PARK RIDGE, N.J.—On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Rose Keller Triano strolls along the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, surrounded by the sounds of seagulls, crashing waves and boardwalk games. She stops to try a spinning-wheel game. As the wheel slows, it comes to rest on a name that means everything to her: Joe.
For Triano, moments like this bring a sense of connection to her first husband, Park Ridge resident Joseph Keller, who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Twenty-five years later, she still finds comfort in reminders of him.
Her memories of the day she lost him remain painful to recount.
Triano was driving east on I-80 to her mother’s house in Fairview when a call came in on her cellphone. Looking toward the New York City skyline, she noticed smoke billowing from the North Tower. Her husband worked at Three World Trade Center, the Marriott hotel, which connected to the tower.
Still about 20 minutes from her mother’s house, she began trying to call Keller, but the calls wouldn’t go through. When she arrived, she watched the scene unfolding across the Hudson River on television. She tried again, and this time he answered, telling her he was helping with the evacuation.
“That’s not your job. Please just leave,” Triano recalled telling him. “I know in his mind he was thinking that he knows the hotel. He was the kind of person who was always willing to help somebody else, always. This wasn’t just a rare occurrence for him to put others before himself.”
That was the last she heard from him. By the time they spoke, the South Tower had also been hit. Almost immediately after they ended the call, the words of a television news anchor caught her attention.
“I could hear on the TV the woman saying, ‘It’s gone. It’s gone,’” Triano recalled. “In my head I’m saying, ‘What is she talking about? What is gone?’”
The South Tower had collapsed. It was 9:59 a.m. She tried to reach Keller again but could not get through.
The hours and days that followed remain mostly a blur. Triano remembers her brother, Joe Gaglioti, arriving at their mother’s house shortly after the towers fell. He had been working in Jersey City, where he could see what was happening across the river.
“I don’t know how he knew I was there, but he showed up,” said Triano, her voice breaking with emotion. “I remember my older brother came to the door and I said to him, ‘He’s my lungs. Without him, I cannot breathe.’”
Gaglioti told her that Keller’s mother had received a call from someone at the Marriott saying Keller was alive after the first tower collapsed. According to the account relayed to the family, he had been communicating by radio and had given first responders his location. He could see rescuers approaching when the North Tower collapsed.
“Being a young mom … I just prayed that he survived the second collapse as well,” Triano said. “That went on for days, we were just waiting and waiting, like everybody else. There were so many families that were in the same situation.”
The family hoped he had survived in a pocket of safety. After about 10 days, they knew he was gone. His body was never found.
In the weeks that followed, people began sharing stories with Triano about her husband’s actions.
“I can tell you that I received a letter — multiple people at the time found me, reached out, and said, ‘Your husband saved my life.’ So, I do know we lost a hero. He was the most loving and kindest human.”
Keller grew up in Hillsdale with his sister, Jennifer (Keller) Lutz. She can still picture him standing in the driveway of his Park Ridge home, his young son in his arms, waving goodbye as she and her husband left after a family dinner. It was only days before the attack, and the last time she saw him.
Keller began working for Marriott at 18. At his memorial service, Lutz recalls at least 50 people telling her he was the best boss they ever had.
“I heard so many stories about the way he treated people and the kind of leader he was,” Lutz recalled. “Again and again, people told me there was simply no one else like him. So, when I learned that he had made it out and then went back to help other people evacuate, I can’t say I was surprised. That was Joe. As painful as it is to know that he could have survived, I also know that helping others was part of who he was.”
Lutz also remembers her brother saying he somehow knew he would die young.
“Our father had died in a tragic truck accident when he was only 29, and then my brother died at 31,” she said. “The weekend before 9/11, Joe made a point of seeing so many of the people he cared about. It was almost like he knew.”
A therapist, Lutz found herself trying to follow the advice she usually shares with clients.
“I don’t believe grief ever completely goes away or necessarily even ‘gets better’. I think it changes, and over time you learn how to carry it and manage the feelings differently,” she said.
For Keller’s cousin, Karin Beutel, honoring his memory means sharing stories with her children. She named her firstborn daughter Amelia Joe in his honor.
“I still think about him daily,” Beutel said. “My kids, who have never met him, have heard so many stories that they feel they do know him. He is still, all these years later, deeply missed.”
When Keller died, Triano was left to raise their two young children: Joseph, 2½, and Sydnie, not yet 6 months old.
“I don’t want to be strong; I have to be strong. My whole life changed in an instant. Our whole life — my children’s entire life —changed in an instant.”
She continues to mourn what her husband and their children lost.
“He was robbed of these beautiful children and the life that they have and seeing all of their milestones and everything else,” she said. “And that hurts every single time.”
Several years after Keller’s death, Triano remarried and had another son, Aaron, now 21 and a senior at West Point. The events of Sept. 11 were part of his motivation to serve his country.
For Triano, each anniversary brings renewed attention to how Keller died, rather than the life they shared.
“Every other day, you can focus more on his life. That day, it’s such a focus on how he was taken, and that makes it harder,” she said. “Forever, he’s my husband. I’m remarried now and I’m happy … You move forward and you do those things, but it’s different when you lose somebody to other reasons of no longer being together.”
She finds solace in believing Keller is watching over her and their now-grown children.
“He might not be here physically, but he’s with us spiritually. He’s with us, and he’s watching from above,” Triano said. “He’s a part of [our children’s] lives that way. He’s forever in our hearts.”
She sees reminders of him in their children’s mannerisms, in their favorite number, 43, appearing unexpectedly, and in his name on a boardwalk game.
Lutz, too, finds comfort in the ways people continue to remember her brother, whether by paying for the next person in line or performing another small act of kindness in his honor.
“If I had five more minutes with him, part of me would want to tell him not to go back into the World Trade Center after he had made it out. But I also know Joe wouldn’t listen to me,” she said. “He was an incredibly caring person. If he were faced with the same choice again, I believe he would do exactly the same thing. And if I really had those five minutes, beyond trying to change what happened, I think I would simply want to tell him how much I love him, how much he is still missed, and that 25 years later, people are still remembering him.”
About the author: Juliana (Hendriks) Demarest was the founding editor of Pascack Press in 1997 and led the newspaper until 2009, including during the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath. In 2010, she and her husband, PJ, moved west with their two children to the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe.