USCGC Jeffrey Palazzo Commissioned

PHOTO CAPTION: Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffrey Palazzo early in his U.S. Coast Guard career. Palazzo later became an FDNY firefighter while remaining in the Coast Guard Reserve and was killed responding to the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. A Coast Guard cutter bearing his name will be commissioned in New York on Sept. 12, 2026. (U.S. Coast Guard)

Twenty-five years after Coast Guard reservist and New York City firefighter Jeffrey Palazzo died trying to save people at the World Trade Center, his name is about to officially enter Coast Guard service aboard a cutter built to carry his legacy forward.

The Coast Guard will commission USCGC Jeffrey Palazzo in New York City on Saturday, Sept. 12, one day after the 25th anniversary of the attacks that killed Palazzo and 342 other FDNY members. The ceremony is scheduled for noon at the Intrepid Museum and Pier 86 in Manhattan.

The ship is the Coast Guard’s 63rd Fast Response Cutter and will eventually be homeported in Apra Harbor, Guam. The service accepted delivery of the vessel in June and specifically named it for Palazzo, a machinery technician first class whose career was built around rescuing people long before Sept. 11, 2001.

Palazzo served eight years on active duty in the Coast Guard before joining the New York City Fire Department, while continuing his military service in the Coast Guard Reserve.

His Coast Guard career included major rescues.

During the 1989 sinking of the charter boat Bronx Queen off the Rockaways, Palazzo was part of a Coast Guard response in which 17 passengers were saved from the sinking vessel.

Four years later, Palazzo was aboard one of the first Coast Guard boats to reach the Golden Venture, a cargo ship carrying more than 200 Chinese migrants that ran aground near Queens.

Fellow reservist Chris Cassano later recalled hearing people crying for help in the darkness and credited Palazzo with pulling numerous people from the water.

In 1996, Palazzo took that rescue mentality into another uniform when he joined FDNY.

After five years with Ladder Company 109 in Brooklyn, he joined Staten Island’s elite Rescue Company 5 in the spring of 2001. He remained a Coast Guard reservist at the same time.

On the morning of Sept. 11, Palazzo left his wife, Lisa, a voicemail before heading to work.

It was nothing unusual, she later recalled—just that he was going to work and loved her.

He never came home.

Palazzo and 10 other members of Rescue 5 died while responding to the attack on the World Trade Center and attempting to save people trapped there.

His wife and two young daughters, Nicole and Samantha, were left without him.

What happened afterward adds another layer to the Coast Guard legacy that will be on display this weekend.

Following Palazzo’s death, Lisa wanted to continue the family name. She adopted a 13-month-old boy and named him Matthew, which had been Jeffrey Palazzo’s birth name.

Years later, when the Coast Guard announced in 2019 that a new cutter would be named for Jeffrey Palazzo, Matthew spoke with a Coast Guard recruiter at the ceremony.

Those conversations turned into his own decision to serve.

Matthew graduated from Coast Guard basic training on Sept. 4, 2020, just days before the 19th anniversary of the attacks. He went on to serve aboard the icebreaker Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star.

Twenty-five years after his father’s death, Matthew is still serving. Reporting from New York on Sept. 11 identifies him as a machinery technician second class—the same Coast Guard rating his father held.

The Coast Guard first announced in 2019 that Fast Response Cutters would be named for Palazzo and fellow 9/11 victim Vincent Danz, an NYPD officer and Coast Guard reservist who also died responding to the attacks.

Fast Response Cutters traditionally bear the names of enlisted Coast Guard members recognized for extraordinary service.

The Jeffrey Palazzo has already completed crew training, evaluations and sea trials ahead of commissioning.

Once formally placed into service Saturday, the cutter will eventually travel to Guam, becoming the fifth Fast Response Cutter based at Apra Harbor.

But its name comes from much closer to New York.

A Coast Guardsman who spent years pulling strangers out of danger.

A firefighter who ran toward the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

And, 25 years later, a son serving in the same branch whose uniform his father once wore.

Sources: U.S. Coast Guard; Coast Guard Historian’s Office

(Source: OAF Nation)