Scott Joy

I’m Riding Boston to NYC for the First Responders Still Fighting

On September 11, 2001, I was in a conference room at work in Portsmouth. Like millions of Americans, we sat stunned, watching the unthinkable unfold — unable to function. The collective shock of that day remains with all of us who lived through it.

My fiancée M-J was closer. She was in lower Manhattan with her infant son, heading toward the towers, and watched them fall. The fire station on her block lost five men. She volunteered at Ground Zero, where the smoke and debris hung in the air for months.

We both know what that day meant, and what it keeps costing the people who ran toward the danger.

This September, the 25th anniversary year of 9/11, M-J and I will ride 343 miles from Boston to New York City with a group of first responders, cancer survivors, and advocates. Each mile honors the 343 firefighters who died that day. The finish line is Ground Zero.

This ride is organized by Friends of Firefighters, Livestrong, and the Boston Fire Cancer Foundation, supporting first responders who are still fighting cancer, trauma, and the invisible toll of years spent in service. Nearly 50,000 people have now been diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer, and the total number who have died from those cancers now exceeds the 2,977 killed that day.

I understand resilience. I survived testicular cancer in 2003 and lost my wife Judy to multiple myeloma in 2013, when our four children ranged from high school to college. All in good time, improbably and beautifully, I fell in love again — with M-J, who I’d known since our first day at Brown and rediscovered through reunion planning, as we gradually recognized the pull between us. A breast cancer survivor herself since 2021, M-J and I have logged many miles together: Livestrong Challenge rides with the Cyclists Combating Cancer team I joined in 2004, RAGBRAI, the Five Boro Bike Tour. By the time we clip in for this ride, she’ll be my wife. This one carries all of that and something brand new.

We’re riding as cancer survivors and as people who remember what 9/11 felt like — and who understand that for thousands of first responders, it never ended.

Your donation supports the programs that keep those people going. Please give what you can and share this page if you know someone else who might want to support us, too.

Thank you.