Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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16 SEPT. 11, 2021 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED is alluring for veteran players, sure, but it doesn't always work out for them in the long run. A graduate transfer quar- terback could just as easily crash and burn as he could shine in a new uniform. Vigiano wasn't afraid to try anything. He was a better worker for it. Jack wasn't afraid to transfer to Notre Dame. Now he's the starter there. That speaks for itself. He was originally slated to play la- crosse at Notre Dame. Then scholarship offers from college football programs trickled in, and everything changed. He set his mind to something else, just as Vigiano would have done, and became the starting quarterback at Wisconsin before earning the same title at Notre Dame. "You could tell a switch flipped and Jack wanted to be a college football player," Dan said. "And he never looked back." 'JUST A NIGHTMARE' It's OK to look back, though. If you're Dan Coan, how couldn't you? Had he arrived at the World Trade Center complex a few minutes earlier, he'd have entered the towers to bring supplies to his fellow officers and died alongside them. Had he not been as- signed to another ESU unit that day, he'd have been with Vigiano, Curtin and D'Allara from the start. He'd have died alongside them. "Five more minutes and we're in- side the tower," Coan said. "Five more minutes, and we're a picture on a wall somewhere. There was a lot of that that day. You make a left, you make a right. You make a right, somebody lands on you and you're dead in the street. You make a left, you may get away. "Fate? Yeah. There's definitely some- thing to it." Looking back gives Coan perspective. It allows him to realize how close he was to losing his life. He cherishes the memories he's making with family. His friends weren't so fortunate. He and Jack would never have made it to 50 catches in a row had he been bur- ied in the rubble. He would have never gotten the chance to see his godson start a football game for Notre Dame. "You sort of think back on it now and hearing about how many friends he lost, how many guys he worked with he lost during that incident, it's pretty crazy to think if he made one turn different or did one thing different he may not be here right now," Jack Coan said. "It sort of just taught me to cherish every moment you have with him and your family because you never know what can happen." He would have never gotten to wit- ness his own son try to follow in Jack's footsteps and become a football player. That process is in its early stages. Dan can't wait to watch it play out. He was eerily close to losing all of it. "It was just a nightmare," said Mike Coan, Dan's brother and Jack's father. "If something ever happened like that again, you'd run up to your family right away." Mike was running his landscaping business as usual on the morning of 9/11. His wife, Donna, called him twice — once after each tower was hit. He didn't believe the news at first. Then he didn't know if his brothers were alive. Dan was able to call his father, a re- tired policeman himself, around mid- night, roughly 14 hours after the hor- rifying events in New York City began. The Coan family had no idea if Dan and Jimmy, the NYPD aviation sergeant, had survived. They were in the dark all day. When Dan was finally able to call from a somehow operable phone booth in a lower Manhattan hotel, he told his dad to let the family know he was OK but that he wasn't going to be leaving the wreckage site "for a while." He was one of many officers to stay the night in a nearby high school so they could wake up early and search for sur- vivors. It ended up being a more of a mission to provide closure for grieving families rather than a mass rescue. "There were body parts everywhere," Dan said. "You just hoped that you'd find somebody alive. It didn't happen." "It changed everybody," Mike added. "It made everybody a little closer. When I spend time with them, I'm like, 'Holy cow. This guy could have been gone. He was so close.'" Dan has never talked with Jack about what transpired on 9/11, but he knows Jack still has a deep understanding of what took place. He's too smart not to. Jack has seen the Academy Award- winning documentary on Vigiano's family. He's had conversations with his dad. He toured the memorial museum at ground zero with his Wisconsin team- mates prior to the 2018 Pinstripe Bowl. He's seen enough. He's heard enough. "Obviously as I got older I learned about 9/11 and his involvement in it, and it just amazed me," Jack said. "The bravery he had. Truly making the big- gest sacrifice he could for New York and the country, putting his life at risk try- ing to do as much good as he could." When Jack suits up in blue and gold and plays on the field at Notre Dame Sta- dium on the exact 20-year anniversary of the day his uncles nearly lost their lives, a piece of them will be with him. "He has the appreciation for law en- forcement and for what we do," Dan said. "He understands the dynamic. He's an athlete. He gets the physical and adrenaline part of it. "But I also think he understands the emotional toll we took after 9/11, too." "They're special guys," Jack said. "They've definitely always been heroes to me and guys I've tried to be like. I'm thankful they're in my life." ✦ From left to right: Sergeant Mike Curtin, officer Edwin Torres, officer Dan Coan, officer Andy Bonadio, detective Joe Vigiano and officer John D'Allara. Coan's friends Curtin, D'Allara and Vigiano lost their lives during the events of 9/11, and he has honored their legacies ever since. PHOTO COURTESY DAN COAN