Daughter of Cantor Fitzgerald 9/11 victim turns grief into free therapy program for veterans

Twenty-five years after her father was killed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Kayla Fallon Smith still hears his final words: “I’m getting out. I’m coming home.”

William Lawrence Fallon Jr. was 38 years old and working as an IT manager for Cantor Fitzgerald when he died in the attacks. His daughter, now 33, was 8 at the time.

Before that day, Fallon had a routine. He commuted in early so he could leave in time to take his daughter to dancing school after her classes let out, and he called the house phone each morning to check in with his daughters before school.

“That was the kind of man he was. I remember he would get up and work out in the morning before even going to work, so you’d hear the weights dropping in the house. I do remember that as a kid,” Smith said.

He often described what he could see from his office. “He would tell us what the skyline looked like. Sometimes it would be cloudy below him and he couldn’t even see the street, but it’d be sunny up there,” she said.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Smith spoke to her father one last time on that same house phone. “I spoke to him on the house phone that day, as I always did,” she said. He told her to have a good morning. “I’m sure I said something like, ‘I love you, have a great day,'” she said.

He called again after the first tower was hit, and this time Smith’s mother answered. “He said something to the degree of, ‘I’m getting out, I’m coming home,’ and that was it,” Smith said. When her mother asked what he meant, he told her to turn on the news, then hung up. The family never heard from him again.

“Those words haunt me a little bit,” Smith said. “Every year, grief is different. It doesn’t go away. It’s a myth when people say that time heals all wounds; it doesn’t.”

Turning grief into a nonprofit

In the 25 years since, Smith has built a career around helping others cope with grief and trauma. She is a licensed mental health counselor and founder of Trails of Purpose, a nonprofit that offers free mental health counseling and equine-assisted therapy to military members, veterans, first responders and their families.

Smith started the organization in 2019 after encountering equine-assisted therapy while earning her graduate degree. “As I was getting my graduate degree, I started to experience equine-assisted therapy, and I really—it just clicked for me,” she said. “I never experienced that as a kid, and I had a lot of trauma therapy growing up. The resources were abundant for 9/11 victims, and I never experienced equine therapy.”

Trails of Purpose has since provided 30,000 hours of free counseling and equine-assisted therapy to military members and first responders. “The horses, and the connection that they have when when words don’t seem to to come, the horses can just be with you,” Smith said.

“I needed a place to just be when my brain always felt on fire. I think I’ve created that, and it’s seeming to resonate with other people,” she said. “I created the thing that I think I needed: community and understanding, and a place that’s safe, and quiet, and a respite.”

Smith says she will keep telling her father’s story as a way of preserving the lessons of that day for a generation that didn’t live through it. “If we can remember the feeling that we had on September 12th, I think that would be my biggest point of education for the next generation.”