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SEPTEMBER 11 - SEPTEMBER 17, 2020
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Ocala Remembers 9/11 witness remembers the carnage, the heroes By Brad Rogers Executive Editor
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hen Henry DeGeneste talks about the day terrorists flew two jetliners into the World Trade Center towers, two words flow from his lips over and over: sadness and chaos. DeGeneste, the retired superintendent of the Port Authority Police Department of New York and New Jersey, who now lives in Ocala, was in his Manhattan office on Sept. 11, 2001, when his assistant rushed in to tell him some terrifying news that would ultimately change the way we, as Americans, live. “I remember this like it happened yesterday,” he said. “My assistant came in and said, ‘Boss, I think somebody just flew a plane into the World Trade Center.’” DeGeneste’s office was just five blocks from the WTC, and Prudential had another office across the street from the towers, so he
started making his way to the second office building. “Obviously, there was chaos,” he remembered. When he reached his destination, fellow employees were aghast by DeGeneste’s appearance – he was covered in ash. Then the second plane hit. It was the beginning of a full week that the former police chief spent living in his office in Manhattan. It was also the beginning of a horrendous time in which DeGeneste witnessed person after person die, including 37 of his former Port Authority employees and colleagues. In fact, 9/11 was the deadliest day in history for a single U.S. police force, when the Port Authority lost 37 officers. “Almost all of them I knew,” he said. “I had hired some of them, worked with a lot of them. “People don’t focus on this,” he added. “To that 37, you can add another 19 officers who have died from chancer and other diseases
they got as a result of their actions on 9/11.” He remembers the horror of the scene as well. “There was ash all around. The stench was unbelievable – the jet fuel, there were bodies burning for weeks at a time.” And there were plenty of heroes. “I think about a guy, Jimmy Romito,” DeGeneste said. “He always thought of other people rather than himself.” Romito was at the Port Authority bus terminal when the planes struck the towers, so he immediately headed to the WTC. “He runs into the tower and he never comes out,” DeGeneste said of his friend. “It shows you the unselfishness. He didn’t think of himself, only of rescuing people. “All of the people who rushed in showed not just fearlessness. … What got me was the unselfishness of the first responders and other people. I saw people jumping from the 60th and 70th floors. Then there were
other people running into buildings to save people.” DeGeneste said the WTC held more than 50,000 people and he estimates that first responders were responsible for saving at least 35,000 people. “Those numbers are astronomical,” he said with a mix of pride and sadness. When asked what the legacy of 9/11 is, DeGeneste ponders and says there are many. Certainly, our lives are different than before 9/11, he said. Among the legacies are the Patriot Act and the way airports operate. “Airports have been completely reconfigured as a result of 9/11.” He also points out that the Department of Homeland Security came after 9/11 and it is now the second largest federal agency, behind the Pentagon. Part of Homeland Security is the Transportation Security Administration, which checks passengers going through airports. “We take these things for granted now,” DeGeneste
said. Other legacies, the 80-year-old said, include the narrowing of mass immigration laws and general attitudes toward immigrants. “I never remember before 9/11 so much animosity toward people from the Middle East, especially Muslims,” he said. Also, as he learned as security chief for a major corporation, companies before 9/11 did not have redundant information systems in case their primary systems went down. Now, it is standard practice to have backup systems in another location. Finally, DeGeneste believes 9/11 changed the public’s perception of first responders. “The way they viewed first responders afterward was with reverence,” he said. “The first responders stayed for weeks on end recovering bodies – even knowing it was dangerous to their health.” See 9/11, page 15
MCYFL turns 50 By Brad Rogers Executive Editor
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hen the Marion County Youth Football League kick offs its 2020 season on Saturday, it will mark the 50th anniversary for the league that has seen tens of thousands of local youngsters play and cheer on its fields over the years. The league will begin its second half century amid a global pandemic, but regardless, league President Vince Arnold said that more than 1,000 children are signed up this year to play football and to cheer. Arnold, who has been involved with MCYFL since 1998, beams with pride as he talks about the kids, coaches and mission of this hometown organization. “It is a service we provide to the community,” he said. “And it’s fair and right and it’s good. “We’re not perfect, but
what we accomplish for the community and those kids, that’s what makes MCYFL what it is.” What it is is a well-oiled civic enterprise that has changed lives – of players, coaches and families – over the decades. In addition to the 1,000-plus young people who participate on fall afternoons at the league’s Jervey Gantt Park home, there are 150 coaches and untold volunteers who make MCYFL run. “Wins and losses to me is not the mission,” Arnold said. “The mission is to get these boys out here. Every single coach in this league has touched lives. MCYFL is now on the third generation of some families, and Arnold said nothing inspires him more than to watch a former player come back and coach the next generation of players. “That to me is our Super Bowl,” he said. One of those who came
back – and keeps coming back – is Greg Paquin. Paquin played in the league in its first year in 1970. After taking a break to play high school ball at Forest -- where he was part of a state championship team – he returned to MCYFL in 1975 as a coach and has been part of the league ever since. He is vice president of the board this year, in addition to being a coach. MCYFL was founded in 1970 after Brent Hall came to Ocala as the head football coach of Forest High. At the same time, John Brantley Jr. moved his family, with his two sons, Scott and John III, to town from South Carolina, where the Brantley boys had played youth tackle football. The elder Brantley went looking for a youth football league here, but there was none. So, he went to the local high school, where he met Hall. Hall said he was interested in starting a youth league to serve as a
Photos courtesy of MCYFL
feeder program to Forest. Brantley found some local businessmen to join him, and the Marion County Independent Football League was born. That first group of MCYFL players – which included the Brantleys, who would go onto stardom at the University of Florida – went on to win two state championships under Hall at Forest. “It was just kind of put together,” said John Brantley III, now head coach at Trinity Catholic. Arnold, Paquin and Brantley all agree that the
impact of MCYFL on the kids and the community over the years is palpable and real. “Football is the ultimate microcosm of life,” Paquin said. “You get out of it what you put into it. … Just watching these kids See MCYFL, page 3