Son honours father killed in 9/11 attacks

A man from Coventry is remembering his father who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Rob Halligan's father, Bob, was working on the 99th floor of Two World Trade Center, the south block, when the building was struck by a hijacked passenger plane on 11 September 2001.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks, including 67 Britons, after four passenger aircraft were hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes were flown into the Twin Towers.

"It took a long time to find out if dad was in there or not. You hold on to hope when you don't hear anything, but after a couple of days you start to think, 'I don't think he's got out'," Rob said.

Rob travelled to New York a week after the attacks, retracing the journey his father made by taking the train from New Jersey into Manhattan.

His father Bob had moved to America in the 1980s.

"The city itself was really weird, it hadn't stopped, but it had slowed down - people weren't rushing around and there was a layer of dust everywhere," he told BBC CWR.

"What amazed me at the time was the kindness of strangers. There were so many people there who just wanted to make sure everybody else was okay, and it really struck me."

Rob, a musician, has channelled his experience into a show called How Did We Get Here, which pays tribute to his father, 25 years on from the attacks.

Rob said it is a "special" concert that "tells the story of what happened and how we got there".

"I have this slogan, 'love is bigger', that I try to get through to people - that we can be bigger than the mess that is in this world," he added.

The performance will take place at St Andrew's Church in Shottery, near Stratford-upon-Avon, on Saturday.

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