Local Student Athlete Selected as Tunnel to Towers Advocate

By Katie McFadden

She wasn’t even alive when 9/11 happened but local resident and Hartwick College senior volleyball player, Mary Kinnane, not only talks the talk, but walks the walk when it comes to making sure her peers “Never Forget.” Kinnane was recently announced as one of six new students to join the Tunnel to Towers Student-Athlete Advocate Program, who have been tasked with ensuring that young Americans “Never Forget” the sacrifices made by first responders and military members, especially as we head into the 25th anniversary of 9/11. And taking it a step further, Kinnane has bigger plans to support them by becoming a U.S. Navy nurse to help military members navigate mental health challenges.

The T2T Student-Athlete Advocate Program, launched in September 2021, empowers college student-athletes to use their Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) platforms for a meaningful cause: growing personal brands while promoting the organization’s mission to honor first responders, military veterans, and their families. To date, 24 student-athletes and young professionals have collaborated with the foundation to participate in the initiative.

Born out of 9/11, in memory of Firefighter Stephen Siller, Tunnel to Towers provides mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children and builds specially adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. They also aim to eradicate veteran homelessness.

Born and raised in Rockaway in 2004, Kinnane learned about 9/11 mostly through first-hand accounts of those who were there that day, and her appreciation for first responders and military members comes from connections to many. Her mother worked for Bank of America in Lower Manhattan and has since gone through two cancers that have been linked to 9/11. Her father, although not on the job on 9/11, was a New York City firefighter for 14 years. She also has uncles who have served in the military and went on to become firefighters and cops, one of which responded to 9/11, her grandfather was a U.S. Marine during the Korean War, and her aunts are nurses, which inspired her future career path.

“I’ve heard a lot of firsthand accounts from my mom. Every year, I kind of got a little bit more of her story as she’s more comfortable speaking about 9/11. It had a really big impact on her and my uncle was a police officer who responded that day, my grandfather worked around there, my great aunt worked around there. It really impacted my family firsthand. So, hearing their firsthand account of it has really had an impact,” Kinnane said. She’s also learned of 9/11 through school at Poly Prep High School, which lost about 12 alumni on 9/11, and holds an annual memorial service for them, and at Hartwick, which holds moments of silence to mark the times the planes hit the Twin Towers on the anniversary.

Kinnane learned about the work of T2T through her parents and attending local events. “My parents are longtime supporters and T2T is involved in Thrilla in Camilla, and I did the walks,” she said, adding that she completed the T2T walk in 2024, alongside her mom, who is now in remission. Kinnane was hoping to become more involved with the organization when she found the perfect opportunity on Instagram, about the T2T Student-Athlete Advocate Program. “I thought it would be a great way to involve myself in the organization and raise awareness for victims and survivors of 9/11. I felt it was really important to raise awareness. A lot of younger generations don’t really understand the impact that 9/11 has had, if they haven’t been directly impacted or know someone who has,” Kinnane said. “T2T has been great for first responders and victims and making sure they are seen and heard, so for me, learning about everything that my mom had gone through and growing up watching my dad go to the firehouse, it was really important for me to make sure that people understand what happened that day and we appreciate the sacrifice that was made.”

Kinnane applied for the program in the summer and by late August, found out that she was accepted. “I’m blessed and honored that I was chosen to represent these heroes and I’m really excited to continue to raise awareness, especially around such a big anniversary of 9/11,” she said. And she’s already hit the ground running, spreading awareness around Hartwick, getting the athletics department involved, and making plans to hold a memorial 5K at her school.

And after graduating next year, Kinnane already has her next steps planned out. She enlisted in the U.S. Navy and will spend five weeks in officer development school this summer, before being assigned to a Navy hospital. It’s something Kinnane has been building towards through her college career.

“I’m really passionate about mental health. We have a club at school called The Hidden Opponent, which I’m the vice president of and it’s just about making sure that mental health and athletes are represented. We’re trying to break the stigma because athletes are supposed to be strong and resilient and mental health is really not something that’s spoken about openly with athletes, so I’m a part of that and I also have a job as a peer counselor, so any student who wants to come and speak to me about roommate issues or being homesick or any kind of issue they want to speak about to a peer, they can come to me and we can talk through it and come up with solutions,” Kinnane said. “So mental health is a really big thing for me, and I want to go into psych nursing, so the hope is that by partnering with the Navy, I can become a psychiatric nurse practitioner and help the veterans who are suffering from PTSD. I chose the Navy because I want to make an impact and I think doing that for those who serve and put their lives on the line for me was the greatest way I could do that.”

In the meantime, Kinnane is looking forward to continuing to spread awareness of 9/11 and the mission of T2T. “I’m really excited to continue to advocate for these people and I appreciate the sacrifice that first responders have given to make sure that we are safe.”

For more about the work that Tunnel to Towers does, check out https://tunnel2towers.org/