Family keeps 9/11 FDNY hero’s memory alive with annual traditions

Twenty-four years after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, America continues to reflect on the terror attacks and mourn the loss of nearly 3,000 people, as the enduring pain remains. 

A new generation is learning about that foundational day in American history through the voices of those who lost loved ones, including the servicemen and women who ran into the collapsing Twin Towers, and the shared stories at commemorations held across the U.S., especially in New York City.

“We have been going to the firehouse every 9/11 since that day,” Patrick Dowdell, an Army veteran and son of Lt. Kevin Dowdell, FDNY fireman who lost his life 24 years ago, told Fox News Digital. 

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Lt. Dowdell was a fireman for Rescue 4 in Queens and had 21 years with the FDNY when he was killed. 

“He was dad,” Dowdell said. 

“He had a very storied career and some really major events, including a roof rope rescue in Midtown Manhattan, a diner explosion in Queens. He responded to the Oklahoma City bombing and also, to the first World Trade Center bombing.” 

Dowdell remembers his dad as a very present father who always made it home for sporting events and dinner time. 

“We liked to go out to dinner in Manhattan a lot,” Dowdell said of his family. “He would sit down at dinner and say ‘This is what I work all week for’ and now, we use that line with our kids when we go out for dinner.”

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On Sept. 11, the day so many remember as a beautiful blue-sky day, Dowdell was in his first year of college where his dad dropped him back off on Sept. 9 after visiting home for the weekend to celebrate his brother’s birthday. Lt. Dowdell was returning to work a 24-hour tour from Sept. 10 to Sept. 11. 

“I called home from the landline to my mom’s landline, and we were just waiting for word on what was going on,” Dowdell recalled. “My dad’s firehouse was in Queens, which is kind of far from Lower Manhattan and normally, there would be no chance that they would ever respond that far away.” 

Dowdell remembers comforting a collegiate friend whose brother was working in the Twin Towers at the time of the terror attack. 

“As that night went on, we hadn’t heard from him, knew that he was working, and there was just this assumption that they were missing,” Dowdell said. 

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Patrick Dowdell, a former Army serviceman, fondly recalls his father as someone who was always present and home for dinner until he tragically lost his life in the line of duty on September 11, 2001. (Patrick Dowdell)

Clinging to hope that Lt. Dowdell was transported to a hospital or escaped the collapse; the family remained supportive of one another. 

“Every time the door opened, we would turn to see if it was him walking in,” Dowdell told Fox News Digital. 

“I guess there was never this ah-ha moment that he wasn’t coming back. We just kind of had to gradually accept that,” he added. “It became more apparent, obviously, as the days went on that the worst might have happened.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, Lt. Dowdell’s sons, Patrick and James Dowdell, alongside Rescue 4 firemen, volunteered around the clock until May 15, 2002, at the site of Ground Zero combing through debris, rubble, and rebar. 

“The idea was that, if we made a recovery, and we were able to identify that it was my father, that me and my brother, who was there as well, we would carry him out in the stokes basket with a flag over him,” Dowdell said. 

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Unfortunately, we never got that opportunity. He was never recovered. The only thing that was recovered was his halligan, or his fire officer’s tool, which was found in the days afterward. It has a ‘KD’ welded on it and an ‘R4’ for Rescue 4, so, that’s how we knew it was his, and it was returned to us.”

Dowdell said he finds comfort in knowing his father sacrificed himself trying to save other people. 

“It never goes away,” he said. “My dad never got to meet his grandchildren. He never got to see graduations and birthdays.”

In July 2002, Dowdell began schooling at the United States Military Academy in West Point until he graduated in 2006. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan for five years. His brother, James, serves as an FDNY fireman and has for nearly a decade at Rescue 4, the firehouse his father heroically ended his career at. 

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Patrick Dowdell and his brother, James Dowdell, have honored their father’s memory, who passed away on September 11, 2001, by serving in the US Army and working as a firefighter with the FDNY. (Patrick Dowdell)

“In the city, my brother serves with other firemen whose fathers were also killed on 9/11,” Dowdell said.

Today, current and former FDNY and their family members are invited to Rescue 4 to remember the firemen lost that day. 

Dowdell, as an experienced bagpiper, plays a tune for each event every year: At 8:46 a.m. when the first plane hit the North Tower, at 9:03 a.m. when the second plane hit the South Tower, at 9:37 a.m. when the third plane crashed into the Pentagon, at 9:59 a.m. when the South Tower collapsed, at 10:03 a.m. when Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at 10:28 a.m. when the North Tower collapsed.

The Dowdell family gathers at home every year for family dinner where they recite one thing they are thankful for and one memory they think their husband and father, Lt. Dowdell, would have enjoyed from the last year. 

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“In those moments, we always remember him and we talk about him all the time,” Dowdell said. “My kids know who grandpa Kevin is and how he passed away.”