Jack McNamara shows a photo of his father, John, after completing the 15th annual Dallas 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, at Comerica Bank Tower in Dallas. John was a first responder at Ground Zero and later died of cancer linked to the lasting effects of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News
Jack McNamara thought he could make it through the climb without crying.
Then, somewhere around the 48th floor of Comerica Bank Tower, Taps began to play.
First responders climb the staircase of Comerica Bank Tower during the 15th annual Dallas 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Dallas.
Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News
Josh Herron of Odessa Fire Rescue hugs his son, Tucker, after completing the 15th annual Dallas 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, at Comerica Bank Tower in Dallas.
Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News
Joseph Esposito, a 42-year FDNY veteran, delivers his keynote address ahead of the 15th annual Dallas 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Dallas. Esposito lost his brother, cousin and 11 members of Rescue 5 in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack
Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News
“That was the end of it for me,” the 19-year-old said. “I thought I wasn’t going to cry this whole time, and there I went.”
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McNamara had traveled from New York to Dallas wearing an old FDNY turnout coat.
It belonged to his father.
John F. McNamara survived the Sept. 11 attacks but spent about 500 hours working at Ground Zero in the aftermath. He later developed stage 4 colon cancer and died in 2009 at age 44.
On Saturday, six days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks, he carried his father’s coat up the equivalent of the World Trade Center’s 110 floors during the Dallas 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb.
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His connection to the Dallas event began through a Texas firefighter his father never knew.
Jonathan Duncan of the McKinney Fire Department has participated in the Dallas climb almost every year since it began.
He started in his 20s. Now 41, Duncan said he has missed only one year.
Each time, he climbs for the same person: Frank J. Bonomo, an FDNY firefighter with Engine 230 who was killed on Sept. 11.
It began with a name
Several years ago, while participating in a stair climb in New York, Duncan began connecting with people whose families had ties to FDNY and Sept. 11.
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One of those connections led him to Jack’s mother.
About five years ago, Duncan invited the McNamara family to Dallas as an honor family for the stair climb.
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“Dallas is welcoming. McKinney is very welcoming,” Jack said. “This is the best climb I’ve been to. I’m going to keep coming.”
What began as a connection through a memorial event grew into something closer.
Jack now travels to Texas without his mother and stays with Duncan and his wife when he comes for the climb.
Duncan said the trust Jack’s mother places in his family means a great deal.
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“I never met his father,” Duncan said. “It means a lot that she trusts her son with me.”
‘Never forget’
Knowing Jack also changed what “never forget” means to Duncan.
“Everybody says, ‘Never forget,’” Duncan said. “I think a lot of people say we’ll never forget the event.”
But remembering the event, he said, is not enough.
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“We can’t forget the people and especially the ones that were left behind.”
His father worked hundreds of hours at Ground Zero after the towers fell.
John McNamara was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2006, when Jack’s mother was pregnant. The cancer spread, and he died Aug. 9, 2009.
Jack grew up soaking up other people’s memories of his father.
He knows the firefighter.
But he also knows the jokester.
“Remember him as a jokester,” Jack said. “Remember him as someone who always put himself up for others.”
Even as his father’s health worsened, Jack said, he continued worrying about the people around him.
“There was never a day that he was sick that he wasn’t worried about someone else or something else,” Jack said. “Even when you are down in the trenches, always be looking after someone else.”
‘343 and counting’
Jack McNamara wears a photo of his father, John, after completing the 15th annual Dallas 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, at Comerica Bank Tower in Dallas. John was a first responder at Ground Zero and later died of cancer linked to the lasting effects of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News
For Jack, the story of Sept. 11 did not end when the towers fell.
The attacks killed 343 FDNY members that day. Since then, more than 600 additional FDNY members have died from health complications related to Sept. 11 and the World Trade Center rescue and recovery effort.
His father is among them.
“We oftentimes forget about the 600-plus that also died following the attacks from the illnesses that they contracted during their time on the pile,” Jack said.
He wants that continuing toll to become part of what people mean when they promise never to forget.
“Keep in mind 343 and counting,” he said. “That’s the part that I want everyone to remember.”
Duncan has watched the passage of time through the stair climb, too.
His daughter was 1 when he began participating. She is now 15 and still has a Frank Bonomo onesie she wore as a toddler.
Jack has grown up alongside the tradition.
When he first began coming to Texas, he came with his mother.
Now he is old enough to travel on his own, stay with Duncan’s family and climb in his father’s gear.
“He wants to be a fireman,” Duncan said of Jack. “Hopefully it inspires him to keep going.”
And the connection to his father’s profession is no longer only symbolic. Jack now is a volunteer firefighter with the White Hall Volunteer Fire Department in Kentucky, beginning to make his own place in the fire service.
