Dr. Frank Foti's home office is filled with bits and pieces of memories from a day that he and his wife Suzanne can never forget.  He was working at the hospital when staff told him someone flew into the World Trade Center. "After we saw the second plane hit, it set in that we were being attacked."

Foti, a longtime physician in Erie, grew up in a Manhattan high rise near the financial district, and with younger brothers Robert and Joseph working as New York firefighters, his shock quickly turned to fear. "But then that shifted to sheer terror because this was where I grew up, this was my backyard and I knew that my brothers in some manner, shape or form were going to be called to serve," Foti said.

With New York phones down, Frank couldn't get through for any word on either brother until that night.  "Got a message about 8:00 that night that there was contact with my brother Joseph, but no contact from my brother Robert," Dr. Foti said, "we never heard from him again."

Robert, they call him Bobby, 42, with three children and remarried just that summer, was among the NY firefighters who ran toward the World Trade Center disaster, even though his shift had ended, because that's who he was. "He loved being a firefighter, Bobby was larger than life…growing up um he saved a young man from drowning down at the lake, he would always stop and help people on the side of the road, he was just that kind of kid," Frank added.

And while the family liked to fantasize that Bobby was somewhere, in time a photographer who had captured an image of his battalion coming up from the subway on Vezy Street and heading toward the command center in the smoking towers, with Bobby at the back, proved otherwise.  Frank said, "That picture is probably taken 15-20 minutes before the south tower went down, and so the thought is that...his battalion was in the south tower lobby when the building went down and they didn't even have a chance to get out."

Brother Joseph, answering the alarm for all off duty firefighters biked to a firehouse near South Street, not his own,  "The doors were open and he rode his bike in there and just started grabbing boots, jacket, he grabbed a memorial axe and made his way walking toward the World Trade Center," said Frank.

Still blocks away when the tower collapsed, Joseph felt the deluge of debris but his life was spared.  "You know they say the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh and that day, unfortunately he took Bobby, but fortunately he gave Joseph back to us," Frank Foti said.

Robert's son Bobby, just 11 years old at the time of the tragedy was devastated, but now he's carrying on his father's legacy as a New York City firefighter himself, even wearing his badge number.  "It's what he wanted to do…and we all supported him for that," Frank said.

The Foti family will attend the 20th anniversary memorial ceremony in New York this year, and read Robert's name again.  Dr. Foti said when they ring the bells to mark the time each tower was hit, it's "gut wrenching."   But afterward they enjoy the fellowship of firefighters.  And they often share love and a homemade spaghetti dinner at the International Association of Firefighters Memorial annual ceremony in Colorado Springs, where each year the families of firefighters lost in the line of duty in the U.S. and Canada are honored.

It's one more way they remember Robert Foti, and what helping others through being a firefighter meant to him.  "He was the life of the party, he was a clown a jokester he could be very serious, he could be very tough...he was awesome, he was my best friend."