College Hoops

Lifelong Friends Come Back to ASU for Salute to Service Game

Lifelong Friends Come Back to ASU for Salute to Service Game


TEMPE – Al Fuentes sits on a cushioned patio outdoor sofa at the Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe on a crisp Saturday afternoon before the UCLA vs. Arizona State football game. His left arm extends over the top of the chair with two lifelong friends on either side. The smile underneath his mustache is almost a permanent fixture as decades-long stories are shared. 

The stories may get old, but the memories live on forever. Few understand that better than Fuentes.
 

Fuentes, 71, was a New York City Fire Department Captain when the Sept. 11 terror attacks occurred. He raced from the Brooklyn Navy Yard without hesitation after the first plane hit the World Trade Center South Tower. Fuentes and other firefighters ran into a nearby hotel after the South Tower collapsed, seeking to find people trapped in the rubble.

 

Soon thereafter, the North Tower collapsed and debris buried Fuentes and countless others. 

 

He was one of the few who miraculously survived after a group of firefighters pulled him from the rubble a few hours later. 

 

Fuentes was the last person pulled from the rubble alive.

 

He was rushed to a hospital in Jersey City in a medically-induced coma – one he would be in for weeks – with a fractured skull, collapsed lung, broken ribs, and other injuries.

 

“I was given another shot,” Fuentes said. “I learned to love life, to wake up every day and say, ‘wow, how lucky am I?'”

 

A Bond Born From Tragedy

After Fuentes emerged from the coma, Bob Hurley Sr. – the father of Arizona State men’s basketball head coach Bobby Hurley – reached out to him. The eldest Hurley, who is just four years older than Fuentes, found out that he liked basketball and their bond grew.

 

And that’s where the bond between a legendary high school boys basketball coach and a Sept. 11th hero began.

 

Hurley Sr. coached at St. Anthony’s High School in Jersey City, NJ, where he led the program to 26 state basketball titles. He produced over 150 Division I men’s basketball players in his 45 years as head coach. 

 

Hurley Sr., his wife, and Fuentes and his wife went to dinner where most of the dialogue was about their biggest common interest: basketball. Like Hurley, Fuentes was a basketball coach, too, coaching CYO for St. Sebastian’s in Woodside, N.Y.

 

He invited Fuentes to talk to one of his teams. It was not just…

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