The passage of time
Duncan himself was in his 20s when he started climbing.
Now he wears a heart-rate monitor and takes the stairs more deliberately.
“Long and slow wins the race at this point in my career,” he said.
Jack has been moving in the opposite direction.
He works in the fire service.
And the gear his father left behind no longer looks so large.
“This was my dad’s jacket,” Jack said. “He wore this jacket, and now I’m continuing on and wearing it.”
For years, it had belonged unmistakably to his father.
Jack McNamara stands with wearing his father’s FDNY jacket as he annouces the name of a fallen first responder after completing the 15th annual Dallas 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, at Comerica Bank Tower in Dallas. McNamara’s father, John, was a first responder at Ground Zero and later died of cancer linked to the lasting effects of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News
“I’m now his size,” Jack said. “I’m now turning into a mini him in a way.”
By the time Jack reached the 48th floor Saturday, Taps had broken through whatever emotional barrier he had tried to keep intact.
When he finished, he said his father’s name.
John McNamara never met Jonathan Duncan.
But a promise to remember one firefighter eventually brought another into the life of the son John left behind.
Twenty-five years after Sept. 11, Jack McNamara had grown into his father’s coat.
Then he carried it to the top.
What memories do you have of 9/11?
It’s been 25 years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. What are your memories of that day?
Most RecentTop Responses
Anne H
Mesquite, TX
09/11/26
My husband, I, and our 2 daughters were living in the Philippines at the time. We saw the news on CNN with a picture of the first jet hitting the tower and then the second. It was unreal. With the second jet, the recognition that it was a terrorist attack on our country became real. No one knew what else was coming. The president shut down all airspace. I immediately thought about and we immediately prayed for my youngest brother who flew constantly for his job as a consulting geologist. I had no idea where he was. I called his cellphone to make sure that he was safe. He was. He’d managed to get both a rental car and a hotel room. He’d spoken with my three other siblings and they were safe, too. A huge relief for the moment.
Chenese S
Arlington, TX
09/11/26
25 years ago, I was 21 and preparing to go to work with the news shows from the East coast in the background. Something caused me to tune in as the reporters were discussing the first plane crash. I thought it was a part of a movie or an unfortunate accident. Not too long after that we witnessed the second plane crash live and realized this was not just an accident. This was a deliberate attack. Still too early to know why. Living in Arlington we received some warnings regarding our world trade center in Dallas. As news of other planes being hijacked the fear of the unknown spread. I worked in customer service for a bank with many branches in the NY metro area. That day we fielded calls from people who couldn’t get in contact with their family who worked in the branches near the trade center. Others just called to talk to someone to get their feelings and emotions out as the phone lines were done in and around NYC. I will never forget that day and the lives lost.
I was on a business flight from DFW to Las Vegas when the pilot came over the PA and said the FAA had ordered planes grounded and we were landing in Lubbock. I had gotten a first class upgrade so was one of the first people off the plane. While I was waiting for my colleague I immediately called my wife who told me what happened. She was frantic because at that point Flight 93 was still missing and the target was unknown. My wife was worried because Las Vegas could be a likely target. American Airlines did a great job of handling the thousands of unexpected passengers at the Lubbock airport (with planes parked everywhere!). They gave us a free lunch and offered to let us stay overnight and continue to Las Vegas (of course at the point they didn’t realize it would be days), or be bussed back to DFW. We opted to be bussed back. I never will forget the eerie feeling of arriving at DFW and it being totally quiet. No cars, no air traffic. It was very unsettling.
My office/showroom was in the Dallas World Trade Center, and our families and friends across the globe thought our building was attacked. We watched on televisions as smoke billowed from the first tower, and then in disbelief as the second plane struck. My parents were in New York attending a trade show at the 200 5th Avenue Building. Only two days before they had been in the White House attending a national Librarians event. Our cousin was working in the Pentagon near the location of the impact there but was moving his office to the White House and was spared. I stopped at the Tom Thumb in Highland Park Village and filling bags with dry goods. We gathered our children and waited, ready to depart the city in case danger appeared. We waited. A week later, my folks rented a car to drive home from NYC as no flights were available. Our son was stranded at boarding school in Connecticut. We brought him home at the end of the year. It was reminiscent of our recent experience with Covid.
Dr Feyi O
Keller, TX
09/11/26
I was homeschooling our daughters who at that time were 10,8 and 7 years old in our school room in our home. Our learning time came to a halt as we were grasping to understand what just happened. What we were looking at on the TV was too shocking to understand. We gathered in prayer, pouring our hearts out as much as we knew how, even before we fully understood. What we saw on TV was tragic and beyond human comprehension. It was utter evil!
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