[caption id="attachment_66988" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="FDNY chief Edward Kilduff, Bridget Hunter, and tánaiste Eamon Gilmore display the Certificate of Irish Heritage presented posthumously to firefighter Joe Hunter."]
A week after the tenth anniversary of 9/11 some firemen are still being rightly honored; one of them in a very special way.
On Monday, the tánaiste and foreign affairs minister Eamon Gilmore was in Maspeth, Queens, to make a presentation to the mother of Joseph Hunter, a 31-year-old firefighter who died ten years ago at the Twin Towers.
Gilmore presented the very first Certificate of Irish Heritage to Mrs. Bridget Hunter on behalf of her son.
Uilleann pipers accompanied the short ceremony, and about twenty firefighters from the late firefighter's squad attended, along with the Chief of the Fire Department, Edward Kilduff, and other members of Hunter's family, including his sister, Teresa, and his brother, John.
Bridget Hunter said that the choice of her son as first recipient of the certificate meant a lot.
She had come to the U.S. from Connemara in 1958 when she was 19.
"It is such an honor, and I'm totally flabbergasted," she said. "It was very important to him and he was very proud to be Irish. He went to Ireland once and he absolutely loved it," she said of her fallen son.
Joe Hunter first became a firefighter as an 16-year-old volunteer. He entered the academy in 1996 after studying at Hofstra University, so fulfilling a childhood dream.
His father later told an RTE radio program that he was watching the news on television on September 11 2011, and saw his son enter the second tower. Joe's squad suffered heavily that day, and eighteen of his colleagues lost their lives. After the disaster, only Joe's helmet was found.
The tánaiste said that no one was better suited to be the first holder of a certificate of Irish heritage than someone who had done everything he could to save others.
The certificates, which will be publicly available at the end of next week, are intended to show the connection between Ireland and the members of the diaspora who are not citizens.
"Throughout the world there are about 70 million who claim to be sons and daughters of Ireland. It's a huge number of people," Gilmore said, explaining why he had introduced the concept.
"Down the years we have heard from people who want to have that Irish heritage recognized or acknowledged in a formal way, something to say that they are genuinely Irish."
The certificates cost €40 euro, this to cover administrative fees and information about them will be available on a website and at Irish consulates and embassies.
Some have criticized the certificates because they offer little to their owners beyond a symbolic value.
The documents do not confer any political rights or economic benefits on the holder, Gilmore said.
"There's neither political nor economic advantage to be gained from it. No legal entitlement arises from it, there's nobody that can go back and claim a field in Ireland because they've got a certificate of Irish heritage," he said.
"It is a way of just formally making the connection."
The certificates quote from Article 2 of the constitution in Irish and English: "The Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who are its cultural identity and heritage."
The background of Joe Hunter's certificate shows a color painting from 1863 of an emigrant ship sailing out from
Dublin Bay at dusk.
From the corner of Maspeth that Fire Station 288 occupies, across the East River Manhattan's very different skyline is visible. Joe Hunter and the other firefighters who turned up on the morning of 9/11 expecting an ordinary day's work would have seen Tower One on fire.
Chief Edward Kilduff, described the first responders' actions as "tremendous" on that fateful day.
"All of the firefighters could see what they were getting into. Every one of them who was on their way into Manhattan, they never blinked, they got down there and thought, 'What can I do to help,'" he said.
"Into the buildings they went, as noble as could be. They evacuated thousands and thousands of people. We truly thought we were going to put that fire out, but things didn't work out that way."
Fr. Chris Keenan, the firefighters' chaplain, spoke briefly at the presentation. His own parents hailed from Galway and Roscommon, and he was inspired to become a Franciscan priest after getting to know Fr. Mychal Judge, the popular Irish-American priest who also lost his life at the Twin Towers.
Asked why Fr. Judge, like his firefighter colleagues, would have gone into the towers, he gave the answer many firefighters give: "that was his job."
The Maspeth event marked the start of a busy week for Gilmore who is in New York for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly.
