Editor’s Note: We at the Chronicle, will never forget those firefighters, who have given their lives in 9/11. Each week we will honor one with their stories.

We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

This week we feature:

Battalion Chief William McGovern was last seen alive on the morning of September 11 around the 30th floor of Tower One in the World Trade Center, his fellow firefighters told his wife, Mary.

Knowing her outgoing, assertive husband did not leave before the tower crashed to the ground after the terrorist attack was no surprise to Mary McGovern. Knowing his record for saving lives, she said, “He was going to make sure that everybody got out before he got out.”

In January 1988, he and another firefighter saved the lives of two children in Bedford-Stuyvesant blaze in Brooklyn. They ran into a building, crawled on their hands and knees to stay below the smoke, and found a young brother and sister lying on the floor. The boy was not breathing. McGovern and the other firefighters got both children out and resuscitated the 7-year-old boy. In a newspaper account at the time, McGovern, 49, of Smithtown, New York, was quoted as saying, “I’m thankful I could give him a second chance. I saw him come back to life. It’s the greatest experience I ever had.”

Mary said her husband must have been one of the first firefighters at the World Trade Center because the 2nd Battalion, which he led, was stationed only a quarter of a mile away. She described her husband as “A larger-than-life type guy. When he walked into the room everyone knew he was there. He liked to entertain and make sure everyone was having a good time – lots of laughter, lots of jokes.”

McGovern was in his late 30s when his daughter, Katie, now 11, was born. With Mary working daytime hours as a bank officer, William McGovern, who was often at home because of irregular hours as a firefighter, took charge. “She was the delight of his life,” Mary said. “He was a class parent. She’s on a swimming team. He took her [to meets]. There’s going to be a lot of hard times for her and his wife as well. His death “is hard to believe. Every day I expect to see him burst in the door,” she said.

In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by a son, John, 21, of Boston: his mother, Julia McGovern of Island Park; two sisters, Kathleen Decasper of Island Park and Marilyn Zurica of Valley Stream; and two brothers, John of Long Beach and Patrick of St. James.

Tribute submitted by Marilyn McGovern-Zurica.

Source: Legacy

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By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
November 12, 2009

Someone To Brag About

Joseph Marchbanks Jr. was a Battalion Chief in a Harlem firehouse, but he preferred to be called a firefighter. A 22-year veteran, Chief Marchbanks garnered four promotions by the time he died at age 47, but “he wasn’t one to brag,” said his wife, Teresa.

Still, Chief Marchbanks had a lot to brag about.

A Bronx native, he qualified for the police force and the fire department in the same week, chose the latter, never looked back.

“He loved his job,” said his friend (and stickball teammate) Frank McDonagh.

Chief Marchbanks was justifiably proud of his daughter Lauren’s softball team, which he helped coach to a championship in Nanuet, N.Y., where the former city boy lived with his wife and children, Lauren, 14, and Ryan, 8).

At the firehouse, he organized study groups to help others pass tests for promotions. “He taught without you realizing you were learning,” said his friend and colleague, Lieutenant Kevin Guy.

Now Lieutenant Guy would like to do the bragging for him, more than willing to relate more stories about his friend.

“Anything for Joe, anything,” he said.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 10, 2001.

Source: Legacy

Editor’ Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
November 3, 2009

Granddaddy’s Trains.

Last year at Christmastime, Deputy Chief Charles L. Kasper of the Fire Department’s Special Operations Command went out and bought a set of trains.

They were not for his 425-person division, which races to the scene whenever there is a major catastrophe and already owns a huge collection of red-painted fire trucks, fireboats and other exciting toys for grown-ups. No, they were for his grandson, but when the chief linked the track pieces into a circle and sent the locomotive huffing and whistling around it, Dylan, then only 7 months old, was too young to appreciate the spectacle.

Never mind, thought Chief Kasper. There’s always next year.

On Sept. 11, the 54-year-old veteran of dozens of rescues was having a day off when he heard about the World Trade Center attacks. He scrambled into a spare fire engine parked near his home in Staten Island and sped to the towers. He had a motto: “Drive it like it’s stolen,” recalled Jim Ellson, a retired captain.

Recently Chief Kasper’s wife, Laureen, and their children unpacked the trains, set them up the same way he had and watched while Dylan reacted with delight. “We say that he’s playing with Granddaddy,” who was “always on duty for his family,” Mrs. Kasper said. “And we know that Charlie’s circle will always encircle us.”
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 9, 2001.

