The AM560 annual golf outing benefiting the Tunnel to Towers Foundation takes place this Monday, June 15th, at McCrae Golf Course in Elgin, with two shotgun starts at 7:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. A couple of foursomes remain available at 560theanswer.com/golf.
Christopher Avitabile, senior director of the National Golf Series for Tunnel to Towers, and Jack Oehm, retired New York City Fire Department battalion commander and Tunnel to Towers board member, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to discuss what the foundation is doing in this landmark anniversary year and how the golf program fits into the broader mission.
Avitabile said 2026 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th and the foundation has organized the year around several major initiatives. The most significant is a living memorial of 343 mortgage-free homes, one for each of the firefighters killed on September 11th, being distributed throughout the year. Twenty-five were given out over Memorial Day weekend alone. A sixteen-thousand-pound piece of structural steel from the South Tower is making stops across the country as part of a Steel Across America initiative, with all locations listed at t2t.org. The golf program is approaching three hundred total outings for the year between Tunnel to Towers-organized events and third-party outings, generating millions of dollars for the foundation’s programs.
One of the programs Avitabile highlighted is the adaptive golf initiative, which provides catastrophically injured veterans and first responders with a piece of equipment called the Verticat that allows someone who has lost the use of their legs to address the ball, stand upright, and take a full swing. The foundation currently has twenty-four Verticats placed with recipients and four more on order, which will bring the total to twenty-eight. He described playing recently in Florida with a veteran who had lost both legs overseas and had grown up playing golf with his father. With the Verticat, he is now getting back on the course with his own son. Avitabile said the response from recipients has been overwhelmingly positive, describing it as giving people their freedom back and a path to normalcy.
Oehm, who climbed 104 stories at the World Trade Center the previous Sunday as part of the foundation’s tower climb series, said golf and the foundation’s other event series serve a connective function, bringing Americans together around a shared activity and creating the context in which they learn what the foundation does for the country’s heroes. He said the mission of ensuring Americans never forget September 11th is one he remains optimistic about but acknowledged challenges, noting with concern that schools are not consistently teaching what happened twenty-five years ago. The foundation has built a full September 11th educational institute on its website where teachers from kindergarten through twelfth grade can download ready-to-use lesson plans appropriate for their grade level, requiring minimal preparation on the teacher’s part. He said bringing the South Tower steel across the country serves the same purpose in physical form.
On the multiplier effect the foundation creates, Oehm said once families whose mortgages have been paid off or who have received smart homes become part of the Tunnel to Towers family, they go out and tell others about the foundation’s work, turning recipients into ambassadors who extend the mission’s reach organically. He said the foundation is also expanding into a scholarship program named for May and George Siller and continuing its work eradicating veteran homelessness through the adaptive golf and related programs.
The remaining foursomes for Monday’s outing include a marketing package of twenty-five one-minute commercials airing on AM560 during prime broadcast hours Monday through Friday, available to be used by any business or nonprofit. Registration is at 560theanswer.com/golf.