The Estes Park 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb began with the recorded sounds of an ordinary Tuesday morning radio broadcast from New York City 25 years ago.
Sept. 11, 2001, dawned clear and crisp. It was primary election day in New York, where voters were choosing candidates to succeed term-limited Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Radio announcers delivered traffic reports and chatted about the day ahead.
Then, at 8:46 a.m. — two hours and 46 minutes after the polls opened — the broadcast changed from the breezy banter of morning radio.
American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Initial confusion turned to alarm 17 minutes later when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower. Announcers and listeners began to understand that the country was under attack.
The sobering recordings captured what began as disbelief and then fear as an ordinary morning became a national tragedy.
That historic audio carried across the plaza outside the Estes Park Visitor Center parking garage Friday morning as more than 100 firefighters, veterans, families and community members gathered for the fourth annual Estes Park 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb.
For those old enough to remember, the voices summoned memories of a morning they have never forgotten. For younger participants, they conveyed the fear and uncertainty Americans experienced as the attacks unfolded.
People stood quietly beneath a new 30-by-60-foot American flag suspended between the extended ladders of two Estes Valley Fire Protection District trucks. The flag billowed in the strong morning breeze, creating a dramatic backdrop for a ceremony marked by solemn reflection, bagpipes and deeply personal stories.
People wiped tears and comforted one another with a gentle hand on the shoulder and heartfelt embraces.
“Many of us here can tell you exactly where we were at 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001,” EVFPD Chief Kevin Nunn told the crowd.
Nunn recalled how people froze as the news unfolded while others tried desperately to reach loved ones.
As civilians fled the World Trade Center, firefighters, police officers, emergency medical workers, and other first responders moved toward the danger. Responders converged on the Pentagon after a third hijacked plane struck the building. Aboard United Airlines Flight 93, passengers and crew members fought back before the plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
“Many people reached out to help,” Nunn said. “Thousands of first responders and good Samaritans came together.”
He said events such as the local memorial stair climb have become increasingly important as the country grows more distant from the attacks. A quarter-century is an entire career and, for many younger firefighters, a lifetime, Nunn said.
“Many in the fire service at this moment may not even remember the events of 9/11, 2001,” Nunn said. “Events like this one are to help us remember those lost and remember those who helped.”
Nunn asked participants to look beyond the enormity of the loss and remember the individual lives represented by the numbers.
“Every one of the individuals lost has a story,” he said.
A brother’s story
Scott Manning, a member of the event’s planning committee, told the story of one of those lives: his brother, David “Marc” Manning Sullins.
Marc was a son, father, friend, musician, and emergency medical technician at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City.
“He was my brother,” Manning said.
The last time Manning saw Marc was during his high school graduation weekend in 1993. They had grown up in separate households with different mothers and had not shared the closeness of brothers raised together. But the bond remained.
Manning recalled Marc sitting at a piano and playing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” while Manning recorded him with what he described as a “brick” of a 1990s-era video camera.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Manning was attending advanced signal training with the Army at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Because his classes met at night, he was asleep when a friend called and urgently told him to turn on the television.
When Manning asked which channel, his friend answered, “All of them.”
Manning initially struggled to understand what he was seeing. Then the reality struck him.
“It hit me like a ton of bricks as I fell to my knees,” he said. “We are under attack.”
Manning knew Marc was living in the New York area, but the brothers had not spoken in years. Calls to New York would not go through, and the family had no definitive information about Marc’s whereabouts.
Six months after the attacks, in March 2002, Manning received a call from his father at 1:30 a.m. Officials believed remains recovered from the World Trade Center belonged to Marc.
The family traveled to New York for a memorial service. At the cathedral where Marc and his wife, Evelyn, had married, first responders in dress uniforms lined the streets. The pews were filled, with little standing room remaining.
Manning met Evelyn and the couple’s two young sons for the first time. Julian was 4 and Christian was 2.
“They clung to me like they had been waiting an eternity to meet me,” he said.
