- May 5, 2024
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First, he was a New York City fire captain, then a house painter. Then, he wrote a book. Since 2004, Richard Meo has owned a Venetian painting service in Palm Coast.
Capt. Richard Meo trudged through the streets of Manhattan, Sept. 11, 2001. In 20 years of fire service, he thought he’d seen it all. He worked the World Trade Center car-bombing of 1993, stared down into a five-story hole in the ground in the middle of New York and was sure it was the worst destruction he’d ever encounter.
It wasn’t.
“It was eerily silent,” Meo said, recounting the day. “No birds. No sounds. Just us crunching through the streets, and the crackling fires burning in World Trade Center 7.”
At mid-afternoon, the sky was crystal blue. “Just like this,” he said, pointing out the window of his F-section home. Lifeless bodies hugged the concrete, covered in plastic and soot. The north and south towers had fallen. All three companies in his Hell’s Kitchen firehouse — about 75 men from Engine 34, Ladder 21 and Engine 26 — were missing in action.
Meo was part of a search party, scouring the collapse zone for his lieutenant who, last minute, had replaced him on the day’s work schedule. It seemed every other worker he came across on the abandoned roadways told of another firefighter, another company that was lost.
Finally, he found his replacement, beat up and bloody. Meo made a joke about their shift change. Through red eyes, the lieutenant tried to laugh.
For another month, Meo worked at Ground Zero, sleeping and attending funerals in between 24-hour shifts. Sometimes, there were as many as four services a day.
Sitting with his hands crossed, a decade and two days after his first 9/11 tour, Meo tells stories from the job. The lieutenant who took his shift on the day of the attacks survived, he said; 105 of his other friends did not. In his firehouse, he lost 10 men, and two “kids” on assignment.
Two years later, he left the fire department and moved to Palm Coast, where he and his wife currently run a residential painting and repair company.
Venetian Painting & Plaster Co. has been operating since September 2004, in Palm Coast. (Contact the company at 986-0194.)
Meo started in construction at 18, opened his own painting practice at 21 and painted as a side job throughout his firefighting career, accumulating about 30 years of experience in the industry.
Initially, he wanted to be a fighter pilot. However, after he was diagnosed with nearsightedness, he went into emergency management training instead.
“Some people are motivated by profit, some by ideology,” he said. “Mine was, I guess, kind of trying to make a difference. You’re helping people, and you’re out there. … I’m not a sedentary person.”
But things changed after the attacks.
“After 9/11, I just wanted to be as far away from the fire department as possible,” he said. “I lost 105 of my friends that day. … You worked in the pile to get these guys out and, unfortunately, after the third day there were no more live people found.”
Today, Meo suffers from World Trade Center cough, an asthma-like respiratory affliction identified in late 2002.
He calls emergency management a young man’s job. After years of lugging around 65 to 80 pounds of gear, climbing ladders and running into burning buildings, it’s easy to start hurting.
It’s not that he’s done with ladders, he says, but more that they’re done with him.
Now, instead of hoses he wields brushes and rollers. He specializes in Venetian plaster, Bellagio and color-washing faux finishes. He’s a custom decorator.
He also wrote a book of short stories in 2004, titled “My Turn on the Fire Lines: A 22 Year Manhattan Firefighting Journey,” about his experiences in fire service, as well as a chronicling of events leading to 9/11.
“I’m not a writer writer,” he says, but he did put four years of work and $7,000 into releasing it in 2009, through Trafford Publishing. He’s currently working on a follow-up, examining the evolution of terrorism in America.
“The best part about the job was the people you worked with,” he said. They were all like-minded, all go-getters. “It’s a good feeling when you go into a bad place and you know you’re surrounded by good people.”
