9/11 Blood Drive Honoring Brothers Of Basking Ridge Local

BASKING RIDGE, NJ — A blood drive will be held on Sept. 11, honoring two brothers of a Basking Ridge local who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks 25 years ago.

The drive honors Port Authority Police Officer Thomas Gorman, who was among the first responders on Sept. 11, 2001.

"There is much we will never know about Tom's final moments. He, along with so many first responders and innocent people, was lost in the sudden and massive collapse of the World Trade Center," said his sister Theresa (Gorman) Creedon, a 33-year resident of Basking Ridge.

"While others were running out, Tom ran in. He knew people needed help, and he answered that call. That was Tom," said Creedon.

Tom was one of the 2,977 people killed on September 11, 2001. He left behind a wife and three children.

It also honors John Gorman, who was working on the 81st floor of the North Tower when the first plane hit the building, with the impact zone beginning about 12 floors above
him.

"John was not a first responder. He was a Citibank executive trying to survive an unimaginable situation. But even then, his instinct was to help others," said Creedon.

"He helped usher his staff to safety. And when he reached the lobby as the South Tower collapsed, he encountered a woman - a stranger - who needed help. John picked her up and carried her to safety. They never reconnected," said Creedon.

Fifteen years later, on Dec. 23, 2016, he died from 9/11-related cancers. John left behind a wife, three children and two grand-daughters.

The blood drive will be held at Robert Wood Johnson Steeple Chase Cancer Center - Conference Room 1 at 30 Rehill Drive in Somerville. It will be held on Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4 pm. and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

For more information, see the flyer below:

Sister's Letter Honoring Brothers

Theresa (Gorman) Creedon, a 33-year resident of Basking Ridge, and sister of both Tom and John shared a hearfelt letter about her brothers. See below:

Twenty-Five Years: Remembering 9/11 Through an Act of Life By: Theresa (Gorman) Creedon

Twenty-five years. It is almost impossible for me to reconcile those words with September 11, 2001.

We go about our days. We live our lives. We raise families, celebrate milestones and welcome new generations. We keep moving forward. It is perhaps the greatest honor we can bestow on those we loved and lost.

But it is in moments like this - when I allow myself to reflect deeply because I want to honor the people we lost - that the 25 years simply erase.

Writing this does that for me now.

My brother Thomas Gorman, a Port Authority Police Officer and member of the Emergency Service Unit, was one of the first responders that morning.

There is much we will never know about Tom's final moments. He, along with so many first responders and innocent people, was lost in the sudden and massive collapse of the World Trade Center.

What we do know is enough.

While others were running out, Tom ran in.

He knew people needed help, and he answered that call. That was Tom.

Tom was one of the 2,977 people killed on September 11, 2001. He left behind a wife and three children.

But one of the painful truths we have come to understand over these 25 years is that the number of lives taken by 9/11 did not stop growing when that terrible day ended.

My brother John Gorman was working on the 81st floor of the North Tower when the first plane struck the building, with the impact zone beginning approximately 12 floors above him. John was not a first responder. He was a Citibank executive trying to survive an unimaginable situation. But even then, his instinct was to help others.

He helped usher his staff to safety. And when he reached the lobby as the South Tower collapsed, he encountered a woman - a stranger - who needed help. John picked her up and carried her to safety. They never reconnected.

John survived that day. I think of him as one of its unsung heroes.

But 9/11 was not finished with John - or with our family.

In the days that followed, John returned again and again to the burning site, searching for Tom. Fifteen years later, on December 23, 2016, he died from 9/11-related cancers. John left behind a wife, three children and two grand-daughters.

John became one of the thousands who survived September 11 only to die in the years that followed from illnesses related to their exposure to that day and its aftermath. In 2026, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum is adding a seventh moment of silence to honor those who lost their lives to 9/11-related illness and injury in the years since.

I am grateful for that recognition.

Because John survived September 11. And we still lost him to September 11.

There is another circle of loss that will never be counted in an official number.

Our dad, Edward Gorman, was a 28-year veteran of the Bayonne Fire Department. During his career, Dad was recognized for saving a toddler from a burning building and, on another occasion, for saving a fellow firefighter.

