NY center opens in 9/11 firefighter's name

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wi...,6887246.story

September 4, 2008

NEW YORK - A center that studies emergency responses to disasters like the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina has opened at a Manhattan college.

The Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency Response Studies is named after a 28-year-old firefighter killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

His mother, Sally Regenhard, has lobbied for safer high-rise towers after the trade center's collapse.

"For the Regenhard family, this center will carry on Christian's legacy," she said Thursday in a statement.

The research center received over $150,000 in federal funding and will have a three-person staff. It is part of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"In addition to being a firefighter and a former U.S. Marine, he was an artist and a writer with intellectual interests," Regenhard's mother said. "I wanted something in the academic realm that would have relevance to helping save first responders and members of the public."

"Through the work of its dedicated faculty, this center will honor all first responders who lost their lives as a result of 9/11 and can help to ensure the safety of all responders in the future," she said.