KASPER-Charles L. Deputy Chief, F.D.N.Y. Beloved husband of Laureen. Devoted father of Melissa and Mark Friedman, Kara Kasper and Michael. Adoring ”Granddaddy” to Dylan Friedman. A 28 year veteran of the F.D.N.Y. Recently promoted to Deputy Chief. He reported in from his home the morning of the World Trade Center disaster. Chief Kasper arrived at the Command Post prior to the collapse. He was last seen directing Fire Operations in the North Tower. There will be a memorial service in his honor on Friday September 28, 2001 at the Veterans Memorial Hall, 1000 Richmond Terrace at Snug Harbor on Staten Island.

Paid notice published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on September 26, 2001.

Source Legacy

Editor’ Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
October 28, 2009

Firefighting With Research

Around the firehouse, they called him Joe Knows. The chief of Battalion 48 in Brooklyn, Joseph Grzelak had been fighting fires for 28 years and memorizing trivia for even longer. During slow shifts he could be found at his computer, researching everything from home repair to bowling strategies. He was a history buff who read two newspapers a day, breezed through crossword puzzles and answered all manner of arcane questions for friends and colleagues (hence the nickname).

“We encouraged him to try out for ‘Jeopardy,’” Chief Grzelak’s wife, Joanne, said. “He’d watch it, and most of the time he was right on the money.”

Chief Grzelak, 52, had a mathematical mind that benefited the men he supervised. “He was very rational about fighting fires,” Mrs. Grzelak said. “When the younger guys would ask him how to approach a certain situation, he always came up with the best advice.”

When he raced to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, Chief Grzelak took a binder full of research he had compiled over the years about fighting high-rise fires. It was found, Mrs. Grzelak said, in his crushed car.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 13, 2001.

BATTALION CHIEF JOSEPH GRZELAK, 52, of New York, was in a bowling alley in 1970 when he saw a woman and told his friends he would get a date with her. He did better than that #8211 the two were eventually married. Grzelak, a Vietnam veteran, began his career with the New York Fire Department in 1973. “I didn’t just lose my husband that day,” Joanne Grzelak said. “I lost my best friend.” Grzelak had earned citations for lifesaving heroics during his career. A trivia buff, he even earned the nickname “Joe Knows” from his fellow firefighters. “He was the perfect combination of a father and a friend,” said his daughter Debra Grzelak.

Copyright © 2001 The Associated Press

Source Legacy

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
October 19, 2009

‘His Talent Was His Mind’

Several years ago, Battalion Chief Edward F. Geraghty was put in charge of the Fire Department’s training school on Randall’s Island. On his first day, he gave the new recruits a pep talk, telling them what he expected. After he was done, he turned around to find the school’s instructors staring strangely at him. “What did I do wrong?” he asked. One replied, “You’re not supposed to be nice, you’re supposed to scare the hell out of them.”

That would have been difficult for Chief Geraghty, said his wife, Mary. “I was married to Eddie for 17 years and I saw him in a bad mood twice.” Even last year, when her father became terminally ill and had to move in with them, when they found out their middle son, James, 12, had juvenile diabetes and when they had a fire in their house that displaced them for several weeks, he kept an optimistic outlook and his sense of humor. She said, “He would always say, `Life doesn’t get any better than this.’ ”

Chief Geraghty, 45, oversaw five firehouses on Manhattan’s West Side, all of which responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

Mrs. Geraghty used to go downstairs every morning and find her husband already reading and studying. “His talent was his mind,” she said. Now, when she rises, she sits at the bottom of the stairs as the sun comes up with a picture of him and tells him, “Good morning.”

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on March 10, 2002.

Source: Legacy

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
October 13, 2009

Editor’s Note: Our Firefighter of the week was  Battalion Chief Haz-Mat Operations John J Fanning II.

We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

Naming the Future for Him

A few months after the terrorist attack, Maureen Fanning realized that her 14-year-old son, Sean, was still staring out the window looking for his father to walk up the driveway.

So she bought a new minivan to break the association brought on by the car Sean’s father used to drive. Still, Sean, who is autistic, didn’t seem to understand that his father wasn’t coming home.

“I showed him pictures of his father and the towers on fire,” Mrs. Fanning recalled, her voice barely audible. “This is smoke,” she told him. “Bad smoke. Daddy got hurt.”

Sean screamed and hurled his body about.

Explaining to her younger son, Patrick, 5, about his father’s death has been just as hard. Patrick, who is also autistic, has never spoken. One day, a firefighter friend came to their house in West Hempstead, N.Y., wearing a jacket similar to Patrick’s father’s and the boy began to cry inconsolably.

