"He says, Dad! Dad! Do you know what’s going on? A plane hit the World Trade Center! I ran like everyone else, thinking it was an assassin or something. Then he says, Dad! another pla-. He couldn't get the word plane out because the communications went out.”

It would be hours before Rein learned that his son was okay. But in the meantime, he coordinated Suffolk County’s emergency response, sending 250 fire trucks and ambulances to a staging site at Shea Stadium in Queens where they would be deployed as needed.

Late in the afternoon, Rein made his way to Ground Zero. He was looking for another fire official who could give him some direction he could take back to the emergency management team on Long Island. “We have fire departments but they’re not listening to the chiefs,” he recalled. “They’re just jumping on a truck, three or four guys, and going into the city. That’s not a chain of command. That’s chaos.”

The official he finally found thanked him for his effort but bluntly told him no one could provide that information. “He said, We have so much to deal with here. You wanna help? Take that five-gallon bucket.”

For five days, Rein, then 62, worked on The Pile, as the smoldering wreckage of the Twin Towers was called by those who excavated it, picking through ash and asbestos-laden dust and twisted steel, looking for body parts, wallets, purses, anything that might identify those who perished in the terrorist attacks.

“I never thought about it like this until yesterday when I was going through some pictures, finalizing which ones I’m going to use [for the exhibit]," he said. "This pile was 10 or 12 stories high. It hurt your neck to look up ... and here we are, 1,000 or more rescue and recovery workers with a five-gallon pail. All this steel, some of which was longer than buses, and twisted and all. And we’re with these pails. And I said, How the hell are we ever gonna empty that 10-story mess over here?”

Rein’s story and that of so many others is collected up in 9/11 Remembrance Tribute & Exhibit, on display today through Saturday, Sept. 12 at Winter Garden City Hall, to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

The exhibit includes newspapers and magazines, photos, artifacts, memorabilia and video, documenting the coordinated terrorist attacks when three passenger jets flying out of Boston and Washington, D.C. were hijacked and flown into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon. A fourth plane, flying out of Newark, was brought down in Shanksville, Penn., after passengers overpowered the hijackers, preventing the plane from reaching its target, believed to be the White House or the Capitol.

This is the third time Rein, now 87, has brought his exhibit, now housed by the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation, to Winter Garden. It was also shown on the 10-year and 20-year anniversaries of the attacks.

For the 25th anniversary, Rein added 30 percent new material, receiving some assistance from his granddaughter who works at the New Museum in New York City.

“She said, Grandpa, in the museum here we have a lot of artifacts and resources that we share sometimes with the 9/11 Museum in the city. She sent me like three Google pages worth of material.”

The exhibit now pays tribute to non-traditional first responders. “ So, what does that mean? There's an explosion. A natural gas explosion. You want the gas utility guys. Hurricanes, you want the linemen. Lifeguards, CERT, Certified Emergency Response Team. Every county has one. They're not traditional first responders, but they back up the first responders with needs.”

Rein, who lived in Winter Garden for 15 years and now lives in Clermont with his son and daughter-in-law, came close to not mounting the exhibit this year. He lost his wife in March, and he's fighting four different cancers and kidney issues — the result of his exposure at Ground Zero. He's one of the more than 154,700 first responders, recovery workers, area residents and students enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program. More than 63,000 people have been diagnosed with health issues related to 9/11. Ten cancers are commonly associated with 9/11, including the prostate and skin cancers Rein has. More than 1,300 people in the WTCHP program have died from 9/11-related diseases, according to a new report released Tuesday.

“That’s another crime,” Rein said.

But Rein said friends from church wouldn’t let him not produce the exhibit for the 25th anniversary. They asked if they could do the heavy lifting while he directed them where to put all the pieces. “I said, Hell yeah!"

Rein added, " I feel honored to do it as a tribute, and I feel honored to do it so I can honor on behalf of everyone who comes, those who perished, those who were involved in the rescue, those who are survivors or survivors of the deceased, and those now who are medically fighting the after effects from 9/11.”