FDNY Hater?
The Summer of ‘80
My FDNY blog posts have marked me (by some) as a hater, either jealous or a wannabe.
That’s unfortunate but expected as criticizing FDNY is viewed as profaning the sacred, like pissing in the baptismal font.
It’s a fire service cultural conundrum as many fire departments seek to emulate FDNY.
Criticism is fair game for the tougher-skinned and the observing professional.
All others are doomed to be irritated, offended or outraged.
Am I even positioned to observe and comment?
I became a career firefighter in 1976 when I was 18 and retired twenty-three years later whereupon I spent a second career at the IAFF before retiring from there in 2010. I’m also in my 48th year as an ardent IAFF union member having served in leadership roles at the local and state levels.
(At the IAFF, Vincent Bollon, David McCormack and Peter Gorman, all FDNY veterans, were mentors and bosses. Each one was conspicuously low-key about their former life on the line. Good luck prying a war story loose from them.)
These days I am grateful for a superb career in the past but still a principled observer dedicated to my brothers and sisters.
Which brings me to the “FDNY Hater” part.
In a way I was “calibrated” by FDNY as a young firefighter when, forty-five years ago in 1980, I had the extraordinary privilege of riding on FDNY Rescue Company 2 with then Captain Frederick Gallagher and his crew.
By calibrated I mean that I observed close up the best of the best. It was the “fire wars” era in the city and I was riding with their equivalent of the 82nd Airborne Division.
It was a sweltering summer weekend in Brooklyn with hydrants open on street corners as kids splashed to stay cool.
I was warmly received at the firehouse and a kitchen chair was placed in the rear of the Rescue close to the front where I would sit during a response.
Clambering aboard first, I could see into the cab where Gallagher was seated next to the chauffeur.
I can relive those memories as if they were yesterday--the sound and vibrations of the rig starting, the smell of salty turnouts, the siren and the air horn, the staccato transmissions on the radio. Many a “10–75” and some “all hands” and a few “doubtful will hold.”
During the nights there was no sleep to be had, just brief stints of laying down on the bunk before a bell would sound and the call of “Rescue goes” or “Everbody goes” would be heard once more.
Fire after fire with some of the crew changing into dry turnouts more than once.
It was far outside my realm of experience and the takeaway was ardent professionalism.
One morning, around 5AM, we turned out yet again. It was the fourth or fifth working fire of the night. I was looking through into the cab when I watched Captain Gallagher swing up, take his seat and close the door.
No doubt exhausted, he used his right hand to rub his left wrist and then repeated it on the other side. It was the ultimate “let’s go get this done” motion--an epic moment as the bay door opened and the rising sun shone into the cab.
Minutes later we were on scene at a Brooklyn brownstone with a rocking basement fire underway.
The next night, shortly before 6PM, I was loitering in front of Engine 210 and Rescue 2 as shift change was underway.
As Captain Gallagher walked up in his civvies, a young mother from around the corner came rushing in crying that her child had stopped breathing.
Not yet on duty, Gallagher grabbed the EMS gear and took off to try and save a life.
During that trip and others, I witnessed how the best of the best did it day after day.
I was in my early twenties then and those experiences informed my work ethic for the next 25 years and beyond.
They still do.
Hate FDNY?
Hardly likely--I had seen the pros on the battleground and was changed by it.
Never forget that the end of greatness is paved with fear of criticism, change and progress.
