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World Trade Center Memorial Run-Walk in honour of the victims of 9-11
BY Lore Croghan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, September 7th 2009, 4:00 AM
Giancarli for News
Joshua Mladenik, holding baby Ariana, and Jackie Mladenik participated in the run for Jeff Mladenik, who died on American Airlines Flight 11
Patricia Massari was 25 and pregnant with her first child when she went to work at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and died at her desk.
To honor Massari's memory, her uncle John Brennan ran in a memorial race on Governors Island with the Marsh & McLennan employee's name pinned to his shirt.
"Sometimes I don't want to remember," said Brennan, 48, of Rockaway Park, Queens. "It broke my heart. We buried an empty wedding dress in her casket."
More than 1,000 people turned out for the first-ever World Trade Center Run to Remember, a 5-kilometer race organized by retired NYPD sergeant Tom Biggers.
Jimmy Hart, 55, ran to honor a fallen friend, Firefighter Greg Buck from Engine Company 201 in Brooklyn. He attached a Mass card from Buck's funeral to his shirt.
"Every race I run, I run for him," said Hart, of Staten Island, who competes in triathlons.
There are other races to honor first responders who died on Sept. 11. The annual Tunnel to Towers Run, which will take place Sept. 27, honors firefighter Stephen Siller, who sprinted through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in his gear on 9/11.
Biggers created a new race because he thinks the civilians who died on 9/11 don't get enough public recognition.
"There were many heroes that day," said Biggers, 47, of Massapequa Park, L.I.
John Honerkamp, 33, who won the men's race with a time of 16 minutes and 26 seconds, ran in memory of Michael Horn, who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. They were on the track team together at Chaminade High School in Mineola, L.I.
"This is a way to celebrate my friend, the runner," said Honerkamp, of the upper East Side, who raced in his old Chaminade track shirt.
Joshua Mladenik, 26, came from Chicago for his dad, Jeff, who died on American Airlines Flight 11.
Ten members of the Mladenik family, including Joshua's baby daughter, Ariana, were decked out for the event in fluorescent-green T-shirts with Jeff's picture on them.
His dad is never far from Joshua's thoughts.
"Just about anything, in any way, shape or form, can remind me of him," Joshua said.
Reynaldo Mendez of Burlington, N.J., ran for his police academy classmate, Port Authority Police Officer James Wendell Parham.
"He was a great family man; he was very patriotic," said Mendez, 34, a PAPD sergeant. "He was a classy guy."