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Kevin Calhoun reckons that he cheated death by about two minutes.
He remembers
racing across Brooklyn toward Manhattan at about 70 miles-per-hour
along Bedford Avenue. As Calhoun and his colleagues crossed the
Brooklyn Bridge, they saw the second of the World Trade Center's
towers crumble before their eyes.
"Two minutes
sooner, and we would have been dead," Calhoun says of himself
and his associates from FDNY Engine Company 235 in Brooklyn. Calhoun
and his men proceeded to the fresh pile of rubble and tried to hook
up their hoses to begin extinguishing a fire that ultimately burned
for nearly three months. With water mains smashed beneath the wreckage,
street hydrants, and building standpipes ran dry. They had no water
pressure until FDNY fireboats tapped into the Hudson River late
on the afternoon of Sept. 11.
Calhoun worked
at Ground Zero for 14 consecutive days. "I saw nothing recognizable
for two weeks," he says. He finally pulled a stapler from the
gray dust, the first identifiable artifact he encountered in a fortnight.
While such
wretched memories still haunt Calhoun, he's lucky. Six of his 28
colleagues from Engine 235 were killed when WTC Tower Two took the
world by surprise and suddenly, inexplicably imploded.
While 66 other
FDNY units lost members on 9/11, Calhoun's has another interesting
distinction. Engine 235 just may be New York City's poorest firehouse.
While companies
such as Ladder 3 — which lost 12 of the 27 men who lived around
the corner from my East Village apartment — have enjoyed the
generosity of their prosperous neighbors, Engine 235 is located
in Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of New York's poorest neighborhoods.
"The Eye of Bed-Stuy," as the firehouse calls itself,
received hugs and kisses from grieving members of its community
after the terrorist attack. However, few in this low-income area
could offer the survivors very much money.
"In the
first three weeks after the attack, we got a total of $12,"
Calhoun says. "People dropped by to see us, but they don't
have a lot of resources."
Such funds
surely would help the families of those who were murdered on Sept.
11. The fallen have been dubbed "The Monroe Six" after
the street on which their firehouse stands. Local news reports have
described them not just as heroes but as amiable family men with
widely varied interests.
*Lt. Steven
Bates, 42, enjoyed golf and competed in marathons and triathlons.
He loved to cook for his pals at the firehouse. Sauerbraten was
his specialty. He also shared a home with his girlfriend of 10 years,
Joan Puwalski. His "babies," as he called them, were Norton,
an eight-year-old mutt, and Samantha, an eight-year-old yellow Labrador
Retriever.
*Firefighter
Nick Chiofalo, 39, moonlighted as a fire chief in Selden, Long Island.
He also worked as a pyrotechnics engineer with Fireworks by Grucci,
the Long Island company that sets bombs bursting in air over New
York City every Fourth of July. Grucci hired Chiofalo after he sent
a condolence letter when a 1985 explosion in its plant killed 16
people. His widow, Joan, is rearing their 13-year-old son, Nicholas
Jr.
*Battalion
Chief Dennis Cross, 60, was nicknamed "Captain Fearless."
This Vietnam veteran spent 37 years on the FDNY and, according to
his wife of 37 years, JoAnn, he had no intention of retiring. He
skied, ran, biked, and lifted weights to stay fit despite his advancing
years. His hope, she said, was to spend 50 years with the FDNY.
He also avoided further promotions which likely would mean more
time behind a desk and less time extinguishing fires. His favorite
saying was "Take care of men, and men will take care of you."
Some 3,000 people attended the funeral of Cross, the son of an FDNY
member who died of a heart attack while fighting a fire when Dennis
was 13. Battalion Chief Cross leaves behind his widow, daughters
Lisa Wylie, 34, Laura Sheppard, 32, Denise, 28 and a son, Brian,
a 29-year-old New York City fireman.
*Firefighter
Francis Esposito, 32, hunted, fished, and enjoyed riding around
in boats and on motorcycles. He often entertained his four nieces
and five nephews. He is survived by his wife, Dawn.
*Firefighter
Lee Fehling, 28, played piano, accordion, saxophone, and the clarinet.
He also performed in the Wantagh American Legion Bagpipe Band. He
often spent lunch breaks practicing on his chanter, a flute-like
instrument that helped him polish his bagpipe chops. His widow,
Danielle, is bringing up their kids: Kaitlin, 4, Morgan Lee, 1,
and Megan Lee who was born last October 18, about a week after her
father's funeral.
*Firefighter
Larry Veling, 44, often brought his colleagues cookies and always
wore hats, switching from his heavy helmet to lighter baseball caps.
He co-owned a deli and, shortly before he was killed, began a second
job cleaning and maintaining Board of Education buildings to finance
a new home. Veling leaves behind his wife, Diane, and three children:
Ryan, 8, Cynthia, 6, and Kevin, 3.
