The 1920’s saw high levels emigration to the United States from Ireland. Among those crossing the Atlantic Ocean was James Foley from Endrim near Ferbane. James was 21 when he boarded the RMS Cedric at Cobh enroute to New York in March 1927.
His brother Peter had arrived in the Big Apple a year earlier. In 1929 the Wall Street Crash heralded the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression. Offalians in the city found mutual support in the Offalyman’s Association, an organisation in which the Foley family were closely associated.
James was living on Milton Street in the Greenpoint district of Brooklyn when he applied for US citizenship in 1933. After his marriage to Mary Egan, the daughter of Mr & Mrs Lawerence Egan from Kilcormac, the couple lived at Inwood on Manhathan and later in the Bronx.
The Foley’s had three children, Maureen, Regina and Tom. Tom worked with the New York Sanitation Department until his retirement in 1987. He married Patrica Parchen who worked for many years as a nurse at Pascack Valley Hospital in New Jersey. The couple settled in Nyack, Rockland County, a suburban community with a large Irish American presence in the New York City commuter belt and operated a successful ice cream parlour in Pearl River. Tom and Patrica had three children, Joanne, Tommy and Danny.
Both Tommy and Danny Foley joined the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) and lined out with the departments American Football side.
Tommy served with Squad 41 in the South Bronx. Outside of the FDNY he worked landscape gardening and had an eclectic set of interests including his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and rodeo bull riding. In August 1999, a construction worker was left dangling from a safety harness 12 stories above West 108 Street in Manhattan, when a scaffolding collapsed. After attempts to rescue the man utilizing a Fire Truck’s 110 Foot ladder fell short, the fire crews hauled their equipment to the roof top enabling Tommy to abseil down from the seventeenth floor, hook the stranded worker to his own harness and descend to the extended ladder. The rescue garnered Tommy both a Fire Department commendation and media attention. A series of press articles, including a profile in People Magazine’s 100 most eligible bachelors, and as series of roles as an extra on TV dramas such as the Sopranos followed. A year later Tommy transferred to Rescue 3.
At 8:46 on the morning of September 11th, 2001, America Airlines Flight 11 which had been hijacked after departing Boston less than an hour earlier, crashed into the northern Twin Tower at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. At 9:03, another hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the South Tower, by 9:59 that structure collapsed. The North Tower suffered the same fate less than 30 minutes later. Simultaneously American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon military headquarters in Washington D.C. and United Flight 93 crashed in field at Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers rebelled and attempted to retake control of the hijacked aircraft.
In all 2,977 people died in the attacks which had been carried out by 19 hijackers affiliated with al-Qaeda. The highest casualties were at the World Trade Center where 2,603 died. The death toll included 343 members of the FDNY.
Tommy Foley had been coming to the end of his shift when Flight 11 struck the North Tower and a massive FDNY deployment occurred. Fire Engines descending on the scene of the unfolding tragedy are described as ‘Riding Heavy’ because they contained members of both the Night and Day shifts. Along with other members of Rescue 3, Chris Blackwell, Tom Gambino, Ray Meisenheimer, Don Regan, Jerry Schrang, Joe Spor, and Brian Hickey; Tommy lost his life when the towers collapsed.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Danny Foley a member of Ladder 49 in the Bronx, made his way to what the media soon labelled Ground Zero, he was soon joined by his brother-in-law K.C Gross, a firefighter with the Mount Vernon FD.
The search and rescue mission they participated in was hampered by communication difficulties, the vast scale of the debris and thick veil of dust which were created when the tower collapsed, a series of fires (the last of which was extinguished 100 days after the attacks on December 20th) and the danger that surrounding buildings which had been destabilised might give and collapse themselves. In all, 20 survivors were rescued from the rubble around the World Trade Center before the mission pivoted to a recovery operation. On the night of the attack Danny assured his parents he would remain at the site until he recovered his brother’s body, a promise he kept when Tommy’s remains were found eleven days later.
In the months that followed, both Danny and his father Tom continued to work in the massive clean-up operation sifting through 1.8 million tons of debris at the 16-acre site which rescue workers labelled The Pile. For many years Tommy’s mother Patrica volunteered as a guide at the 9/11 Tribute Center. The family established the FF Thomas J. Foley Foundation. In 2010, Joanne produced ‘Tommy Foley: Legacy of a Young Hero’ a documentary detailing her brother’s life story.
