by KELLIE CLARK
Brendan Stackpole vividly remembers Sept. 11, 2001. He was sitting in a classroom in Brooklyn, watching as other students were leaving the class. Then, he was told somebody was picking him up.
His father Timothy was a firefighter, and Brendan knew what that meant. "He wasn't on duty," says Brendan, now 16. "He didn't even have to go."
Timothy did go to the World Trade Center that day. And, late that evening, Brendan sat with his mom Tara, older brothers Kevin and Brian, older sister Kaitlyn, and baby brother Terence as they received word that Timothy had been killed in action.
"At first they said he was missing," Brendan says. "Then they said he was dead. They found his body exactly a week later."
Brian, a 17-year-old senior linebacker at St. Francis Prep, and Brendan, a sophomore quarterback on the JV, have found comfort in family and football ever since. Here, they reflect on the loss and discuss the slow process of grieving:
BRIAN: "Football helps me a lot. It's a family, like my family at home, so you're always bonding together and you're playing for each other.
"I think about what happened a lot, but I try not to go crazy. I think I thought about it more when I was younger.
"I wear his jersey number. They retired it, but they said family could wear it, so I wear it.
"I'm doing it really to honor him. I try to honor him by putting that jersey on and doing the best I can to help my team every night out."
BRENDAN: "Yeah, it's tough, especially coming up this time now. But everybody here at Prep helps, and the family helps. My mom does a lot; she probably doesn't get enough credit.
"The school has been great. He played (at St. Francis Prep), and when we were little he always had us out there throwing the football. It was tough because (around when he died) I had just signed up for Pop Warner, and he never got to see me in my first game.
"(At St. Francis Prep) I wear No. 1. But I play for him."
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