Goodbye to dad poisoned by 9/11

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-324168c.html

BY AUSTIN FENNER
1/11/2006

Motorcycle cops salute as hearse carrying Zadroga’s body passes yesterday on its way to Holy Cross Cemetery in Arlington, N.J.

As bugler plays taps, NYPD Detective James Zadroga's coffin is carried from Queen of Peace Catholic Church in North Arlington, N.J.

Tragedy had taken the 4-year-old girl's parents from her, first her mother two years ago, and now her father.

As Tylerann Zadroga sat for another funeral yesterday, loved ones reassured her that her dad, former NYPD Detective James Zadroga, died a hero - poisoned as he helped clean up the burning ruins of the World Trade Center.

"My granddaughter has accepted the fact her dad died," said the detective's father, Joseph Zadroga, a retired North Arlington, N.J., police chief. "We told her he died a hero."

While an autopsy is still pending on 34-year-old Zadroga's official cause of death, the NYPD did award him a tax-free disability pension of three-quarters pay in July 2004. Zadroga's mother, Linda Zadroga, said her son, who developed the infamous World Trade Center cough, was diagnosed by doctors as having black lung disease.

Zadroga, who logged nearly 500 hours during the recovery effort at Ground Zero, died last Thursday.

After the service at Queen of Peace Catholic Church in North Arlington, Zadroga's parents said his death should serve as a wakeup call to first responders who toiled along the smoky pile of death and destruction.

"My son had a gallium scan and it showed he had glass and people's bones in his lungs," said his heartbroken mother.

She urged recovery workers to get a gallium scan, an exhaustive test that uses a special camera to take pictures of specific tissues in the body.

"We want to help these other people," she added.

Zadroga's wife, Ronda, 29, died two years ago from a stress-related illness, said family members.

Tylerann is being raised by James Zadroga's parents, who now live in Little Egg Harbor, N.J.

Mike Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, said Zadroga's death is the first post-9/11 death of a city worker who was exposed to the hazardous material at Ground Zero.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which urged workers to use respirators at Ground Zero, did find elevated levels of pollutants on the pile at Ground Zero, as fires burned for months after the 9/11 attacks.