John J. Fanning, 54, also had three children from a previous marriage, Ryan, Jeremy and Jacqueline. A member of the New York Fire Department since 1969, and the chief of the Hazardous Materials Unit, he saved lives for a living.

He had a plan for what he’d do with the lottery jackpot if he won. “We’d buy a group home and you’d run it,” he told his wife. His family hopes to open the first Jack Fanning House for autistic youths next year, financed by donations they received after Sept. 11.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on September 10, 2002.

Source Legacy

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
October 8, 2009

Her Cheerleader

For 29 years, Dennis and Kathleen Devlin were man and wife, parents to four children. In a house on a small hill in upstate New York, they watched sunsets and laid plans to grow old together.

But Dennis Devlin, a battalion chief for the New York City Fire Department, is gone now, leaving Mrs. Devlin to try and hold on to their bond.

So, Chief. Devlin’s hobbies have become her hobbies. Every morning, she’s out on a three mile run, a habit she never cared for when her husband was alive, but one she hopes now will prepare her for a coming race that she is planning in his honor.

“I can hear him sometimes telling me not to get tired, pushing me,” she said.

It is also because of her husband that no day passes without Mrs. Devlin thumbing through one of the 23 photo albums Chief Devlin labored over, for decades, meticulously labeling and dating each photograph. (The last photo he ever entered, taken three months before Sept. 11, was one of him in a helicopter flying over Lower Manhattan, staring at the World Trade Center.)

“We complained about him taking so many pictures, everywhere we went,” she said. “But having those albums now is such a joy. We all look at them and think how blessed we are that he took the time and that we were a happy family.”
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 9, 2001.

Dennis L. Devlin, 51, a 23-year resident of Washingtonville, New York, a New York Fire Department battalion chief of the 3rd division in Manhattan, died at the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Visitation is scheduled for Friday, September 28, 2001, 5-9 p.m., at David T. Ferguson Funeral Home Inc., 20 North Street, Washingtonville. Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday, September 29, 11 a.m., at St. Mary’s Church, Washingtonville. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are appreciated to Uniformed Firefighters Association of New York, Widows and Children’s Fund, 204 East 23rd Street, 5th Floor, NY, NY 10010 or Engine 75 Ladder 33, World Trade Center Fund, 2175 Walton Avenue, Bronx, NY 10468. Arrangements entrusted to David T. Ferguson Funeral Home Inc., Washingtonville, New York.

Source Legacy

In the Thick of Things

Five years ago, when Thomas P. DeAngelis was promoted to battalion chief in the New York City Fire Department, his wife, Patty, told him: “You’ve been running into burning buildings for 22 years. But you’re a battalion chief now, so you won’t have to do that anymore.”

In her heart, she knew better. Tommy DeAngelis would never send a firefighter into a building he had not personally entered and checked out. Around the East 51st Street firehouse in Manhattan, he was known as “Chuckles” because of his sunny good humor and his lust for life: sports, cooking, sailing, carpentry, writing. But when the alarm sounded, he would suddenly become all business.

Sometimes he would kick around the idea of retiring in a year or two — he was 51 — maybe to take up writing children’s books. But, again, Mrs. DeAngelis knew better. “He loved being a firefighter way too much to ever quit early,” she said.

On Monday, Sept. 10, she had lunch with him at their home in Westbury, on Long Island, before he headed into Manhattan to pull a 24-hour shift. “See you Tuesday night,” she said as he left, giving him a kiss. “Be careful.”

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 16, 2001.

Source Legacy

Running for a Memory

The race seemed more important than ever. For 18 years, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Dennis Cross competed in the Turkey Trot, a 5- kilometer race held in Flushing Meadows, Queens, where firefighters ran for charity. Now he would be absent.

His wife, JoAnn, used to operate a fitness studio and induced him to run with her. But once the children arrived, she stopped running. That was 15 years ago.

Yet she felt an unshakable need to have a Cross in the Turkey Trot to honor her husband, a battalion chief of Battalion 57 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. So she concluded she would be that Cross. And she would recruit additional firefighters to run, too, in honor of all the firefighters lost in the attack.

Chief Cross, 60, known as Captain Fearless, lived with his wife in Islip Terrace, N.Y. His favorite saying was, “Take care of the men and the men will take care of you.” Mrs. Cross was going to take care of his memory. She vowed she would finish this race and then begin an annual memorial run for her husband next April 27, the anniversary of the day they met.

