Welty lived in Yonkers with his wife, Delia, and their two children.
His son, Jake, was three years old. Julia had just arrived into the family a month earlier.
Outside the firehouse, Welty was known for living life with unusual energy.
He skied.
He skydived.
He rode motorcycles.
He went bungee jumping.
He played hockey and volleyball for the department and spent his days off looking for the next challenge.
But his adventurous side was only one part of his personality.
Welty also loved working with his hands. Shortly before his death, he had helped gut and rebuild his mother’s house himself, installing new molding and skylights and creating handmade parquet floors.
His wife described him as a philosopher, too — a man who could be adventurous and practical, energetic and thoughtful.
To his family, however, his greatest role was much simpler.
He was a husband and a father.
The Call to the World Trade Center
On September 11, Squad 288 responded to the World Trade Center alongside Hazmat Company One, which operated from the same Maspeth firehouse.
Twenty men from the firehouse went downtown.
Nineteen would never return.
Welty was among them.
The scale of the loss was extraordinary, but for the families left behind, the numbers could never explain what had disappeared.
For Delia, it was her husband.
For Jake, it was his father.
And for Julia, it was the beginning of a life in which her father’s presence would exist mostly through memories belonging to other people.
Growing Up Without His Voice
Because Julia was only four weeks old when Timothy died, she never had the chance to build memories of him herself.
As she grew older, she had to learn about her father by asking questions.
What was he like?
What made him laugh?
What did he sound like?
What was he like at home?
The answers came from family members, friends and the recordings he left behind.
Old home videos became especially important.
They preserved something photographs could not — his voice and the small movements of an ordinary family life.
For Julia, those fragments offered a connection to someone she had lost before she was old enough to understand what losing him meant.
Her older brother Jake was three at the time, young enough that his memories would also fade with time, but old enough to have known his father’s face and presence.
The two children grew up carrying the same loss in very different ways.
Remembering Timothy
Welty’s name has continued to be remembered long after the morning that took his life.
People who never knew him have worn bracelets bearing his name. Firefighters and supporters have participated in memorial stair climbs, climbing the equivalent of the stairs firefighters faced on September 11.
Each year, his name is spoken alongside the names of the other members of Squad 288 and the hundreds of firefighters who died that day.
But behind the name is a much more personal story.
Timothy was a man who loved adventure and took pride in his work.
He was a son who helped rebuild his mother’s home.
He was a husband.
And he was the father of two young children who were still at the very beginning of their lives.
A Life Interrupted
One of the hardest things about Welty’s story is how much of his children’s lives remained unwritten.
Julia would grow up without the ordinary moments most daughters share with their fathers.
There would be no new memories to add to the old home videos.
Instead, her understanding of him would be built from what others remembered and what he left behind.
As she reached milestones he should have witnessed, his absence became part of those moments.
Yet his presence remained in another form — in the stories his family continued to tell and in the photographs that preserved the man Julia never had the opportunity to know firsthand.
That is what makes the story of Timothy Welty more than another name among the victims of September 11.
It is the story of a family whose future changed in a single morning.
A three-year-old boy lost his father.
A newborn daughter grew up knowing him through memories that belonged to others.
And a wife lost the man she expected to grow old with.
Remember His Name
Timothy Welty was 34 years old when he responded to the World Trade Center.
He had a young family waiting for him.
He had a life outside the firehouse, projects he had not finished and years he should have had ahead of him.
Instead, his life became part of the history of September 11.
His daughter Julia would eventually turn eighteen without ever having the chance to hear her father speak to her in person.
But she would know his face.
She would know his name.
And through the stories of those who knew him, she would continue to discover the man he was.
Timothy Welty was more than a firefighter who died on 9/11.
He was a husband, a father, a son, a friend — and a man whose children were only beginning their lives when his was suddenly cut short.
Rest easy, Timothy.