Barry Nolan started his broadcasting career in the 1970s. He co-hosted the program Evening Magazine with Here & Now‘s Robin Young, introducing the world to people like Dick Hoyt, the marathoner who pushed his son, Rick Hoyt, who was born with disabilities, through the entire 26.2-mile Boston course in 1981.
More recently, Nolan was a panelist on the public radio show Says You!. But in 2001, he was a national reporter based in New York and spent several days at Ground Zero right after the Sept. 11 attacks. He slept on the ground and sifted through the dust to show his viewers the complete destruction he was seeing.
He befriended firefighters and other first responders, and later, advocated for benefits and compensation for the many illnesses they began to suffer, including the World Trade Center cough, severe lung diseases, cancers, post-traumatic stress disorder and death.
Eventually Nolan quit broadcasting and joined the office of then-Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) to continue to fight for federal legislation. Those efforts joined others and led to the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund and a monitoring program, the World Trade Center Health Program
That monitoring program now has one more data point: Nolan himself. He’s been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an interstitial lung disease with a median survival time of two to five years after symptoms arrive. Nolan first saw symptoms seven years ago, but did not know the cause at first.
Nolan and his wife Garland Waller spoke with Young.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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