‘Help Me To Light the Way’

September 1, 2026

New Jersey Knight Chuck Costello gave his life on 9/11 to save people trapped in the twin towers

By Jorge I. Domínguez-López

September 1, 2026

The Tribute in Light illuminates the New York City skyline on Sept. 11, 2018, as seen from Jersey City, N.J. (Gary Hershorn / Getty Images)

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Charles “Chuck” Costello Jr., a 46-year-old elevator mechanic and member of St. Ambrose Council 6424 in Old Bridge, New Jersey, was working about 20 blocks north of the World Trade Center at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo.

“It was not common for him to work in Manhattan at all,” recalled his wife, Mary Costello. “He usually worked in Jersey.”

Chuck was preparing to repair the hotel’s elevators when a Boeing 767 passenger plane slammed into the north tower at 8:46 a.m.; a second one struck the south tower at 9:03 a.m.

As more than 300,000 people fled Lower Manhattan, Chuck ran in the opposite direction. “I’ll be fine,” he told a coworker before heading into the north tower at around 9 a.m. He later entered the south tower as well.

Firefighters and law enforcement officers who witnessed Chuck’s evacuation efforts at ground zero referred to him as “the elevator man.” His body was recovered in the south tower’s elevator shaft next to a firefighter and a police officer on Jan. 5, 2002. In his pocket were $77, his driver’s license and his rosary.

To those who knew Chuck best, it made perfect sense.

“After the towers went down, I was like, ‘What was he thinking, running in there, with the kids and everything else?’” said childhood friend Kevin Wyer. “That’s Chucky — he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he didn’t.”

Mary agreed: “He just did what felt natural to him. A car once broke down on the turnpike in the fast lane, and we pulled over. It was a woman, and he’s running into traffic. He’s like, ‘I’m not gonna leave her there.’”

She added: “He did what had to be done. He didn’t have fears about something like that. He just did what was necessary.”

*Chuck Costello is pictured in his U.S. Navy uniform. (Photo courtesy of Mary Costello)*

SERVICE AND CHARITY

Charles Gregory Costello Jr. was born in Queens on Feb. 24, 1955, the oldest of four siblings. In 1960, the family moved to Old Bridge, New Jersey, just a couple of blocks away from the home of Mary Norton, his future bride.

“Chuck was very religious, and he was also very outgoing — he liked everybody, and everybody liked him,” recalled Raymond Costello, his younger brother, who was also an elevator mechanic. “When we walked around in New York, he would reach into his pocket, and if it was his last dollar, or his lunch or whatever, he would hand it to a homeless person.”

Kevin Wyer remembered growing up in the neighborhood with Chuck.

“We were a bunch of wild kids and Chuck was the good kid,” Wyer said with a laugh. “You know, we were getting into trouble, and he was getting us out of trouble. Anybody needed help, he was there. So he was a really good person.”

Though Chuck and Mary grew up in the same neighborhood, they didn’t meet until their 20s and married in 1989. Back in the mid-1980s, Mary didn’t attend church very often. That changed soon after she began dating Chuck.

His faith “was definitely the number one thing in his life,” Mary recalled. “I can remember watching him at church in those early days. He was in another zone when he was sitting there praying. You could tell he wasn’t just waiting for Mass to end. He was deep in thought and deep in prayer.”

During and after his four years in the U.S. Navy, from 1975 to 1979, Chuck served the Church in many ways. Stationed largely at Pearl Harbor, he also served in Japan and the Philippines. When a hurricane demolished a children’s hospital in the Philippines, Wyer, who also served in the Navy, recalled that Chuck helped rebuild it.

“He took his 30-day leave that you get every year, and he volunteered to help rebuild that hospital,” Wyer said. “And that’s what he did. He always took the time to take care of people.”

Following his time in the Navy, Chuck was an extraordinary minister of holy Communion, played guitar for Mass at St. Ambrose for 27 years, taught confirmation classes and, as his brother Raymond noted, was “the one who went to the church rectory to shovel snow” even as a boy.