He survived the death of Tom by 17 years and John by just 20 months.

When I wrote Dad's obituary in 2018, I called him yet another victim of the 9/11 attacks. I wrote that he died of the broken heart he had carried for those 17 years.

I knew then, as I do now, that Dad's name would never be included in an official count of those lost to 9/11. Nor should I try to make a medical claim that doesn't belong to me.

But numbers cannot capture every consequence of that day.

There are parents, spouses, children, siblings and families who carried unimaginable grief forward. For some, including my dad, that anguish took a profound toll on their emotional and physical well-being.

That, too, is part of the human cost of September 11.

So when I think about the lives affected by 9/11, I think in widening circles.

Those we lost that morning.

Those, like John, we lost to its illnesses in the years that followed.

And those, like Dad, who carried the grief of September 11 so deeply that it changed the course of the lives they had left to live.

Twenty-five years later, those circles include thousands upon thousands of families, each with their own names, their own stories and their own ways of carrying forward the consequences of the senseless and horrific acts of that day.

Our family's story is just one of them.

Tom ran into that building when others were running out. John was inside trying to get out and, along the way, made sure others got out too.

Two brothers. Two very different circumstances. Both confronted with people who needed help.

And both responded by helping.

Then there was Dad - the firefighter who had spent his own life doing much the same.

When I put their stories together now, I see something that feels important.

Service wasn't something these three men talked about. It was something they did.

My mom and I are the two who remain from our original family of five. Around us is the cherished family Tom and John helped create - their wives, Barbara and Janeth respectively and combined they have six children and 12 grandchildren who carry their names, their stories and pieces of them forward.

There is something else I have come to understand about those widening circles of loss. For many years, my instinct was to focus on those whose grief seemed greater than my own - Tom's and John's wives and children, and my parents as they endured the unimaginable loss of two sons. My own nuclear family, my husband and two daughters remained intact, and I was profoundly grateful for that. But I was also a sister who lost one brother suddenly, another through the protracted consequences of that same terrible day, and then a daughter watching her father carry an unbearable grief until we lost him too. Supporting those I loved did not mean my own grief disappeared.

I understand now that there can be room for both: to show up for others in their grief while also recognizing and caring for your own. That understanding is part of why, 25 years later, I am finding my way back to reciprocal peer support - the model Cherie Castellano pioneered and invited me to work under in 2005 through Grant 4 UNJ 911. I am now planning to work with VolunPEER as a reciprocal peer supporter, using lived experience not because it gives me answers for someone else's loss, but because it can help me sit beside another person with a different kind of understanding.

In many ways, that feels like another circle of service. For years, my service was to my family, to helping them through the immediate and continuing challenges of our losses, and to carrying forward what needed to be carried. I do not see those years as something separate from this next chapter. They are what prepared me to return to a form of peer support rooted in mutuality: getting support, giving support, and growing the capacity for support in others.

And while we cannot change what happened to our family, we have always known we have a choice about what we do with it. In our own unique ways, we have tried to live in a way that honors their memory.

Not every day is spent actively remembering. Life doesn't work that way. We go about our days and live the lives we are fortunate enough to have.

But Tom, John and Dad are woven into our lives.

And when moments like the RWJ 25th 9/11 annual remembrance blood drive come when we can remember them with purpose, we have tried to make those moments a force for good.

There is a particular poignancy in holding it at the Steeplechase Cancer Center at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset. Tom made his last blood donation at this same location on September 10, 2001 - the day before he gave his life helping others.

Twenty-five years later, on September 10 and 11, our family will return there for a 9/11 Memorial Blood Drive honoring Tom and John - and the many victims of September 11.

I hope those who can join us will donate.

And for those who cannot, I hope you will consider donating blood wherever you live - in memory of Tom and John, in memory of someone whose name or story you carry, or simply in honor of all those whose lives were lost or forever changed by September 11.

Donate in their memory. Donate to help someone you may never meet. Donate to transform remembrance into an act that can give life to someone else.

Twenty-five years later, perhaps that is one way we keep moving forward while never forgetting.