Thursday, October 1, 2026
34.3 miles — a number meant to represent the 343 FDNY firefighters who never made it home on Sept. 11, 2001.
That was the distance Frank Zangari, his 14-year-old son, Frankie, and a group of Oceanside community members ran from Long Beach to the Freedom Tower in Manhattan to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
“I wanted to feel something,” Zangari, principal of School No. 8 in Oceanside, said. “We wanted to really be part of something a lot bigger than us.”
The Sept. 11 run is organized by the 34.3 Foundation, which was started in 2021 by FDNY firefighter and avid runner Etan Blatt. Blatt's first run traveled from his hometown of Long Beach to Ground Zero, with each mile symbolizing one of the 343 firefighters who lost their lives.
The foundation has since turned the run into an annual tribute, with proceeds supporting the families and firehouses affected by line-of-duty deaths.
For Zangari, the decision to participate this year was especially meaningful because Frankie turned 14 on Sept. 11.
Zangari said he and his son have always noted the importance of remembering the attacks, but the run gave them an opportunity to experience that remembrance together.
“We've always taught him about 9/11, and we've always taught him about the act and how important it is to remember, reflect on it,” Zangari said. “So, seeing something like this really just helped me communicate to him how important it is for his generation to understand the brevity of the situation and understand that, no, we can't ever forget.”
The father and son spent six months preparing for the run. Zangari trained on the Long Beach boardwalk six mornings a week from March through September, while Frankie joined him about twice a week around his high school sports schedule.
Frankie ultimately ran about 24 miles and biked the remaining 10. Zangari ran 22 miles and biked 12.
For Frankie, who has been running with his father since he was young, the experience was about much more than completing a physical challenge.
“It felt really cool to do something on 9/11 to honor the firefighters,” he said.
The group began after a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane struck the North Tower. Along the route, they stopped at several firehouses to honor those who died.
Frankie said the support from people along the route helped keep him moving.
“It felt so surreal to be there with all the people,” he said. “It was so motivational.”
As the miles accumulated, however, the group had to rely on one another.
“There’s some point, especially beginning, we were just talking about how incredible this is,” Frankie said. “But there’s also several miles where you just go without saying a word.”
When he finally saw the Freedom Tower, the exhaustion gave way to something else.“It was the best feeling in the world,” Frankie said. “Once we saw that tower and running toward it, it felt so incredible.”
For Grace Montgomery, a first-grade special education teacher at School No. 8 who ran alongside Zangari and Frankie, the experience was equally emotional.
Montgomery is currently training for the New York City Marathon that will take place in the beginning of November, but before the 34.3-mile run, the longest distance she had ever run was 18 miles.
She said there were moments when she wondered whether she could finish. But Montgomery said the group had developed such a strong sense of camaraderie that quitting no longer felt like an option.
“Everybody truly leaned on each other,” Montgomery said. “By the end, we were all family.”
That feeling extended beyond the people Montgomery knew before the run. Participants shared food, water and encouragement, with runners checking on one another throughout the more than 34-mile journey.
That sense of teamwork was particularly meaningful because of the relationship between the runners and Zangari’s run as school principal. Montgomery said Zangari’s calm demeanor helped her push through difficult moments.
“He had this calm nature to him,” she said. “Anytime before or during the run, when I thought I couldn’t do it, he encouraged me. He was like ‘Yes, you can. We’re going to do this together.’”
Montgomery, who was born in 2000, does not remember 9/11 firsthand. But she grew up hearing stories from relatives who served in the FDNY and NYPD.
During the run, she said, those stories became part of the experience.
“Everyone was just talking about what this day meant to them,” Montgomery said. “It just made the gravity of the situation even stronger.”
For Zangari, completing the run with his son was the most meaningful part.
“Bar none, it was the best experience I've ever had in my life,” he said. “I've never been more proud of a human being than I was of him in completing it.”
Frankie was the youngest participant to complete the run. Afterward, Blatt told him, “You're the future of this.”
Those words stayed with Zangari.
“He knows that he accomplished this as a 14-year-old,” Zangari said. “It's tough to give up on anything. It's tough to give up on any challenge at this point, knowing what he went through and what he did.”
For father and son, the 34.3 miles became more than a test of endurance. It became a way to carry a painful piece of history forward — one mile, one memory and one generation at a time. “We are running because we will never forget,” Zangari said.
