Police Officer Liam Callahan

Officer Liam Callahan, forty-four, was a member of the Port Authority ESU. A veteran with over twenty years of service, Callahan once saved the life of a man who tried to jump off a roof of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He won a Valor Award in 1993 for rescuing disabled people during the World Trade Center bombing. An Irishman who was proud of his heritage, he was a drum sergeant for the Port Authority Emerald Society Pipes and Drums band. He and his wife, Joan, had four children: Brian, Bridget, Ellen and James. A frequent volunteer at the children’s schools, he was often a chaperone on cafeteria lunch duty. An active member of St. Cecilia Church of Rockaway, he was well known for the pancakes he cooked at church functions. PORTRAITS OF GRIEF, THE NEW YORK TIMES Many Citations for Heroism Liam Callahan always made it out of dangerous situations. So it was fully expected that Mr. Callahan, a Port Authority police officer, would emerge from the trade center wreckage-even if days later. Police work was the lifeblood of Officer Callahan, 44, a 22-year police veteran who got at least half a dozen citations for exemplary actions, including a group citation for “heroic efforts” during the first trade center bombing in 1993, the police said. One of his first rescues as a rookie came on September 9, 1982. A distraught 20-year-old man was threatening to jump from the roof of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. “Suddenly, he slid closer to the edge, and I grabbed him,” Officer Callahan told the New York Post that day. “If I didn’t get him then, he would have been gone.”