NEW YORK — The deaths of some 3,000 people killed on 9/11 when the World Trade Center collapsed in lower Manhattan ripped apart families. The dead included firefighters, cops, business executives, office workers and others. They were also moms and dads, wives and husbands, sisters and brothers.

For those left behind, the pain has not gone away, but with the passage of time many have found ways to live alongside the grief they still carry with them.

“Where’s grandpa?”

FDNY Lieutenant Kevin Dowdell charged into the South Tower with his Rescue 4 squad just before it fell. He and his team were working to free people from an elevator when the building came crashing down. No trace of him was ever found beyond a work tool engraved with his initials, his widow, Rose Ellen Dowdell, told the Daily News.

The couple’s two teen sons insisted on helping search for their father at Ground Zero. Rose Ellen gave her reluctant blessing and, as it turned out, working side by side with their fallen father’s fellow firefighters enabled the two boys, 17 and 18 at the time,. to process some of their grief.

The boys have since grown up to embrace public service themselves: James as a firefighter and older brother Patrick served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan before joining a cybersecurity firm. Both are in their early 40s now, just a few years younger than their father was when he died at age 46.

“It’s hard to express the change,” Dowdell said of the past quarter-century. “It’s been a long time.”

Then, as now, Dowdell has focused on the positive. She takes solace in knowing that Kevin has several grandchildren, with another on the way. Rose Ellen, Kevin and James have made sure the kids know about their grandpa.

The youngest, she says, tries to picture him looking down on them, as they’ve been told, asking Dowdell,

“‘Where’s Grandpa Kevin? Is he in heaven? How is he looking down? Is he lying on his belly?’ ”

Her two sons are “great fathers” who are never too busy to talk to their children, just like Kevin was, she said.

“I see a lot of him in both my sons. And I’m grateful that my boys have lived up to everything he would have wanted for them,” she said. “They make me proud, and I know that he would be proud of them.”

“I sure miss her”

On 9/11, Charles Wolf’s wife, Katherine, was working in the World Trade Center’s North Tower on the 97th floor as an executive assistant at Marsh & McLennan. No one above the 91st floor would survive.

Twenty-five years after her loss, no other woman has replaced her in Charles’ life, and he continues to miss her profoundly, he said.

“It’s not like I’m in deep depression. I’m not,” Charles, now 72, said. “But boy, I sure miss her.”

As the years roll on, Wolf does want to find someone to share the rest of his life with, but he has found that dating has its own challenges. Every time he mentions to a potential companion that his wife died on 9/11, they wince as if they’re experiencing some kind of shared trauma.

“I know she’s up there wanting me to find love on earth,” he said.

After the attack, Wolf became a leading advocate for the 9/11 families. Actor Stanley Tucci portrayed him in the movie “Worth” about their battle for compensation. One year he wasn’t sure he would attend an anniversary ceremony in lower Manhattan — yet found himself compelled, jumping on the subway and heading down to the 9/11 Memorial.

“It’s only three stops,” he said. “I had to go.”

He doesn’t just go for Katherine. He also goes because of the bond he’s created with fellow family members who lost someone that day — and a special feeling of community that has blossomed with people who actually have shared his trauma.

“You’re with those who have gone through the same thing,” he said.

An unforgettable smile

For retired Police Officer James Smith, this year’s 9/11 anniversary is following familiar patterns of getting together with relatives and attending events amid the heartache he still feels over losing his beloved wife, Moira.

Police Officer Moira Smith was the only female NYPD cop to die in the World Trade Center attack. One of the first officers to respond to the scene, she repeatedly helped guide people safely out of the South Tower, where she was last seen on its lower floors.

“It’s 25 years, the pain doesn’t go away,” Smith said. “But it’s also a time to gather with family and talk about celebrating a life and all she was and all the things we miss about her.”

“We’re still remembering, and we’re still there supporting each other,” he said.

On Sept. 11,2001, James was at home with their daughter Patricia, then 2, watching a children’s video on TV. He and Moira met as transit cops and worked different shifts so one of them could always be home with her.

This year, Smith, 64, and his daughter, Patricia, now 27 and a student at Fordham University law school, will attend the 9/11 Memorial ceremony, where Patricia will read names of the victims. Afterward, in an annual tradition, Smith and Patricia will join around 50 family members for a meal.

“I see Moira’s spirit in her, her sense of fun, her smile,” her dad said, “but she’s definitely her own person.”

Missing out on a Knicks title

This year marks the anniversary of 9/11 since the Knicks finally won a championship. Jennifer Gardner knows her her late husband, Douglas Gardner, would “still be going crazy about it.”

“He was a rabid Knicks fan,” she said. “All he ever wanted was the Knicks to win a championship. I believe that when OG tipped that ball in and people called it the hand of God — it was the hand of Doug,” she said, laughing.

“And our son and daughter were at that game… I felt him in that moment,” she said, her voice breaking.

Doug was 39 and Cantor Fitzgerald’s executive managing director when terrorists slammed a jet into the North Tower right beneath their office. None of the company’s 658 employees there that day survived.

Jennifer was 35 then. Theyhad married in 1995 after meeting two years earlier. She quickly learned basketball wasn’t just a game to her husband — it was his life.

“I miss him as much today as I did then,” she said. “What never goes away is the ache about what he’s missing. Our son is getting married. The kids have had bar mitzvahs and graduations. They’re adults now. His life was stolen from him.”