That bright,
September morning, firefighter Phil Scarfi drove his five colleagues
to Tower Two and remained at West and Vesey Streets connecting hoses
to the rig. That saved his life. All five of his mates were killed.
(Battalion Chief Cross arrived separately.) Scarfi watched his friends
approach the blazing building and has not seen them since.
As he told
Newsday's Rocco Parascandola: "What gives me the strength
to get by is every one of those guys knew they were walking into
hell, and they never looked back."
On a sunny
President's Day afternoon, Battalion Chief Eddie Travers, another
survivor, sits in the firehouse kitchen at a large, round table
covered with a green, plastic tablecloth. "Would you like some
shrimp?" he asks, pointing to a shiny, stainless steel bowl
filled with ice and crustaceans. Above him, a sign on the wall shows
the Statue of Liberty beside the words: "FDNY — Still
the greatest job on Earth."
Travers discusses
Engine 235's fundraising efforts, to date. His colleagues "have
been selling T-shirts at firemen's conventions," Travers says.
The kindness of strangers helps, too. Sometimes folks just show
up bearing gifts.
"We don't
know they're coming. They just come," Travers says. He recalls
that on February 16, "people drove here from Ohio. A group
of teachers." They delivered a check for $1,000 and a care
package with decorative pins made by grade-school students along
with small bags of popcorn bearing stickers that say, "My heart
pops for you."
Mell Bailey,
who co-owns a Salt Lake City Olympic memento shop, produced a lapel
pin with an American flag draping the Twin Towers. After speaking
with Salt Lake resident Raymond DePrizio, whose brother once worked
at Engine 235, she sent the firehouse $8,500 in proceeds from the
pins.
Unlike other
stations whose affluent neighbors have hosted numerous events for
them, Engine 235 has had precisely one benefit staged on its behalf.
Several of President Bush's supporters organized a group viewing
of his January 28 State of the Union speech at Midtown Manhattan's
Turtle Bay Lounge.
"I spoke
with some Bush campaign volunteers who wanted to get together to
watch the State of the Union address," former Bush/Cheney 2000
staffer Thayer Patterson says. "We decided it would be good
to do something for the FDNY at the same time. I spoke to my fire
station, and they put me in touch with the impecunious E-235 in
Bed-Stuy." The $20 admissions as well as sales of FDNY T-shirts
generated about $1,950 for the surviving families.
Donations to
the Monroe Six Memorial Fund, coins from local children's piggy
banks, sales of FDNY-emblazoned items and specific checks earmarked
directly to specific firemen's families have yielded around $50,000,
WNBC-TV's Tim Minton reported on January 17. Compare that sum to
the receipts for Hazmat 1/Squad 288 in Maspeth, Queens which lost
19 firefighters at the WTC. That company subsequently has raised
$700,000. Meanwhile, Engine 22/Ladder 13 scored an amazing $3.8
million from its wealthy neighbors on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
This company voted to give $2 million of that total to a fund for
survivors of all 343 FDNY members who made the ultimate sacrifice
on Sept. 11.
To help address
this disparity, my friends David Gray and Charlie Wright and I are
mounting a musical benefit for Engine 235. "Bluegrass
for Our Bravest" will bring Buddy Merriam & Back Roads
to No Moore's Blues Bar in Tribeca for a March 14 fundraiser. Admissions,
($20 in advance and $25 at the door), raffle tickets and a silent
auction will add even more financial resources to the firehouse's
relief fund. (Click
here for more information.)
As Gray and
I visit Engine 235 on President's Day, seven firemen and a firewoman
speak casually and joke with each other inside a rugged, beige brick
firehouse built in 1895. Its Dutch-style architecture features limestone
cornices with the busts of two firemen flanking the building. Inside,
Apolinair LaGrandier II lifts his sweatshirt over his head to reveal
the outlines of a giant tattoo he is having etched between his shoulder
blades. It is based on a memorial mural painted on the side of the
firehouse by area artist Anthony Ewing and sponsored by a self-described
neighborhood bounty hunter who goes by the name of Jimmy.
LaGrandier's
colleagues recoil in mock horror, begging him to put his shirt over
his hairy back.
Soon, we're
all reminded that the FDNY's bravery was not just an unforgettable
element of September 11 but — even now — an absolute given
in their everyday lives.
The chuckles
and ribbing come to a swift halt as a bell rings lightly in the
background. Nearby, a department radio squawks the location of a
brand-new emergency. Ever so faintly, what sounds like a telegraph's
dots and dashes urgently fills the air.
Engine Company
235's firefighters spring into action. They leap into the boots
and pants that always stand at the ready around their fire truck.
Within 30 seconds, they have revved up, mounted their wagon and
peeled out of the firehouse with sirens blaring and their light
display flashing red and white. With determination — not fear
— etched across their faces, they turn left on Monroe Street
and race west towards unseen danger.
For more on
E-235, to buy tickets to the Bluegrass for Our Bravest musical tribute
or donate to the Monroe Six Memorial Fund, click
here.
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