The image left Tony Modaferri reeling.
There in the new 9/11 museum’s Foundation Hall was a picture of his brother, firefighter Louis Modafferi, affixed to the fabled “Last Column” from the toppled Twin Towers — in the very spot where Tony had taped it more than a dozen years ago.
“When I saw that, it was like a rush of being back there, and then I got an overwhelming feeling and started crying,” Modafferi told The Post.
“It really brought me back to all the nights I spent searching and hoping to find my brother, first in the rubble and then down in the pit.”
Modafferi said he attached the photo of his slain younger brother shortly before the steel beam was removed from Ground Zero.
On it, he had written, “I will take care of your kids and I’ll meet you down the road.”
The massive support column — decorated with graffiti and pictures commemorating those killed in the terror attacks — loomed large over the 700 invited family members and dignitaries that had gathered Thursday morning to dedicate the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
“My brother is gone, but this is satisfaction, seeing his picture in that museum and knowing he will be memorialized forever, long after we are gone,” said Modafferi, 65, a retired transit worker from Howard Beach, Queens.
“After we are long gone, that picture will tell his story.”
Alfred and Josephine Acquaviva, of Wayne, NJ, said they were stunned to find on display a business card bearing the name of their late son, Paul, who worked in the north tower.
“Just seeing it all brought back the morning it happened,” Josephine said.
“I received a phone call from his wife saying he was in Tower One, the north tower. He was very resourceful, and I said, ‘He’ll get out of this.’
“But once I turned on the TV and saw the plane hit and where his floor was . . .” She trailed off, overcome by emotion.
My brother is gone, but this is satisfaction, seeing his picture in that museum and knowing he will be memorialized forever, long after we are gone.
- Tony Modafferi
And Debra Burlingame called it “incredibly bittersweet” to see the prayer card that her brother, Flight 77 pilot Charles Burlingame, had been carrying when hijackers slammed his jet into the Pentagon. The card, she said, was from their mother’s funeral.
“We were shocked by it, because it’s one of those prayer cards that’s covered in laminated plastic and it didn’t get burned at over 2,000 degrees,” she said.
But Burlingame, 60, said it was harder to look at a part of the jet’s fuselage on display.
“It’s so beat up,” she said.
“It just makes me so sad because to die in that way — I always say to people: It’s kind of like, imagine someone you love is an Olympic swimmer and someone murders him by drowning him.
“It’s the most horrible way I can think of for him to die.”
Sheila Kioskerides, 61, of Brooklyn, was overwhelmed when she saw a photo of her brother, FDNY Battalion Chief John Paolillo, on display in a room lined with pictures of the victims.
“It was just too devastating to see all those people who perished on that day,” she said.
“It feels like [Sept. 11] was just yesterday visiting there.”
Barbara Pandolfo, 75, of Mahwah, NJ, said she donated two credit cards that belonged to her slain daughter, Dominique, and were found in the rubble.
Pandolfo said she paid $350 to have them framed, “and they looked beautiful, but I just couldn’t look at them.”
“It hurt. It was just so painful. Such a reminder,” she said.