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By EDMUND M. SILVESTRE
Caesar Borja Jr., son of a World Trade Center first responder who succumbed last week to a WTC-related lung disease, got his wish to meet the United States President face-to-face.
With his mother, younger brother and sister by his side, Borja Jr. told reporters that President George W. Bush listened intently as he pressed him for more federal funding to help those suffering from exposure to Ground Zero dust.
“On behalf of all World Trade Center victims, I expressed the urgency and the desperate need for financial support for health services,” Borja Jr. said of his private meeting with Mr. Bush Wednesday afternoon at Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan, where the President earlier delivered an economic speech.
“Everything that Mr. President told me reassured me wholeheartedly,” added the 21-year-old eldest son of fallen New York Police Department Police Officer Cesar Borja, who died Jan. 23 from serious lung problems attributed to WTC
toxin.
Borja Jr., a journalism student at Hunter College, said he felt he got the message across during his meeting with the President.
He said he wasn’t nervous at all during the meeting but kept himself focused on what he saw as his duty, to speak for the victims of 9/11.
“Now is your chance to be the voice, right here in this room, and speak confidentiality with the President of the United States of America. This is your honor, and honor it well,” he said he told himself.
Borja Jr. said he showed Mr. Bush a picture of his father and gave him the Mass card from his funeral last week.
He attended the meeting with his mother, Eva, brother, Evan, 16, and sister, Nhia, 12. Nhia skipped school to attend the meeting — and the President signed a sheet of notebook paper for her, writing a note asking the teacher to excuse her because she took the time off to meet with him.
“I was able to tell the President everything he needed to know about my father and the desperate need of many others who have died or are suffering from WTC-related illnesses,” he said.
Speaking quietly but fervently about his mission to save others from his father’s fate, Borja Jr. said he told the President that the funding should be expanded not just for “the heroes” who risked their lives but also for those living in the Ground Zero area and even out of towners who came to help and had been
exposed to the toxin.
Asked how he felt the President responded to his requests, Borja Jr. said he “felt the dedication, and felt the motivation and appreciation that the President has for my father, my family, and myself for coming this far.”
About an hour before Mr. Bush delivered his economic speech, sick 9/11 workers and residents of the neighborhood gathered at the edge of Ground Zero criticizing Mr. Bush’s proposal to spend an additional $25 million to fund a health care program.
“Twenty-five million is absolutely not enough,” said Marvin Bethea, 47, pointing out that some legislators, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, have proposed $1.9 billion in additional funds. “That’s a big gap.”
But Borja Jr. said he left his meeting with the President feeling the $25 million put in the budget to help sick 9/11 responders and workers is just a start.
“I’m not quoting Mr. President, but what I heard is that there will be more support,” he said. “My father was fortunate to have his own health insurance and his own pension. “But there are those who have to pay out of their own wallets for health monitoring, for doctors’ appointments, for medicine.”
The President’s role was put in the spotlight by Borja Jr. after he attended the President’s State of the Union address last week in Washington as a guest of Clinton.
Hours before the address, Borja Jr. learned his father died at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Instead of rushing back to New York, he decided to attend the speech as a way to honor his father and bring attention to those fighting WTC-related illnesses.
A day after the President’s speech, Borja Jr. publicly asked to meet with Mr. Bush, and the White House agreed.
Borja Jr. is supporting Clinton’s bill, which calls for a $1.9 billion commitment to fight 9/11 diseases among first-responders and others.
The federal government put up $75 million last year for 9/11 health programs but medical officials here say that the money will run out this summer.
He also defended the lady senator from critics who accuse her of using Borja Jr. and parading him around for her presidential bid.
“No, no one is using nobody,” he said. “Sen. Clinton is a World Trade Center advocate and what I am is a World Trade Center victim. She reached out to my family simply to help. And I thank Sen. Clinton for granting me the exposure that I needed to fight my battle that I believe is right.”
In an interview with 1010 WINS, Borja Jr. said he is overwhelmed by the attention his father’s case has generated, as well as the quick turn of events — from being invited by Clinton to the State of the Union address, to meeting the Chief Executive himself.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe everything that’s happening,” he said.
Borja Jr. said he knows his father would have been proud of his meeting with the President.
“My father would honestly not even say anything. He would just pat me on the back once, if I’m lucky twice, smile at me, do like one of those manly hero head nods, like this,” Borja said, demonstrating the slightest nod. “And that’s it, and I would love it.”
Borja Jr. briefly interned at age 15 with the Filipino Reporter. It was his late father who brought him to the Reporter’s editorial office at the Empire State Building.
During his stint at the Reporter, he joined sports editor L.P. Pelayo and another intern, Tracy Cruz, to the New York Mets’ Asian Night at Shea Stadium and mingled with Mets’ Asian players, including then outfielder Benny Agbayani, a Filipino-American.
At his father’s wake last week, Borja Jr. hugged the publisher
of the Reporter and thanked him for writing first about his father’s plight.
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