25 years on, remembering the Irish and Irish Americans killed on 9/11

An estimated one-sixth of the 2,977 people killed across New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2011, had Irish heritage or connections, leaving wounds that still run deep across generations.

While Americans were the target, other nationals also perished; the Irish government named more than a dozen of its natives among those killed in the US on that dreadful morning.

Based on family names and individual stories, there are many hundreds of Americans with Irish heritage, including Americans who, through their parents or grandparents, had become Irish citizens.

The now-defunct website IrishTribute.com, which was set up in reaction to the September 11 attacks, estimated that perhaps one-sixth of the dead were in some way “Irish.”

"September 11, 2001, may well go down as the bloodiest day in the history of the Irish people," the website said. "An estimated 1,000 people who were of Irish descent or of Irish birth were lost in the violent events on that day."

Read on to learn about some of the Irish and Irish Americans who were killed on September 11, 2001.

Annemarie McHugh

Meanwhile, Annemarie McHugh had been at her desk inside Tower Two since early that morning. When not working for the EuroBrokers firm, the 35-year-old native of Tuam, Co Galway, was busy planning her wedding, just a month away.

Kieran Gorman

A native of Carrowcurragh, Lavagh, Co Sligo, Gorman had been living in the Irish enclave of Woodlawn in the Bronx with his wife Ann and their two sons. The young family had only recently returned from a visit to Sligo in the days before 9/11.

Gorman, a mason tender with Structure Tone, returned to work earlier than he expected that week. On the morning of 9/11, he was working on a renovation project on the South Tower’s 95th floor when the first plane hit the North Tower. He was able to phone his wife Anne to let her know he was leaving, but, tragically, Anne never heard from her husband again.

Anne gave birth to their third son about two months later. Gorman's remains were recovered in March 2002.

Ruth Clifford McCourt & Juliana McCourt

At Boston's Logan Airport, the McCourts waited on standby. Ruth Clifford McCourt, a 44-year-old businesswoman who left her native County Cork as a teenager, was taking four-year-old Juliana on a vacation to Los Angeles. Mother and daughter found seats aboard United Airlines Flight 175. 

Shortly after takeoff, of course, Flight 175 was yanked from its flight path by hijackers. As Ruth McCourt's plane hurtled towards Lower Manhattan, it's likely she never knew that her own brother, Ron, was attending a business meeting in the very same skyscraper where she and her daughter would meet their fiery end.

Ron Clifford would escape the Trade Center without serious injury, only to learn later that one of the two planes that brought the Towers down contained his sister Ruth and niece Juliana.

Joanne Mary Cregan

A native of Churchtown in Dublin, Joanne had moved to Brooklyn Heights with her sister, Grace, and the two found apartments in the same building.

On the morning of 9/11, Joanne was working on the 105th floor of the North Tower. Her remains, as well as her necklace, were found a few months after the attacks.

Martin Coughlan

Shortly after 9 am, the 53-year-old carpenter from Cappawhite, County Tipperary, managed to call home from his job site on the 96th floor of Tower One.

"There's been a bomb in the building," Coughlan told his wife, "but I'm OK, and tell the four girls I'll be home for dinner." Coughlan's remains were found many days  later.

Patrick Currivan

A native of Drimnagh in Dublin, Patrick was living in Massachusetts at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

Patrick was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11.

Tommy Foley

On that warm and sunny Tuesday morning, Tommy Foley was closing out the overnight shift at Rescue 3 in The Bronx.

At age 32, Foley was already a 10-year veteran of the FDNY. It was the job he had dreamt of since childhood, when he would visit the Harlem firehouse of a family friend, Firefighter Bob Conroy.

At 8:52 am, the call came in. Emergency in Lower Manhattan. An airplane or a helicopter or maybe even bombs, tearing through what New Yorkers call the Twin Towers.

Instead of ending his shift, Tommy reached for his boots. Across the city, the scene was repeated. The first airliner hit just as scores of firefighters were either coming off duty or arriving to work, thus maximizing the number rushing downtown.

Later, Conroy echoed the sentiments of so many families and friends when he said, "I only wish I could see him one more time – just one more time to tell him how much I love him."

Mike Cawley

Mike Cawley wasn't even on duty that day with his regular outfit, the “Elmhurst Eagles” of Ladder 136, but instinctively he raced to the Towers with another unit, Rescue 4.

A 32-year-old bachelor like Foley, Cawley had been what firemen call a “buff” ever since he was a kid, happily covering shifts for firefighters who had families, and racing toward smoke and flame even when he was off-duty.

On September 11, when he could have stayed away, Cawley, of course, could be nowhere else.

Michael 'Mike' Armstrong

Over in Tower One, Mike Armstrong had even less time left before his “big day.” The 34-year-old son of immigrants from County Longford worked for the Cantor Fitzgerald brokerage firm alongside the Lynch brothers, Farrell (39) and Sean (36), whose uncle represents the Sligo-Leitrim constituency in the Irish Senate.

Armstrong, a Manhattan native who was so outgoing and gregarious that his many friends long ago nicknamed him “Posse,” was getting married to longtime girlfriend Cathy Nolan on October 6th.

Captain Robert 'Bob' Dolan

Panic spread like brushfire across the country, and Navy Commander Robert Dolan was among those called to quell the flames. The 40-year-old husband, father, and Little League coach often addressed his military colleagues with speeches that quoted everything from Shakespeare to Monty Python; he was equally adept at commanding naval fleets that resemble floating steel cities.

On the morning of September 11, Dolan was in his office on the first floor of the Pentagon's D Ring, among a group hearing reports on that morning's attacks in Lower Manhattan. At 9:43 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 exploded through Dolan's window.

"Bob Dolan was the best and brightest this country had to offer to the altar of freedom," Lisa Dolan would later write about her husband of nearly 19 years. "We pray his rest is peaceful, although ours cannot be."

The final plane to be hijacked that morning was United Airlines Flight 93. Because its passengers learned by cell phone that the morning's previous hijackings were suicide runs, they obviously deduced there was nothing to lose from being brave.

Thomas Burnett

As Flight 93 rumbled through rural Pennsylvania, passenger Thomas Burnett spoke to his wife in California. "I know we're all going to die," said Burnett, a 38-year-old father of three. "There's three of us who are going to do something about it."

Burnett was one of the so-called 'lucky' ones who was able to get a call out before tragedy struck. With so few survivors pulled from the ruins, and hospitals across New York relatively empty because the dead so outnumbered the physically wounded, there were so many who never got the chance to say goodbye, never got the chance to say "I love you."

Eamon McEneaney

106 stories from safety, Eamon McEneaney also called his wife. The 46-year-old vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald was a heralded survivor of the 1993 World Trade Center attack when he calmly covered the mouths of co-workers with wet towels and led human chains down the stairs.

On September 11, the father of four left a message at his wife's office: a plane had hit the building, he was on the way out, and he loved her. McEneaney never made it out.

John O'Neill

Unlike McEneaney, John O'Neill managed to escape. The 50-year-old former FBI man had been named the Trade Center's Director of Security just two weeks before. He made it from the 34th floor to the street, from where he called his son to report that he was safe.

However, O'Neill re-entered one of the Towers, ultimately making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of evacuating others.

James McAlary

In Spring Lake, New Jersey, the McAlarys leaped for joy when their son and brother Bryan phoned to say he had escaped unharmed from his Trade Center office.

They were soon horrified to learn that Bryan's older brother James, a 42-year-old broker, was in the Trade Center that day for a sales meeting. "Jimmy Mac," as he was known to all, never came home.

The McAlarys were but one of many sets of brothers at the scene that day.

John Moran

At the base of the Towers, Michael Moran of Rescue 3 spoke by cell phone with his big brother John, a 43-year-old Battalion Chief. They were brothers by blood and “brothers” by profession, among the fraternity of the FDNY.

"I told him to be careful," the younger Moran would recall weeks later at a memorial service for John. "I didn't see him there that day, but now I see him all the time."

Timothy 'Timmy' Haskell & Thomas 'Tommy' Haskell

Maureen Haskell, a Fire Department widow, sent three of her four boys, Kenny, Timmy, and Tommy, to the FDNY.

Timmy, 34, was on the 60th floor of Tower One when the floor dropped beneath him. Nearly two weeks after the attacks, Maureen listened as Kenny gave a eulogy, Timmy's remains lay in a casket, and Tommy was still in Lower Manhattan, one of the thousands lost in the mountain of steel and smoke.

"We need to pray for Tommy's safe return ... I'm sure he's fine," Kenny told those who gathered to bury Timmy in Seaford, Long Island. "Tommy's probably sitting comfortably down there in a large void, wondering, 'what's taking us so long?'"

Kenny Haskell vowed to retrieve his brother, as did Danny Foley, who went on to follow his above-mentioned elder brother Tommy into the FDNY.

Danny worked around the clock with rescue crews searching for the brother that he idolized, and nearly two weeks after the attack, he addressed mourners at St. Anthony's in Nanuet, New York: "It took 10 days, but a promise I made to my family was kept when I brought Tommy home."

Danny recalled the nights spent talking across bunk beds to his older brother, discussing what he called their common interests: football, fishing, becoming a firefighter, and girls.

In later years, he recalled jokingly about his big brother's pin-up pose in a firefighter's calendar, a charity fundraiser that led to modeling jobs and appearances among “eligible bachelors” in People and also the Top 100 Irish Americans list published by Irish America magazine.

"I knew someday I wanted to be just like my big brother," Danny recalled. "He's always been a hero to me, and now he's a hero to people around the world."

Damian Meehan

The unborn second child of Damian Meehan will never know daddy first-hand, how he grew up playing Gaelic Football with five brothers in Good Shepherd Parish, Upper Manhattan.

Among the Donegal Meehans of Upper Manhattan, Damian was the first to enter a “safe” profession, becoming a financial foot-soldier on Wall Street, instead of a fireman or a cop.

On September 11, 2001, the 33-year-old reported to his desk at Carr Futures in Tower One and then disappeared; vanished forever.

Brian Monaghan

9/11 was Irish American Brian Monaghan's second day on the job as a carpenter; he was working on the 98th floor of 2 World Trade Center.

Joint ceremonies at Good Shepherd Church in Inwood and St. Patrick's Church in Belfast recalled the hurdles young Monaghan and his family had overcome to date and all the promise the young carpenter had left to give.

Richard Fitzsimons

In Dublin, they memorialized Richard Fitzsimons, who traveled to the Irish capital from Lynbrook, Long Island, just weeks before to dance at his niece's wedding.

Timothy 'Timmy' Stackpole

There are Brooklynites like Captain Timmy Stackpole, who just weeks before had laughed while being named “Irishman of the Year” at the Coney Island Irish Fest, and there are Bronxites like Ann McGovern, who bragged of a recent hole-in-one on the golf course.

Ann McGovern

A vice president at the Aon Corporation of Tower Two who had recently become a grandma for the fifth time, McGovern had many accomplishments and perhaps even more loved ones who gathered to mourn at St. Brigid's of Westbury, Long Island.

From the altar, Ann's husband Larry McGovern summed up perhaps the most important lesson learned by untold thousands since the attacks of September 11: "Don't be afraid to tell people you love them when it could be the last words spoken," he said near a poster-sized photo of Ann with her youngest grandchild, Liam.

Cocking his head to the church roof, McGovern said in a cracked voice: "I love you."

*Originally published September 10, 2011, updated in 2026.