John Perry woke up on a Tuesday morning and headed to the New York City Police Department headquarters to submit paperwork officially declaring his retirement.
“He turned in his shield, he did his paperwork, and that was it,” said Castaic resident Marc Manfro. “He was now a retired policeman.”
Moments later, Perry and everyone else there was met with a loud sound coming from about a mile and a half away. Clouds of smoke then followed soon after.
Before anyone really knew what was going on, as a police officer, Perry knew it was an emergency and immediately turned back and headed into the NYPD headquarters to withdraw his paperwork and picked up his shield.
Perry told personnel, “‘I’ll retire tomorrow,’” Manfro recalled.
He then headed toward the World Trade Center on that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001, and ran toward the South Tower to redirect hundreds of people evacuating the building and avoiding the falling debris.
As the South Tower began to shake, first responders and civilians kept exiting the building, but Perry saw one person who fainted.
“He took it upon himself to carry that person to safety,” Manfro said, and moments later the building collapsed, claiming Perry’s life.
Before that life-changing day for millions across the nation, Manfro and Perry were planning to retire from the force and open a business together. Manfro was an NYPD transit officer specializing in the subway systems.
But after the largest terrorist attack in American history, like thousands of police officers and other first responders, Manfro was assigned to Ground Zero, working seven days a week, with more than 12-hour shifts performing search and recovery efforts.
He then medically retired in January 2003 from 9/11 exposure.
It started with a cough, and then by the end of the shift he had a headache, developed shortness of breath, which ultimately began to affect his heart and he had to be revived twice in the hospital years after, he said.
“It took a toll on me,” he added. “I had a dual stroke. I had heart failure,” adding that a dozen police officers that he knew of have died from those same symptoms throughout the years.
Manfro moved his family to Castaic about a year after the attack because “I just wanted them to have a normal life, and the only way I thought they could do that is if I moved them far away from New York as possible,” he said. His two sons graduated from local high school in the Santa Clarita Valley and went on to become law enforcement officers themselves.
One works with the Los Angeles Police Department, and another is a probation officer, he said.
“They’re both my heroes. I look up to them,” he added.
Now, 24 years later, Manfro dedicates his time to speaking about his friend and sharing his own story with anyone willing to listen when he’s not traveling the country and looking for a good food spot with his wife.
Most recently, he was featured on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute podcast in honor of the 9/11 anniversary.
Manfro hasn’t visited the 9/11 site since the attack, because it’s too painful to return to a place that changed his life and the lives of thousands forever.
But sharing Perry’s story has become his way of honoring the friend who never got to enjoy retirement and the thousands of others who never made it home that day.
“I don’t want people to forget,” he said. “All these poor people lost their life for no reason other than they were just trying to go to work and make a living.”
