In the 22 years since NYFD’s Scott Davidson died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, his son Pete Davidson, 29, has become a household name. Now, the Saturday Night Live star’s mom Amy Waters Davidson is paying tribute to her late husband with photos from Pete’s youth and a heartwarming message. In the Sept. 11 Instagram post, Amy shared a photo of herself hugging Scott, and in the second slide, a heartbreaking pic of the NYFD hero buttoning up a fireman’s jacket on a grade-school age Pete as the future star beamed. In another adorable pic, Scott held Pete’s younger sister Casey, then a toddler, as Pete stood in front of an Elmo mascot smiling.
In yet another, Pete’s dad raised him up over his head as they played in a pool. Photos of Scott in the middle of a big laugh (looking like a mirror image of Pete), his black shoes, and a chalkboard of NYFD firefighters and their locations on 9/11 completed the emotional photo collection. “Happiest days of my life and I didn’t know it,” Amy captioned the post, alongside blue heart emojis. “Never forget and always be grateful.”
Amy’s followers on the platform couldn’t help but head to the comments section to praise Scott’s legacy — particularly the Bupkis star’s successes. “Your son has done an amazing job keeping his memory alive,” wrote on, while another remarked, “Love and prayers to all of you.” “Sending so much love and support. He would be so incredibly proud of you and Pete and Casey,” commented a third.
Pete, who parted ways with ex Chase Sui Wonders, 26, in August, has opened up about how he discovered his dad had died in a heartbreaking March 2023 interview. “My dad told me he was going to pick me up from school on 9/11. I got picked up by my mom. She didn’t tell me what was going on for like three days,” he told Jon Bernthal during an appearance on the Real Ones podcast at the time. Pete was just 7 on Sept. 11, 2001.
He later went into detail on how he discovered Scott had perished. “Then one night, I turned on the TV and I just saw my dad on the TV,” he said in part. “I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ And they were like, these are all the firemen that are, like, dead. It was weird because we didn’t know he was dead for, like, three weeks,” he continued. “They were finding people, you know? They were pulling people out of s***, and there was just some sort of hope. Like, it was just up and down and nobody knew how to deal with it.”