Manning remembered little of what was said during the service because he was overwhelmed by grief. But as the family left the cathedral, bagpipers began playing “Amazing Grace.”
Wearing his Army uniform, Manning came to attention and saluted.
“I finally broke down and cried,” he said.
He looked across the rows of uniformed first responders and realized he was not grieving alone.
Later, people stood in line for three or four hours to share brief stories about Marc, describing his kindness and the ways he had touched their lives. Marc’s ambulance partner told the family that he carried toys in the ambulance to comfort frightened children during emergency calls.
But Evelyn refused to accept the wooden box officials said contained her husband’s remains. She did not believe the remains were Marc’s.
She was right.
The remains had been misidentified. On July 3, 2002, the family learned that other remains recovered from the World Trade Center had been identified as Marc’s.
Only then, Manning said, could Evelyn accept that her husband had finally come home.
Through Marc’s colleagues, Manning learned that his brother had been working a double shift at Cabrini Medical Center on Sept. 11, as he often did on Tuesdays. After learning of the disaster, Marc rushed to the World Trade Center to help rescue people trapped and injured inside the towers.
Colleagues saw him make repeated trips between the trade center and area hospitals, transporting civilians he had helped bring out of the buildings.
Marc’s ambulance partner, Angela, told the family that she and Marc had helped rescue seven people from the South Tower. Physically and emotionally exhausted, Angela stopped to rest. Marc put on his helmet and went back inside to search for another person.
The South Tower collapsed moments later.
“There is a saying: Nobody asks to be a hero. It just sometimes turns out that way,” Manning said.
Manning closed by recalling the song Marc had played the last time they were together and reciting its opening question: “If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me?”
“To my brother Marc and the 2,977 others who died on 9/11, 2001, and thousands more injured, I answer: I will always remember and never let anyone forget you,” Manning said.
Climbing for those who could not
Tony Helfer, a Fire Hero Family member with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, also addressed the gathering. His father, Denver firefighter George M. Helfer, died from occupational cancer in December 2019 after a 29-year career.
Helfer thanked participants for showing the families of fallen firefighters that their loved ones remain remembered.
“You’re climbing today for those who gave their all and the loved ones who will forever hold them dear,” he said. “Climb with determination for those who no longer can.”
Money raised through the event supports the FDNY Counseling Services Unit and programs provided by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation for the families and colleagues of fallen firefighters.
Estes Park Trustee Kirby Hazelton, one of the organizers of the event, choked up as she told the audience, “I read something this morning about how each person lost that day was a universe in their own way.”
The first 9/11 memorial stair climb took place in Denver in 2005, when five Colorado firefighters climbed 110 flights in memory of the 343 FDNY firefighters killed in the attacks. The observance has since spread to communities across the country.
Each Estes Park participant received a tag bearing the photograph, name and company of a first responder who died on Sept. 11. Committee Chair Laura Shepard encouraged participants to look at their tags when the climb became difficult and consider what those responders faced as they climbed the towers.
“This is not a timed race event, but a way for firefighters and the community to climb together to honor and remember all firefighters who died in the line of duty,” Shepard said.
Estes Park Police Department chaplain Dennis Hoshiko led the gathering in an invocation for those killed in New York, at the Pentagon and near Shanksville, as well as the thousands who later died from illnesses associated with the attacks.
The Estes Park International Tattoo Pipes and Drums played before leading the firefighters and other participants toward the stairs.
Active and retired firefighters took their places at the front of the procession. Other climbers followed, some maintaining a steady pace, and others pausing along the route.
Beneath the towering flag, the skirl of bagpipes and the beat of drums filled the air as participants began climbing 2,200 steps—the equivalent of the World Trade Center’s 110 stories.
Completing that distance inside the Visitor Center parking garage required 36 laps: climbing one staircase, crossing the upper level, descending another, and circling back to begin again. With every lap, the participants climbed in memory of those who never made it home.
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