For nine weeks, she trained, building up endurance. Race day came. She ran, as did her four children. She finished in 29 minutes. “I thought I was going to do it in 45 minutes,” she said. “I was proud of myself.”
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 29, 2001.

At age 60, Dennis Cross had spent nearly two-thirds of his life as a firefighter in New York City.

And retirement wasn’t on his calendar anytime soon.

“He wanted to be the first to put in 50 years on the job,” said JoAnn Cross, his wife of 37 years.

Along with so many of his brethren, Cross’ career was cut short Sept. 11. The battalion chief for Battalion 57, based in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, was killed when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

His body wasn’t recovered until a week later.

“The first three days it was more than hell,” said his wife. “When they found him on the seventh day, that was such a relief because we could bring him home. So many of our friends haven’t been able to do that.”

As is common in the profession, fighting fires was a family affair. Cross’ father, Charles, was a New York firefighter, as is his only son, Brian.

Cross joined the department in 1963 after returning home from a two-year tour in Vietnam, where he served in an Army communications unit, JoAnn Cross said.

In the department, Cross was widely admired as a gutsy firefighter and, later, as a respected leader.

“He was a quiet guy, but powerful,” JoAnn Cross said. “When he made captain, they called him Captain Fearless.”

He was promoted to battalion chief in 1993.

A frequent runner who kept himself in excellent shape, Cross was looking forward to competing in an annual 5K race around the Thanksgiving holiday in Flushing Meadows, Queens. Now, JoAnn Cross hopes to turn the race into a fundraiser for a local charity that aids burn victims.

Cross is also survived by three daughters and three grandchildren.

An estimated 3,000 mourners, mostly firefighters, attended Cross’ funeral Sept. 22 in Islip Terrace, Long Island, where he lived.

Profile courtesy of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.

Source Legacy

Firefighter to the Core
Raymond M. Downey was the battalion chief in charge of special operations in the New York City Fire Department.

Here’s his son, Chuck, a fire lieutenant: “Dad joined the Fire Department on April 7, 1962. Coming on in the 60′s, they went to a lot of fires. The war years, they termed it. In 1995 he was assigned to Special Operations Command, SOC is the acronym, as chief of rescue operations. . . .

“He was on the Gilmore Commission to fight domestic terrorism. No one’s going to see it all, but I don’t think anyone thought of the World Trade Center. . . .

“When the south tower went down, there was a lot of Maydays. He survived. A lot of the top brass did. These are all guys with 30- plus years. They went back in. There were two young firemen, he told them, not in the nicest language, to get out of here.”

Here’s Chief Downey’s daughter, Marie Tortorici: “Mommy, Rosalie, is Italian. Daddy’s Irish. He would have been 64 on Sept. 19. He’s very spiritual. He was in Oklahoma City after the bombing. Gov. Keating gave him a set of rosary beads. He wore them every day. Well, they broke, and he kept them in his pocket. He had them with him, because they’re not home. . . .

“When I was a little girl, he was working three jobs to support the family, and he was always too busy to come to the school to do fire prevention week. Last year, when my daughter was in first grade, he went to the school for fire prevention week. I don’t know. It’s so sad, everything. But a good thing came out of this. My sister, my father called her the baby, we just found out she’s pregnant. So she felt like it was a blessing from my father.”
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 22, 2001.

DOWNEY-Raymond. Of Deer Park, LI, FDNY-Deputy Chief of Special Operations Command, heroically in the line of duty at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a week before his 64th birthday. Beloved husband of Rosalie (nee Princiotta). Loving and adored father of Joseph and Lynn, Marie and Girolamo Tortorici, Chuck and Melissa, Ray and Christine, Kathy and Brian Ugalde. Cherishd poppy of Gina Marie, Nicolette Rose, Peter Raymond, Joseph James, Connor Joseph, Olivia Faith and Kayla Rae. A dear brother to Eugene, Thomas and the late Joseph and Alice Routledge. Dear brother-in-law of Eileen Downey, Jean Downey and Sal Princiotta. Survived by many loving nieces and nephews and cherished family and friends. Memorial viewing at the Claude R. Boyd-Caratozzolo Funeral Home, 1785 Deer Park Ave, Deer Park, NY, on Thursday and Friday from 2-5 PM and 7-9:30 PM. A memorial mass will be held at St. Cyril and Methodius, RC Church at 11:00 AM on Saturday, December 15th. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his loving memory to the Deputy Chief, Raymond Downey Scholarship – Charity Fund (D.C.R.D.S.C Fund) 7 Bardish Lane, Babylon, NY 11702.

Paid notice published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 13, 2001.

Source Legacy