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by FERNANDA SANTOS
Tommy Gies gripped the gleaming bar and began to do his pullups, part of the daily routine for Fire Department recruits. But for the 169 men and one woman in this year's class, the pullups are more than merely a fitness exercise. They are a lasting reminder of the 343 Fire Department members lost in the 9/11 attacks.
The twin pullup bars are bracketed by a pair of rusty steel columns fetched from the rubble at Ground Zero - the place where Gies' father died.
"It makes me think about him, about what it would be like if I could go home to him and tell him how my day went, what I learned, what I did," said Gies, 21, a recruit in the Fire Department Academy, where he is learning his dad's trade.
Lt. Ronnie Gies was a levelheaded man and master carpenter who was killed alongside seven comrades assigned to Squad 288 in Maspeth, Queens.
Pullups are a part of the daily workout at probie school and a graduation requirement for would-be firefighters vying to join the ranks of the Bravest.
It was Firefighter James McLoughlin's idea to turn pieces of steel stored at the Fire Academy on Randalls Island into support columns for the pullup bars.
He designed them as a monument, and assigned meaning to each of its components.
The rusty World Trade Center steel represents the firemen who died in the twin towers' collapse. The stainless steel rods represent new blood.
A drawing of the towers is carved into the steel, above the date 9/11/01. A broken heart adorns the back of one of the columns - a sign of the pain caused by so many lives lost.
"I wanted the probies to be able to touch it, to be part of what happened that day somehow," said McLoughlin, 43, the academy's health and fitness instructor.
The steel began to be welded together in March by James Shelley, a crafts-oriented firefighter assigned to Ladder 42 in the Bronx.
The final touch, a soaring eagle, is to be added this week, and a formal dedication ceremony will be held on the third anniversary of the attacks this year.
"This will be here longer than I'm here, longer than any of us will be here," McLoughlin said.
"I'm hoping 100 years from now, when people may have started to forget about 9/11, I want the probies to know what we went through that day."
For now, the memories are fresh in the recruits' minds, because many of their instructors worked at Ground Zero and lost someone they knew.
"The pullups might hurt your muscles a little bit, but when I do them, I realize my pain is nothing compared to what those firemen went through on 9/11," said Lawrence Hollingsworth, 24, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who joined probie school after a six-month tour in Iraq.
"Some of the greatest firefighters on this job died on 9/11. When I touch the steel from the towers, I feel as if the guys who are gone are still with us, helping us along."
"When I'm here," Tommy Gies said, his hand gently touching one of the steel columns that support the pullup bars, "I know my father's close to me."
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