Mike Keane says O’Hara’s Restaurant and Pub will simply “put up new walls” if the thousands of first-responder patches ever run out of space.
Keane, 63, co-owns the Cedar Street bar located one block south of the World Trade Center site, where more than 7,000 patches from police officers, firefighters, EMTs and military personnel now cover nearly every inch of the walls and ceilings. The collection draws contributors from all 50 states and countries across the globe.
“Even Guam,” Keane told The Post. “All over the world, everybody’s been through here. They know about the patches, and they want to have theirs hung with the rest of their brethren.”
Before September 11, O’Hara’s functioned as a “Cheers”-style gathering spot for Wall Streeters, first responders and tradesmen. The bar itself nearly didn’t survive the day; Keane once believed the dust and debris had destroyed the building for good. When it finally reopened in April 2002, the space transformed into a refuge for those still working at Ground Zero, and a place where patrons exchanged devastating updates about former regulars who never made it out.
“You’d be talking to someone, and they’d say, ‘Remember Jeff who used to come in? He didn’t make it,'” Keane recalled.
The patch tradition began on the first anniversary of the attacks, born from an impromptu gesture by a construction worker. “One of the construction guys decided to take a patch off one of the FDNY guy’s shirts and staple it to the bar,” Keane said. That first patch came from a fireman at Ten House on Liberty Street, the first fire station to respond to the tragedy. “At the end of that day, there might have been 20 patches stapled up around the top of the bar. And then, as you can see now, it got away from us a little bit.”
Tim Brown, a 20-year FDNY veteran and 9/11 survivor who supervised in Mayor Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management, discovered O’Hara’s after the 9/11 Memorial & Museum opened in 2014. He visits the memorial four or five times weekly to speak with the nearly 100 friends he lost, then stops by the bar three or four more times.
“I lost nearly 100 friends, so I go visit my friends’ names [at the memorial], say hi to them four or five times a week. And I come here three or four times a week … It feels like I’m home,” Brown said. “This is also a 9/11 museum, just a different kind.”
Brown has brought an extraordinary range of visitors to pay respects, from Navy SEALs and FBI agents to members of the Afghan military’s Female Tactical Platoon.
Amanda Lynch found her way to O’Hara’s in 2019 while searching for answers about her family’s losses. Her uncle, Michael Boyle of NoHo’s Engine Company 33, died in the attacks. Her grandfather, James Boyle, former president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, spent months searching Ground Zero for his son before dying of 9/11-related cancer in 2019.
“I spent a long time looking for answers … and while in New York City one weekend with some time to kill, I went looking for these answers,” Lynch said. There she met Brown, who became her mentor as she pursued a career as a paramedic.
Brown stood beside Lynch when she stapled her Philadelphia Fire Department and Pennsylvania state paramedic patches to the wall a couple years ago. “I’d like to think my grandpa and uncle also enjoy a beer under those patches after hours,” she said. Her annual pilgrimages continue, and this 25th anniversary carries extra weight: her husband, a fire captain, will add his own Philadelphia Fire Department patch while their son watches.
Jake LaFerriere, a second-generation Minneapolis firefighter who founded the nonprofit Firefighters for Healing, described his first visit as “completely overwhelming.”
“You can truly feel the deep sense of brotherhood, love, respect and tradition within those walls,” LaFerriere said. He contributed both his Minneapolis Fire Department and Minneapolis Police Department patches.
Keane ensures even those who cannot visit personally find representation. “I was just actually on the phone with a guy from Rhode Island and he wanted to send a patch down for a buddy of his who had passed away … I said, ‘Mail it down to us, I’ll put it up, and then I’ll take a picture for you,'” he said.
The bar extends its honor beyond traditional first responders. Welles Crowther, a 24-year-old equities trader at Sandler O’Neill in the South Tower, survived the initial impact of United Flight 175 because he was in the elevator bank. He proceeded to save a reported 18 people, leading and carrying them down the stairs before returning upward to help more. He died when the tower collapsed, but survivors identified him as the “Man in the Red Bandana” — the signature kerchief his father had given him years earlier, always kept in his back pocket.
A red bandana embroidered with “19,” his varsity lacrosse number at Nyack school, now hangs at O’Hara’s.
“My breath was taken away,” Alison Crowther, his mother, said of her first encounter with the tribute. “I knew that they had always honored the firefighters and other emergency service workers who traveled to New York to help on and after the attacks, but I never thought they would necessarily know about or include Welles.”
She has returned approximately 10 times, bringing friends for meals after memorial visits. “My heart always swells to see all of the patches, all of the love, all of the dedication to service represented there,” she said. This year, her son will posthumously receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
For the 25th anniversary, Keane will open at 8:30 a.m. On September 11 and expects to remain active until around 2 a.m. “A lot of people just need a drink, or want to have a toast in memory of someone,” he said. “It’s good that people want to be part of this and want to come here and show respect for all the first responders. Because they don’t always get it all over the place.”