Honoring the Unseen: Funeral Directors and the Lasting Cost of 9/11

By Jay Jacobson, LUTCF, CPC, CFSP

The air was still heavy with dust and grief when the remains of the first victims were carefully released into the care of funeral directors. These professionals were not on the pile at Ground Zero searching through rubble. Their calling came after recovery, when families needed someone to take the most sacred next steps. In quiet rooms away from the cameras, they received the dead with dignity and began the painstaking process of preparing services that could bring comfort to the living.

Funeral directors from New York and across the country stepped forward to serve. Some were part of Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams, while others volunteered their time and left their own communities to help shoulder the overwhelming need. They coordinated with medical examiners, transported remains, and offered families the space to grieve, to gather, and to find a way forward. Where there were remains, they guided families through arrangements. Where there were none, they helped create meaningful services that honored lives lost even in absence. Their hands and voices were steady when families felt the ground beneath them had disappeared.

This sacred work came with a cost. The funeral directors who served in and around the exposure zone breathed the same poisoned air as other responders. The dust contained asbestos, pulverized concrete, jet fuel, and heavy metals, and it lingered long after the initial collapse. Many funeral directors later faced cancers, respiratory illnesses, and gastrointestinal disease tied directly to those exposures. Others carried invisible wounds. Standing alongside grieving families day after day, absorbing relentless sorrow, many battled burnout, depression, or post-traumatic stress.

Unlike firefighters or police officers, funeral directors are rarely named in official accounts of 9/11-related deaths. Their illnesses and losses are hidden within broader categories of “cleanup workers” or “support staff.” There are no public rolls of honor bearing their names. Yet their contributions were essential. These were men and women who stepped into the hardest work of all—caring for the dead with dignity and the living with compassion. They carried grief that was not their own so that families would not have to carry it alone.

Today, the World Trade Center Health Program and the Victim Compensation Fund provide support for those who can demonstrate their presence in the exposure zone. Funeral directors qualify under these programs, but no compensation can erase the toll. What can bring healing is remembrance. Their story deserves to be told as part of the larger narrative of service and sacrifice after September 11.

As we pause each year to remember the lives lost and the heroes who rushed into danger, we should also honor those who stood quietly at the edges of the tragedy. The funeral directors who cared for the fallen, who comforted families, who gave order to chaos and dignity where it seemed impossible. Their heroism was not measured in headlines or monuments, but in compassion that endured through the darkest of days.

This is their story. A story of service, sacrifice, and love expressed in its most practical and profound form. It is a story worth telling, again and again, until their names and their contributions are remembered alongside every other hero of September 11.