On the morning of September 11, 2001, off-duty FDNY firefighter Tim Duffy was tuning his 2000 Harley-Davidson Super Glide Sport when the first plane hit. He put the plug back in, pulled on his FDNY shirt, grabbed his gear from the firehouse, and rode straight through a dust-choked Manhattan street toward Ground Zero.

Shortly after he arrived and started helping others to safety, the North Tower came down and buried him. He clawed himself free and went back to work anyway, spending nearly three months at Ground Zero in the recovery effort that followed. In the first hour alone, he lost nearly three dozen friends. A photographer, Allan Tannenbaum, captured him on that motorcycle in full gear moments after the South Tower fell, an image that's since become one of the defining photographs of that day.

The motorcycle survived, just as Duffy did. He kept riding it for years afterward, eventually putting it to work for 1 Soldier 1 Dog 1 Team, the nonprofit he founded that pairs shelter dogs with veterans and first responders living with PTSD, channeling everything he carried away from that day into helping other people carry theirs. This September, twenty-five years on, the bike went on display at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. He was also named Grand Marshal of this year's Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and presented with the American Hero Award.

He still shrugs off the word hero. Says he just had a job to do. Never forgotten.

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