23 in Midtown Manhattan. As units were dispatched downtown the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, his company remained in Midtown, responding to emergency calls and covering service gaps.

In the days that followed, Lennon joined recovery operations at Ground Zero. Alongside thousands of others, he worked long shifts amid asbestos, jet fuel and crushed concrete dust that lingered over lower Manhattan for weeks.

Within a few years, medical evaluations revealed progressive lung damage tied to that exposure. By 2004, doctors determined Lennon was no longer fit for active duty, and he retired from the fire department’s Engine 90/Ladder 41 in the Bronx.

“The doctors classified it as reactive airway disease, which then they later started putting it as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,” Hugh Lennon said.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is often caused by long-term exposure to airborne irritants.

“It was like every element on the chart was pulverized — every computer board and everything you could imagine coming down in the air,” Hugh Lennon, who also suffers from a 9/11-related illness, said. “That concrete dust sits in your lungs, and it does close off the bronchi. A lot of that damage that Jerry had was from that.”

Like many responders, Lennon rarely spoke in detail about what he witnessed at Ground Zero.

“You could kind of see that it was very traumatic for him,” his daughter, Veronica Lennon, said. “He didn’t really like to talk about that kind of stuff. He carried it, but he didn’t put it on other people.”

Those who knew Lennon said his health struggles did not define him. Veronica described her father as animated and relentlessly funny.

“The only thing he loved more than laughing was making other people laugh,” she said in her eulogy. “He had this intense, electric kind of energy that colored every word he said. If you’ve ever heard him tell a story, you know this — someone else could tell the exact same story and it might seem unremarkable, but he would make it come alive. He would speak with his entire body.”

Reflecting the reach of Lennons’s many relationships, the service at St. Gabriel’s was filled with classmates and childhood friends from across the country.

“I think he would have been so humbly brought to tears,” Deirdre Lennon Goss said. “They never think they’re heroes. It’s always somebody else.”

In the coming months, Lennon’s name will be added to the Endor Garden 9/11 Memorial in Riverdale, where a plaque honors rescuers who later died from illnesses linked to the recovery effort. He will also be memorialized at FDNY headquarters at his former firehouse and on the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Colorado Springs.