John D’Allara

PO John D’Allara

In January 1983 John D’ Allara was accepted to the Police Academy and graduated in June 1983. He worked for the New York City Transit Police Dept., 46th Precinct, Bronx Task Force and then for the Emergency Service Unit Truck 2.

John was an officer for eighteen years. Fourteen years were served in Emergency Service. This is an Elite unit with highly trained officers who provide tactical weapons and backup for precinct officers and brings to the aid of citizens an extraordinary range of rescue techniques, skills and knowledge. During his tenure John was still involved in teaching. He was assigned to teach the remote tactics program (robot and surveillance equipment) to other members of the Emergency Service Unit and together with Police Officer Paul Hargrove, rewrote the operations manual.

John D’Allara was 47 years old on September 11, 2001. Eighteen years on the NYPD. Fourteen of them in the Emergency Service Unit, assigned to Truck 2 in Harlem.

He grew up in the Bronx with a twin brother, Dan. Before the badge, he spent five years as a competitive bodybuilder, then became a physical education teacher at three different high schools.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Lehman College in 1978 and went back for a master’s ten years later. He married his wife, Carol, on September 24, 1988. They had two boys — John, 7, and Nicholas, 3 — and lived in Pearl River, where he also volunteered with the local fire company.

He’d wanted to be a cop since he was a kid. He also kept one eye on retirement, and on going back to a classroom someday.

On the morning of the attack, his ESU unit was among the first inside the North Tower. When the South Tower came down, the lower floors of the North Tower went completely dark.

In that darkness, D’Allara found FDNY firefighter Bill Spade, from Rescue 5 out of Staten Island. Neither man had met the other before that morning.

Together they forced open a jammed door so trapped people could reach the street. They kept working side by side, strangers doing the same job in the same dark.

They had known each other about 25 minutes. In that time, D’Allara told Spade about Carol and his two boys. Spade told him about his wife and his own two sons — one of them just two months old.

Spade would later say it felt like trading the kind of details you’d want someone to pass on, if it came to that. D’Allara kept talking about his boys almost until the very end.

When it was time to go, D’Allara went first, looked back, and told the others it was clear to move. Spade made it out to the street.

D’Allara did not. He had turned back to make sure the way was clear for anyone still behind them, and the tower came down before he could follow.

Of the 72 officers from eight different agencies who died that day, D’Allara was one. Of the 343 FDNY firefighters lost, Spade’s entire company from Rescue 5 was wiped out — Spade was the only one who survived.

His body was recovered on April 11, 2002. That was exactly seven months to the day since the attack — and he was the last ESU officer, and the last NYPD officer, ever found.

He is remembered at the 9/11 Memorial’s South Pool, Panel S-24.

Twenty-five years later, Spade finally sat down with D’Allara’s sons — John, now a Marine reservist, and Nicholas, who followed his father into the NYPD — and told them what their dad said about them, right up until the last minute he had.

A stranger kept his promise for 25 years. That’s the whole story.