CHARLESTON, Miss. — You can catch a showing of a story about a group of New York firefighters, and how some of them never made it back to the station after 9/11. The documentary is called FDNY Dream Bike, and you can see that Thursday night at the CARE building on the square in Charleston at 6 p.m.
John Allison (son of famous Miss. Musician Mose Allision) directed the film and will be present at Thursday’s showing. Allison worked for 11 years in the North Tower of the World Trade Center before moving to Tucson, Ariz. He was not employed there during the 9/11 attacks, but his wife was. She was off work that day visiting family. Allison now lives in Charleston where his father was born.
The documentary highlights the story of Gerard Baptiste and his crew at station FDNY’s Ladder 9. Allison lived right next door to the fire station and says Baptists along with 9 others never made it out of the north tower while trying to save lives at the World Trade Center.
In October 2001, there was a gathering at the fire station at which a publisher for a motorcycle museum attended. The publisher spotted an old beat up Honda motorcycle in the back of the firehouse that Baptiste had purchased a week before 9/11. The fighter fighters let the publisher take the bike away and a mother later, he brought the bike back completely refurbished, with the letters “FDNY” on the side and “In Memory of John Baptiste” on the handle.