Danny Foley transferred to his brother’s old unit Rescue 3 and had a distinguished record with the Fire Department but would suffer the long-term effects of 9-11. The Twin Towers had been constructed in the 1970’s and the dust and smoke which bellowed from Ground Zero contained a toxic soup of asbestos, concrete residue, heavy metals, lead and a multitude of harmful chemicals. Danny Foley died in February 2020; he was 46 years old and had a fought a long battle with pancreatic cancer directly linked to his exposure to chemicals at the Ground Zero site. By September 2024, 360 fighter fighters had died from illnesses acquired as a consequence of the World Trade Dust Plume.
In September 2023, life-size statues of Tommy and Danny Foley were unveiled at the West Nyack Hamlet Green and Firefighter Memorial Park in Clarkstown, Rockland County. In April 2025, members of the Foley family from New York visited Ferbane Fire Station to meet members of the local Fire Brigade and view the Memorial situated there which is dedicated to Tommy, Danny and their father Tom. Apart from the obvious linkages, the positioning of the monument has other subtle but important connections to the Foleys. Another member of the clan, Peter Foley emigrated to New York in the 1950’s, following his return to live on Ballycumber Road, along with his wife Kathleen he ran a successful petrol station and was heavily associated with the local GAA club, but he also a long serving member of the Ferbane Fire Brigade. The modern state of the art Fire Station was officially opened in 2018. It is situated at the rear of the old council office, a building which for almost 80 years housed Ferbane Railway Station, from where James Foley probably set out on his journey to New York in the Spring of 1927.
Sources and Further Reading
Offaly Independent. 15 August 1959. 7 December 1963.22 January 1966.
United States of America Petition for Citizenship. James Foley 1933.
Marianne V. Heffernan. ‘My 9-11 Connection. (Part 1): Cowboy Up. (Part 2): Godspeed Cowboy.’ Online at https://marianneheffernan.wordpress.com/category/fdny/
‘A New York City firefighter who helped recover his brother’s body from Ground Zero has died from 9/11-related cancer’ by Alaa Elassar CNN online at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/24/us/fdny-firefighter-9-11-brother-cancer-trnd/index.html
‘Family Celebrates Life of 9/11 Firefighter With Documentary’ Heather Caspi, Firehouse online at https://www.firehouse.com/historical-incidents/news/10461376/family-celebrates-life-of-9-11-firefighter-with-documentary
‘Firefighter who recovered brother’s body at ground zero buried after dying of 9/11-linked cancer’ Mike Kelly, USA Today online at https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/27/fdny-dan-foley-buried-next-brother-who-died-9-11/4899934002/
‘Ground Zero stops burning, after 100 days’ The Guardian online at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/dec/20/september11.usa
‘The Pit and The Pile: Ground Zero Is Gone’ ABC News online at https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91609&page=1
‘Town of Clarkstown Pay Tribute to Rockland & 9/11 Heroes Thomas and Danny Foley with Life-Sized Statues in West Nyack’ Rockland Reporter online at https://rocklandreport.com/town-of-clarkstown-pay-tribute-to-rockland-9-11-heroes-thomas-and-danny-foley-with-life-sized-statues-in-west-nyack/
‘9/11’s long legacy: How the attack on the World Trade Center is still claiming lives’ Cindy Augustine BBC online at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240911-911s-long-legacy-how-the-dust-and-smoke-from-the-twin-towers-attacks-is-still-claiming-lives
National Fire Fighters Roll of Honour online at https://www.firehero.org/fallen-firefighter/daniel-robert-foley/
National Fighters Roll of Honour online at https://www.firehero.org/fallen-firefighter/thomas-j-foley/
Patricia Foley Obituary online at https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/lohud/name/patricia-foley-obituary?id=22717440
Thomas Foley Obituary online at https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/palmbeachpost/name/thomas-foley-obituary?id=14919840
In Memory Page online at https://kingkonepearlriver.com/in-memory/
Tommy Foley Foundation website online at https://firefighterthomasjfoley.com/tommy.html
Supported by the Department of Culture Communications and Sport as part of the Commemorations Series for 2025.
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