When he first heard about the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’s Let Us Do Good Village, Joel Steinbach thought it sounded “like a dream.”
The new community in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, promises mortgage-free smart homes for 93 wounded and ailing veterans, Fallen First Responders and Gold Star families.
Steinbach served 30 years as an intelligence specialist in the US Navy before a near-death experience forced him to retire in 2021.
While serving in Africa, Steinbach contracted an “excruciating” rare blood disease called Clarkson’s, which he described as “your capillaries leaking out, which floods your system and starts killing your organs.”
Doctors put him into a two-week medically induced coma — and he was given a 10% chance of coming out of it.
Steinbach made it through but was “basically paralyzed from the waist down.
“My nerves are basically dead in my legs,” he told The Post, adding that the recovery saw him go from “being on a gurney, to a wheelchair, to a walker, to crutches, to two canes, and now I’m down to one cane with my braces off.”
Steinbach and Diana, his wife of 32 years, were trying to transform their Florida home into an ADA-accessible smart home, using a small grant from Veterans Affairs, when a “life-changing” call came.
Tunnel To Towers was founded as a tribute to Stephen Siller, an NYPD fire fighter who died during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Siller had just gotten off-duty from Brooklyn’s Squad 1 in Park Slope when a plane hit the North Tower.With the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (now Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) connecting Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan closed to cars, he ran with 60 pounds of gear through the tunnel to Ground Zero.
Steinbach had donated to Tunnel To Towers for years. Now, the non-profit was making him the offer of a lifetime: a mortgage-free home, tailored to his needs, in a community of other vets — all as a thank-you for his decades of service.
“Who offers a mortgage-free smart home?” said a still-gobsmacked Steinbach, who had his family, including his two daughters, 28 and 30, and 23-year-old son, by his side for the home dedication in October. “I’m still numb, thinking we’re going to wake up from a dream.”
All of Let Us Do Good Village’s homes feature smart design elements and technology to allow injured service people to reclaim some independence.
“This is is a game-changer,” said Steinbach, who is grateful for a home without steps. “Everything has a button that you push and just does it.”
The 2,600-square-foot, three-bedroom home includes wider hallways and doorways, allowing ease of movement without the obstacles of raised door thresholds and tight corners. The doors are all automatic.
The home’s lights, sound system, thermostat and security are controlled remotely via app and smart panels throughout the home. The kitchen features pull-down cabinet shelves and a stove that raises and lowers. Cutouts — big enough for a chair or wheelchair — beneath the sink and counters allow residents to cook.
“It’s a love story. And it’s going to be a bigger love story,” Frank Siller, Tunnel to Towers Foundation CEO and Chairman, told The Post of the village. “It’s a beautiful place and we’re getting all these great heroes in there for their next chapter.”
Steinbach said he originally enlisted in the military for his own love story. In 1990, he was just 22 years old when he promised Diana’s father he would take care of her, then marched into a Navy recruiter’s office to make it happen.
“My first thought when I signed the contract was Diana. It wasn’t me — I needed to support her,” said Steinbach
He started his contract a year later during Operation Desert Storm.
Among his career highlights was being part of the hostage team that negotiated the freedom of cargo Captain Richard Phillips in 2009, after his ship was hijacked by Somali pirates. (The story later became a movie, “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks.)
“We had direct contact with the pirates — it was me looking those guys in the eye and trying to convince them that if they did not let him go, we’re going to blow them up,” Steinach recounted, adding that a heart-rending plea from Phillips’ family gave him strength. “All I needed was to [hear] his wife and his kids say they need their dad home. And I said, ‘OK, let’s get him.’ And we got him.”
Now, Steinbach is grateful that someone has his back.
“It’s a family,” he said of his new neighbors, “and the Let Us Do Good Village brings them all together.” He’s eager to make new friends and “help them get set up. That’s what we need to get back in America — helping each other out.”