Readers' Forum | Ground zero worker now has chronic cough

My son, Michael McDonald, is a 9/11 hero. He is a cellphone expert.

After the terrorist attacks on New York City, he was going to pick up a portable cellphone tower at Giants Stadium. He stopped at the Hackensack River Red Cross sub-rescue sight and helipad, where I was. He was crying and said, “They got the Pentagon.”

I assured him the Pentagon is almost-everything proofed. I worked there as a Marine Corps sergeant in 1966 and 1967.

Mike got to the stadium rescue staging center and hooked up to the portable cell tower. They packed him with supplies.

He then was escorted by the New Jersey State Police and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to the center of the mass-murder scene.

Now he has got a chronic cough. Is he going the way of black lung, Agent Orange and Gulf War syndrome heroes?

James R. McDonald Sr.

Windber