She never attends the annual Sept. 11 memorial in lower Manhattan.

“I don’t want to live in his grave,” she said, “I can’t do it.”

Instead of attending the Sept. 11 memorial in lower Manhattan, she and her son Michael — her daughter, Julia, is away at college — will light a candle that day for Doug, joined by another family that lost a member on 9/11, at a special remembrance ceremony at Central Synagogue.

“I was lucky to have created a lifetime of love with him in such a short time,” she said.

A cherished nephew, a cherished photgraph

When retired NYPD Transit Chief Joseph Fox arrived at Ground Zero and saw the devastation around him, he was certain his nephew, probationary FDNY Firefighter Michael Roberts, had been killed. After rushing to the site from his firehouse in Brooklyn. Roberts was among the missing that day.

Fox remembers that day as he looks at two photos of his beloved nephew: a photo of him in his FDNY gear that he kept under his police hat for years, and a telling picture of the young man on the beach in Breezy Point.

Michael’s birthday was in the late part of the summer, just a few weeks before 9/11. Fox’s son Joseph also has a birthday around then, so his family would often celebrate the two together. As they celebrated that year, Fox and his son Joseph arrived at Breezy Point late. The family had already gone swimming, but Michael took the 11-year-old Joseph down to the beach. Fox, a budding photographer at the time, tagged along and took some pics of his son on his boogie board.

“At one point, almost as an afterthought, I said, ‘Michael, let me get one of you,'” he recalled. “He stopped and turned toward me for a moment, and I captured the photograph that would become my most cherished image of my dear nephew.”

“I often stare at that photograph in my home,” he said. “Although it was such a lighthearted moment, his expression is serious, almost contemplative. When I look at that photograph, I feel as though I am seeing Michael the young man, Michael the person of wisdom, Michael our hero.”

“There is something about it that makes me feel as though I am looking into eternity,” he said.

Enduring legacy

New York City Fire Department Chief Joe Downey was with with his two young sons at home watching television when his father, legendary FDNY Chief Ray Downey,, died during the terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001

Now, 25 years later, both boys are poised to become New York City firefighters themselves, following in their father’s and grandfather’s footsteps.

Joe’s sons are just two of Ray Downey’s 15 grandchildren, most of whom never got to meet him, he said.

“Only two of them were old enough to know my father,” Joe said, “but they all know of him because of what we do in his name.” Ray Downey was one the city’s most decorated firefighters

“His legacy is alive and strong,” Joe said.

When he died in the terror attacks, Ray was on the brink of retirement, a 39-year veteran and nationally recognized expert on rescue operations at collapsed buildings. In addition to 9/11, his teams had responded to the bombings in Oklahoma City and the Atlanta Olympics.

To honor that, his family has spent the past 25 years helping people like Ray did, by establishing scholarship funds and through charitable endeavors, including an annual 5K Father’s Day run in his honor. This year, more than 1,800 people participated. In the years since 9/11, Joe estimates they have collected and donated upwards of $2 million in Ray’s name.

Joe responded as well to the Towers that day, but he never crossed paths with his father. It wasn’t until May 2002 that his family received official confirmation of Ray’s death.

The months in between were a “whirlwind” of hope and loss and grief, an experience Joe described as “unimaginable.” But he refused to let the pain take over, which is why he strives to embrace a positive perspective when the anniversary of his father’s death comes around each year.

“I try to make it a good day, not a bad day,” he said. “We have to take this negative and make it positive. He would want that. And I think he would be happy.”

This year, Joe plans to visit the site of the attack as he has done every year since it occurred. But this anniversary, he’s thinking more about his mother, who held the family together after Ray’s passing.

“She’s such a strong woman. To me, he was always this big, strong guy. But mom really showed me how strong she is these last 25 years.”

Now that his boys are gearing up to become firefighters themselves, he’s appreciating his mother more and more — and now understands the stress of being the one who has to wait at home and worry.

“I think they may have the harder job,” he noted.

Time blinks by

Kathy Vigiano measures time by how much her youngest son, John, has grown since her husband, NYPD Detective Joseph Vigiano, was killed in the 9/11 terror attacks.

“He was just three months old (on 9/11),” Vigiano said. “(NYPD Chaplain) Monsignor Romano had just baptized him the week before.”

Det. Vigiano was assigned to NYPD Emergency Services Unit Truck 2 on 9/11 and was one of the first to rush into the crumbling World Trade Center complex. He died in the collapse, along with his brother, FDNY Firefighter John Vigiano.

The decorated 14-year NYPD veteran was involved in two gunfights and countless daring rescues as part of ESU before dying in the terror attack.

It may have been 25 years ago, but to Kathy, the love of her life and father of her three children died just yesterday.

“For everybody else it’s 25 years later, but for us, we’re living with this every day,” the 62-year-old mom and former NYPD cop said about the horrors and heartache she suffered on 9/11.

John’s older brothers, Jimmy and Joe Jr., are both with the NYPD. Jimmy, like his dad, is with ESU. Joseph Vigiano Jr. was promoted to sergeant last month.

“I count the years by my son John,” she said. John’s currently serving in the U.S. Marines. “I still think of him as a child, that baby that was just baptized. I can’t believe he’s 25 already. He’s a man and it went by so quick.”

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