BY RICH PALZEWIC
CORRESPONDENT
GREEN BAY – Imagine climbing the equivalent of 110 floors, the height of the World Trade Center. Now do that in 85-degree heat dressed in full firefighting gear.
Many of the nearly 3,000 participants did just that on September 16 at the fifth annual Lambeau Field Stair Climb. The Lambeau event is the largest stair climb in the United States.
The event pays tribute to the 343 fallen firefighters who gave their lives during the terrorist attacks at the WTC on September 11, 2001.
“This is my sixth year doing stair climbs,” said Brian White, who is the fire chief of the volunteer fire department in Stephenson, Michigan, and also a member of the Iron Mountain Fire Department in the U.P. “I’ve done several here at Lambeau, one in Indiana and one in Wausau. I had several members of my department from Stephenson and Iron Mountain with me participating.”
Each climber was given a badge with the name and photograph of one of the fallen firefighters to symbolically complete the climb with one of the fallen.
At the equivalent of the 78th floor of the World Trade Center towers, which is the highest floor firefighters reached on 9/11, each climber rang the fire bell in honor of the fallen firefighter on their badge. The stair climb was not a timed race and participants could climb to any desired level.
All the funds raised for the 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb go to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
Email Rich ([email protected]) or find him on Twitter (@richpalzewic).