Twenty-five years after 9/11, firefighter Bill Spade has finally delivered a fallen NYPD officer’s last words to the family he left behind.
Spade survived the collapse of the North Tower, but he never forgot John D’Allara, an NYPD Emergency Service Unit officer he met inside the building on that terrible day.
The two men had known each other for only about 25 minutes. Yet in that incredibly short time, they spoke about their wives and children and exchanged the kind of information that could help their families if only one of them made it home.
Now, a quarter of a century later, Spade has kept the promise he made to D’Allara’s family. His sons have finally heard the words their father spoke in the final moments of his life: “I was thinking of you until the very end.”
Met inside the North Tower
Spade and D’Allara crossed paths while helping people escape the North Tower as the September 11 attacks unfolded. Neither man knew what would happen next.
Speaking with the Sun following the release of National Geographic’s documentary 9/11: Reunited, Spade recalled the conversation they shared amid the chaos.
“Well, here we are in the middle of this tragedy – one tower coming down and the other minutes away from coming down – and in a matter of moments, we’re working together, and we’re talking about our families,” he said according to UNILAD.
D’Allara, who was 47, told Spade about his wife, Carol, and their two sons, who were seven and two years old at the time. With the building around them becoming increasingly dangerous, the two men exchanged details their families might need if one of them failed to make it out alive.
They thought they had escaped
As the rescue effort continued, the situation inside the tower suddenly changed. The building became quiet, and the responders realized they needed to leave. D’Allara went ahead of the group to make sure the path toward the exit was clear.
Spade later recalled: “At the time, I never thought the towers would come down.”
The men eventually made their way toward safety. But they had barely gotten outside when the North Tower collapsed. D’Allara was still inside.
Spade was caught in the debris as the building came down. He had lost sight of John and curled up, preparing himself for what he feared could be his final moments.
He later said: “We left the North Tower about 30 seconds before it came down. John looked up and said, ‘It’s clear. Everybody run’.”
D’Allara was reported to have died less than a minute after the two men escaped the building. But his final actions would end up saving lives.
Spade later learned that D’Allara had helped force open a jammed door, allowing roughly 20 civilians to escape.
“He was thinking of his boys”
In the immediate aftermath, Spade realized John was gone. He went looking for a chief and urged them to return to search for the missing responders.
“As soon as the buildings came down and I realised they were no longer there, I went searching for a chief and said, ‘We’ve got to go back and look for them,’
“Sure enough, months later, they were found there.”
But the story did not end there for Spade. For years, he carried the memory of the brief conversation he had shared with D’Allara inside the tower – including the things the officer had told him about his family.
Twenty-five years later, Spade finally fulfilled his promise to pass those memories on to D’Allara’s sons.
The boys their father had spoken about that day are now grown. One is a Marine reservist, while the other is a police officer in the Bronx.
And they now know what their father was thinking about during those final moments. Spade said: “He was thinking of his boys right to the very end.
“There were no lights on; it was completely pitch black. We were helping people out of the building and talking about his wife and two boys, and my wife and boys.”
For Spade, a brief encounter with a fellow first responder became a promise that lasted a quarter of a century. And for D’Allara’s family, his final words finally made their way home.
Read more:
