CULLMAN, Ala. – On the south side of the National September 11 Memorial in New York City, the name Paul Talty is cut into Panel S-24.
Talty was a 40-year-old husband, father and New York Police Department Emergency Service officer. On Sept. 11, 2001, he entered the South Tower of the World Trade Center while thousands of people were trying to escape.
Before he wore an NYPD uniform, however, Talty appears to have spent part of his life in Cullman.
Brother Augustine “Gus” Campion, O.S.B., a longtime St. Bernard monk and dormitory director, left that connection in an entry on Talty’s online memorial.
“Paul was a resident in our dorm his freshman year at St. Bernard College,” Brother Gus wrote.
It is a small surviving detail from a young man’s life, but on the 25th anniversary of the attacks, it connects Cullman to one of the thousands of names Americans have promised never to forget.
A Cullman name at Ground Zero
Talty began his shift at 7 a.m. on Sept. 11, according to accounts preserved in police and victim memorials. When the first aircraft struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m., his Emergency Service unit responded.
The South Tower was struck at 9:03 a.m. Talty and fellow Emergency Service Officer Thomas Langone were sent into the building to help rescue those still trapped inside.
Memorial accounts say Talty was last seen around the 20th floor, climbing upward as workers continued moving downward. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., only 56 minutes after it was struck.
Talty and Langone were among 23 NYPD officers killed that morning. Talty’s remains were never recovered, although accounts say his service weapon and handcuffs were later found.
At home in Wantagh, New York, Talty left his wife, Barbara, two older children and an infant daughter, Kelly, who had been born less than a month before the attacks.
Talty was also building a second story onto the family’s home. Friends remembered him as a man who could repair almost anything. After his death, fellow officers stepped in to help complete the work he had begun.
His friend Joseph McAuliffe later described Talty’s character in one sentence.
“You knew that if it came down to it, Paul would do whatever needed to be done.”
That character was evident in the direction Talty chose on Sept. 11. While others descended, he climbed.
His connection to St. Bernard was preserved by Brother Gus, whose name appears in St. Bernard yearbooks as a dormitory director.
Further research into surviving college records could establish when Talty attended, where he lived and whether photographs or additional memories remain from his time in Cullman.
What is already known is that one of the names at Ground Zero once belonged to a freshman living in a Cullman dormitory.
Cullman watched
Cullman County also had an eyewitness close to the center of the federal government’s response that morning.
Holly Pond High School graduate Terry Abbott was serving as chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Education. He was in Sarasota, Florida, traveling with President George W. Bush and Education Secretary Rod Paige.
In a 2020 guest column for The Cullman Tribune, Abbott recalled initially believing the first crash might have been a small aircraft accident. The second strike made it clear that the United States was under attack.
Abbott helped rewrite Paige’s scheduled remarks, sought police protection for the education secretary and traveled through a country suddenly under extraordinary security restrictions.
When he returned to the Washington area aboard a military aircraft the following day, the usually crowded American skies were almost empty.
“I will never forget what I saw and felt that day,” Abbott wrote.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in New York, at the Pentagon and aboard United Airlines Flight 93. The dead included office workers, restaurant employees, travelers, military personnel, police officers and 343 New York City firefighters.
The courage revealed that morning was not confined to one profession. Firefighters climbed stairwells knowing buildings were burning above them.
Police officers and emergency medical personnel entered danger to direct strangers toward safety. Passengers and crew members aboard Flight 93 fought back against their hijackers, preventing the aircraft from reaching its intended target.
Many gave their lives attempting to give others a chance to live.
Memory in motion
Over the years, Cullman’s remembrance has taken different forms.
In 2020, when many traditional ceremonies were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, a blue searchlight was placed at Depot Park and pointed into the night sky. The beam echoed New York City’s Tribute in Light and offered Cullman residents a visible place to remember.
That same year, members of Cullman Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2214 and its Auxiliary walked around Sportsman Lake carrying the American flag, flags representing the military branches and flags honoring firefighters and law enforcement officers.
Children who had not yet been born in 2001 participated. Their presence pointed to one of remembrance’s greatest challenges: passing the meaning of Sept. 11 to generations with no memory of the day itself.
Local schools have taken up that responsibility. Students have interviewed relatives about where they were when the attacks occurred, studied the lives behind the casualty numbers and created displays bearing victims’ names.
Cullman County firefighters have carried remembrance physically.
In 2023, members of Cullman Fire Rescue climbed 2,071 steps at Cullman Savings Bank, the equivalent of 110 stories. They made the climb wearing between 60 and 80 pounds of protective gear, honoring the firefighters who entered the World Trade Center towers.
Afterward, firefighter Seth Brock reflected on the difference between completing a memorial challenge in safety and climbing into an actual burning tower.
“That’s a different level of hard,” Brock said.
In 2025, Holly Pond firefighters Woodrow Brown, Michael Butler and Caleb Graves, along with cadet Ty Harrison, completed their own 110-story memorial climb at Anytime Fitness in Arab.
Those challenges cannot recreate the smoke, confusion, fear or impossible choices of Sept. 11. They are not intended to. Their purpose is to carry the weight of the memory, if only for a few thousand steps.
Cullman County’s 25th-anniversary observances are already taking shape. On Friday, Sept. 11, Fairview High School is scheduled to hold a 9/11 tribute before its Gold Star Football Game.
Military personnel, firefighters, law enforcement officers and emergency medical responders have been invited to help carry a large American flag onto the field.
The program is also expected to recognize a Gold Star family and the family of a fallen first responder, linking the sacrifices of Sept. 11 to the losses carried by families in the years since.
A seventh silence
This year’s national commemoration will include a significant addition.
The names of 2,983 people will be read at the National September 11 Memorial, representing the 2,977 people killed in the 2001 attacks and six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The ceremony traditionally observes six moments of silence marking the aircraft strikes, the collapse of each tower, the attack on the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93.
For the 25th anniversary, organizers will add a seventh moment of silence. It will honor the rescue workers, recovery personnel, survivors and Lower Manhattan residents who later died from illnesses connected to toxic exposure at Ground Zero.
The addition acknowledges that the death toll did not end on Sept. 11, 2001.
Fires at the World Trade Center site burned for more than 100 days. Rescue and recovery personnel worked among nearly 2 million tons of debris.
Hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to contaminants, and more than 152,000 are now enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program.
Thousands have died from 9/11-related illnesses. Others continue to live with cancers, respiratory diseases and psychological injuries tied to what they saw, breathed and carried home.
The seventh silence will recognize their courage and remind the country that sacrifice can unfold across decades.
An estimated 100 million Americans were either born after Sept. 11 or were too young to remember it. For them, the attacks are history rather than memory.
The responsibility for making that history human belongs to those who remember, the families who still grieve and the communities that continue to speak the victims’ names.
In Cullman, that remembrance can begin with one name cut into bronze in Lower Manhattan and preserved in the words of a St. Bernard monk.
Paul Talty once lived among students in a dormitory here. Years later, he climbed into the South Tower while others were escaping. Twenty-five years after his death, the courage in that choice still speaks, but only if another generation is willing to listen and remember.
