To the firefighters in New York and even around the nation after 9/11, 343 wasn’t just a number. It was family. “You do 24-hour shifts and one-third of the year you are with [your fellow firefighters],” Knightdale firefighter Mike Boshart, an N.C. State graduate and Long Island native, said. “So pretty much they are family because a lot of times, you see them more than you see any other person even at your firefighters.”  They spoke of how the North Carolina firefighting community has drawn close to its New York brothers and how firefighters have learned from the fallen. Bryant Woodall, former Raleigh assistant chief and current chief of the Swift Creek Fire Department, said on 9/11 he was, ironically, headed to a meeting with the Wake County Terrorism Task Force. “It was just all fairly new to us. We were seeing what was happening around the world and everybody knew we had to prepare for it here,” he said. “You just can’t imagine it happening, you know? But obviously it shocking.” After the attacks, State Fire Marshal Jim Long commissioned former captain Andy Woodall (no relation to Bryant Woodall), then chief of operations for the North Carolina Fallen Firefighter’s Foundation, to go to New York to see what was needed. Woodall has since been to New York 168 times. “[Long] didn’t want North Carolina to buy a fire engine or anything,” Woodall said. “He wanted to do something for the families that would be million.” He said while they do not need as much as they did, the funding drop is a testimony to how the passage of time affects our actions. “It is like a lot of other things. The longer you go away from it, the more you forget about it,” he said. Boshart said while the thanking and the helping still happen today, it occurs less often than right after the attacks.  “It was just kind of a different world to be in,” he said. “It would be interesting to see if it could have lasted longer, but it was just different, I guess. Different for the better,