If he wasn’t at work, Chuck was playing outdoors with his four children — Theresa, Amanda, MaryKate and Charlie — coaching soccer, or involved in activities of the Friendly Sons of the Shillelagh or the Knights of Columbus. His family and friends later discovered that he quietly assisted numerous people in need.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

Joseph Langlois, then-treasurer of St. Ambrose Council 6424, was working in 7 World Trade Center next to the twin towers on Sept. 11. He didn’t see Chuck that day, but he remembered raising funds with him a few months earlier outside an A&P supermarket during one of the New Jersey State Council’s Intellectual Disabilities Program drives.

Chuck Costello holds his infant son, Charlie, at home in early 1995. (Photo courtesy of Mary Costello)

“He was a very friendly guy,” Langlois recalled, “and obviously he cared enough to be doing this in the first place. It showed he cared about the people we were trying to support. Everything I heard afterward only reinforced that impression.”

Chuck’s funeral Mass was celebrated at St. Ambrose Church on Sept. 29. Langlois led the Fourth Degree honor guard, even though Chuck was not a Fourth Degree member.

“This was the least we could do for him,” Langlois said, “show him the respect of having the Fourth Degree there when normally we wouldn’t.”

But there was a problem.

“You couldn’t get into church,” he said. “We absolutely could not get into the church. It was wall-to-wall packed with people.”

The Knights waited outside.

“At the end of the Mass,” Langlois recalled, “we formed a ceremony with the swords in the air and people walked underneath.”

Among the hundreds in attendance were many people whom Chuck had helped in one way or another over the years.

“We found out there were so many people he was helping after he passed,” Wyer recalled. “They came forward or called Mary and said, ‘I just want to tell you how good your husband is.’ He didn’t brag about nothing. He just did it. He did what was right, and he never mentioned nothing.”

Chuck wrote in one of his notebooks the year before he died, “The meaning of human life to me is just plain learning to love. I feel learning to love is the key to all life. And yet I feel this lesson has been one for me where I still have a long way to go.”

When Cardinal John O’Connor, the beloved archbishop of New York, died May 3, 2000, Chuck went to pay his respects. The New York Times quoted him as saying: “I don’t consider today sad because he accomplished what he set out to accomplish, and he’s gone on to a better life.”

Chuck was only 46 when he died on 9/11, leaving behind a young family. Charlie, his youngest child, was just 6 years old.

Remembering that day, his sister Kathy Birch Costello recalled saying to her son: “If Uncle Chuck is gone, this is the exit he would have written.”

Mary Costello holds a framed photograph of her husband, Chuck, outside her New Jersey home. Taken by their 6-year-old son, Charlie, in 2001, the photograph shows Chuck holding a U.S. flag with his hand over his heart. (Photo by Matt Greenslade)

Charlie, whose full name is Charles Gregory Costello III, has few memories of his father, yet Chuck remains the moral compass of his life.

An elevator mechanic like his father, Charlie is also a volunteer firefighter in Summit, New Jersey.

Charlie said that not long ago he considered buying a fancy car. Then he remembered that his father had never cared about such things, so he decided he didn’t need one.

“I am a Roman Catholic, and we believe he is always with us in spirit,” affirmed Charlie, who recently celebrated the birth of his own son, Charles Gregory Costello IV. “He influences almost every thought and decision in my life. At this point, I try every day to make him the proudest and happiest father I can.”

On the night of Sept. 10, 2001, Chuck visited his father’s house. He had been working late on a memorial for deceased members of the Friendly Sons of the Shillelagh. Chuck went outside, sat alone in a chair in the backyard and stared up at the sky.

“My father used to tell everyone,” Raymond said, “that was Chuck getting his orders for the next day.”

Chuck was honorably discharged from military service on Jan. 5, 1981. His body was recovered at ground zero exactly 21 years later, on Jan. 5, 2002.

Weeks after the tragedy, Mary found a personal prayer Chuck had written in the book he used to teach religious education classes. In a box titled “What is your prayer for the faith journey?” he had written:

Help me to light the way for those in the dark. And when I enter the darkness, let me not panic but patiently wait to remember the light.

*****

JORGE I. DOMÍNGUEZ-LÓPEZ is an editor and freelance writer based on Long Island, N.Y.

‘Help Me To Light the Way’

SERVICE AND CHARITY

THE MEANING OF LIFE

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