The shirt design included an American flag, which Daryl Cash said helped it’s popularity. Suzanne Rook | The Wake Weekly file
WAKE FOREST — Twenty years ago, the nation watched in horror as planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. In Wake and Franklin counties, people wanted to help in any way possible.
“It’s in the nature of firefighters to not just sit around and say, ‘I wish I could do something,’” said Daryl Cash, chief of services at Wake Forest Fire. “We wanted to do something. It ain’t like a firefighter to just sit around and not do something to help.”
Wake Forest Fire helped the only way it could: Raising money for the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund.
“Right after 9/11, maybe three or four days after, all of a sudden, you could not get your hands on an American flag,” Cash remembered. “At the time, myself and Eric Mohn thought if we had some T-shirts made with a flag on it, we could raise money for some of the families that were affected by 9/11. We had no clue what it would become.”
Members of Wake Forest and Falls fire department present the Fire Department of New York with a check for $70,000 in March 2002. Contributed photo
Cash and Mohn started with 100 shirts, hoping they could sell them for $15 each. Instead, they sold over $70,000 worth.
“The shirts went viral. It just went crazy,” Cash said. “Steve’s Ts was printing them as hard as he could go, working night and day to print the shirts.”
Steve Davis and his team were a relatively new shop at the time. Davis recalled Wake Forest fire only asking for a few hundred shirts at first.
“As weeks went by, they keep placing orders, and it grew to be several thousand tees,” Davis said.
His staff was working nights and weekends to keep up with the demand, he said.
“It was well worth the effort once the fire department told us how much money they would be donating to the 9/11 fundraiser,” Steve Davis said.
Cash said none of it would’ve been possible without him.
“Steve stuck with us no matter what we needed,” Cash said. “He was always willing to help. I don’t think he made any money on it.”
Ten firefighters, including 16-year-old Ben Davis and Daryl Cash, traveled to New York to donate the money. Contributed photo
The fire department essentially turned into a T-shirt factory, Cash said. Firefighters and their families got involved in selling shirts and sending them out.
Capt. Ben Davis was a 16-year-old junior firefighter when the project happened, but he gave it his all. He remembered selling shirts at tents set up throughout town.
“At 16-years-old, we were kind of naive,” Davis said. “I’m almost afraid to admit it, but when they said ‘The World Trade Center,’ I didn’t know what that was. Then they said, ‘The Twin Towers.’ It was like ‘Oh my goodness. I know exactly what that is.’”
None of the firefighters knew what to expect when they started the fundraiser. Cash said he thought it would be cool to sell just 100 shirts.
“We never, never had a thought process that it was going to go into thousands and thousands of shirts with shirts being sold all over the country,” Cash said. “I relate that back to the design on the shirt.”
Erick Mohn, left, and Daryl Cash count money in 2001. Before they were done, they’d raised $70,000 for the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund. Suzanne Rook | The Wake Weekly file
Mohn and Cash came up with a rough idea the design, and then one of Mohn’s friends fleshed it out, Cash said. The shirt featured an American flag, the Twin Towers and Psalm 23:4.
Davis contributes the popularity to the community’s giving spirit.
“Wake Forest is an outstanding place. There’s no doubt the community is going to come together and do anything we could,” Davis said. “We just came up with the design and sold the shirt, the community did just as much. They did all of it that we did. It was truly a community effort.”
Wake Forest Fire was fortunate that one of the firefighters, Thomas Howell, had an in to the Fire Department of New York. Howell’s father was a former Port Authority police officer, and he knew a battalion chief in Queens.
Wake Forest and Falls fire departments raised $70,000 and took a check to New York.
“It went directly into that account for them,” Cash said.
It was Davis’s first trip to New York City. Ten firefighters went up in March 2002. While they were there, they got to listen to the first report on why the towers collapsed. They also got an aerial view of Ground Zero.
“It was very humbling,” Davis remembered. “For me, personally, I hear the sound of machines breaking up concrete or hitting metal, and I’m immediately taken back to that.
“We stayed up there for about an hour in awe. There was still a lot of digging to be done. It was a very humbling experience.”
A few months later, several members of the same group went back to New York for the memorial service for the 343 firefighters who died in the collapse. Both men said it was a humbling experience.
“When a firefighter gets killed in the line of duty, we try to show up,” Cash said. “It’s out of respect that you send someone to the funeral.”
Fire departments from around the world sent ambassadors to the memorial service. Wake Forest got to be inside the ceremony.
“We were very honored to be a part of it,” Davis said.
New York and Wake Forest fire departments stayed in touch for a while afterward. Cash said for a couple of years after, the New York firefighters would come down to North Carolina and everyone would play golf. But most of them have now retired.
Twenty years later, Cash said he can still remember everything like it was yesterday. Both men remember watching the horror on television as the towers fell.
“Every year, people ask us what we’re going to do, but a lot of the guys remember in their own ways,” Davis said. “It’s more of a sacred day for us where we reflect in our own special way.
“We’ll never forget.”
