Speaker 1: Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this
Speaker 1: interview that the opinions about to be expressed by the
Speaker 1: guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of
Speaker 1: the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the
Speaker 1: views of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 3: Hello, I got a big hello today. Hello pee wee.
Speaker 4: Rob Procaccini, Johnny Albany's pull Berg a member, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Not Procaccini's not a member.
Speaker 4: He don't have any money to do that, Bro, he's
Speaker 4: big doylecy b Doug Doyle, Doyle O Fox in there,
Speaker 4: come out, QC Beast is a member. Yet you know
Speaker 4: what they don't realize how much work rough?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: I mean Gators River Here about one more overtime tour
Speaker 4: the Procaccini work. Bro, I'm gonna fucking vomit. There you
Speaker 4: go River at six. Welcome dude, Welcome, Bro. He's a member.
Speaker 4: Weinberg member, Rob.
Speaker 3: Not a membercket.
Speaker 5: Yeah, do we have that? I think I have something
Speaker 5: like that I'll do.
Speaker 4: I'll tee you up for you, Rob, Brocaccinis, Man.
Speaker 5: He's doing this he's actually doing this.
Speaker 3: You know what, He's going down to a burtle beach
Speaker 3: for three weeks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, going down there, Yeah, five ninety five to become
Speaker 4: a member.
Speaker 3: Can you get a bag on a cup of coffee
Speaker 3: for five ninety five?
Speaker 6: You get it straight?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say you can you get one ninety five?
Speaker 3: You can't even get a cup of coffee in a
Speaker 3: bagel for four ninety five. But yeah, he's gonna get
Speaker 3: all original.
Speaker 6: I went to reunion.
Speaker 3: You did well. God bless you, God bless.
Speaker 6: You eighty guys.
Speaker 5: Bro.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw something that said the biggest the busiest
Speaker 4: company in the world, history of the world.
Speaker 5: I still don't know what's name.
Speaker 3: You think that's a little oh my, here it is.
Speaker 3: What do we got? World busiest fought?
Speaker 5: Did you see what you did?
Speaker 7: You mail one of those shirts to me or even
Speaker 7: coops from a free T shirt?
Speaker 8: Just a free T shirt.
Speaker 5: I don't want to take for any of that ship
Speaker 5: I got.
Speaker 6: I got two guys.
Speaker 4: Question, did you have a straight face when you had
Speaker 4: that shirt printed up? The World's busiest?
Speaker 6: True guys?
Speaker 8: I got two guys?
Speaker 6: What I got two guys out of all those guys
Speaker 6: I had Steve Luisi corned he I don't think he's
Speaker 6: gonna do it.
Speaker 4: And I'm saying to you, when you had those shirts
Speaker 4: printed up, did you do with a straight.
Speaker 6: I heard you, but I didn't hear you. You understand
Speaker 6: what I'm saying, all right?
Speaker 3: I wrote in the world.
Speaker 8: I saw what you did in the world.
Speaker 4: I don't want to say it anymore. Play the commercial, maybe, maybe,
Speaker 4: pro you'll inspire a propacina to take four ninety five.
Speaker 3: Out of his fucking pocket and get paid for the membership.
Speaker 5: Oh did we move it? You can't move that, shiit?
Speaker 3: I moved it to the top.
Speaker 6: Oh you did you something?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 1: Here we go looking to take your love for the
Speaker 1: fire service the next level. Then join the Getting Salty
Speaker 1: Experience YouTube premium membership club where the stories burn hotter
Speaker 1: and the history runs deeper. As a member, you'll lack
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Speaker 1: Just hit that join button riding our YouTube channel and
Speaker 1: become part of the brother us. Support the show, celebrate
Speaker 1: the job, get and stay salty.
Speaker 3: They know enough. They know enough about the history of
Speaker 3: the Halligan. They don't need to know no more.
Speaker 5: That's that's something other people do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what, play my little man. I talked
Speaker 3: to Vince today.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 4: Mister asked me, what's going on? I said, you didn't
Speaker 4: send me any information? Because what information do you like?
Speaker 4: I got to know the product. I can't go out
Speaker 4: there and I don't even know the name of the product.
Speaker 4: Call it whatever the hell? To get the square?
Speaker 6: Get the square, the name of the company.
Speaker 3: How about you send me that.
Speaker 8: I'm attack, attack on.
Speaker 5: One of them. Here we go.
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Speaker 3: Bingo rough.
Speaker 4: You got a guy with a lot of stories, both
Speaker 4: fire and non fire. Funny stories, but the man's been
Speaker 4: to a lot of.
Speaker 8: Companies.
Speaker 5: You ready, Yeah, I'm ready's.
Speaker 6: Coming to the stage, cap Steve Ellie.
Speaker 3: With the girls like throwing a.
Speaker 5: Pen out a couple more seconds.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's.
Speaker 5: You, guys.
Speaker 8: Thanks for having me, guys any time.
Speaker 4: But before we get deep into the weeds here, we
Speaker 4: gotta get patriotic.
Speaker 3: Since we are on the move, us a baby country
Speaker 3: in the history.
Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 2: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 2: One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 3: Darren Phillips joined us there. He is member, by the way,
Speaker 3: Darren Philip.
Speaker 5: Remember everybody that's in green is a member. So thank you, guys.
Speaker 3: Well, I see who's not in green rhying Copuccini.
Speaker 4: But go ahead, right, all right, let's start way back,
Speaker 4: because this man's dad was on the job for thirty years,
Speaker 4: so let's go back.
Speaker 3: We'll go back as far as high school. He was
Speaker 3: an upstate guy, right.
Speaker 8: Upstate, that's it. I used to say Suffolk County north
Speaker 8: to the city guys. They used to break my balls
Speaker 8: and say, yeah, where do you live, kid? I said,
Speaker 8: I live in Brewster. They said, yeah, that's upstate. I go, no,
Speaker 8: it's not nine. The state is north of Brewster. Like,
Speaker 8: that's upstate. You across the fucking bridge. Okay, fair enough, Brewsters.
Speaker 3: So that's up by Westchester somewhere up that way.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's about.
Speaker 9: Forty miles from the Bronx. Yeah, Suffolk North.
Speaker 8: I call it the Bronx. The Bronx.
Speaker 3: So we don't got to ask you what, oh you
Speaker 3: went to?
Speaker 8: What school did you go to first in high school?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 8: One famous person, former alum is Michael Imperiali from the Sopranos.
Speaker 8: If you ask him, he'll tell you he's from Mount Vernon, Ohio.
Speaker 6: You forget hi about it.
Speaker 8: We got about got him.
Speaker 3: Did you know him from school or was he different yet?
Speaker 8: And no, I never heard of him. I like it.
Speaker 5: I was an English class right, he was an English
Speaker 5: class well man?
Speaker 3: All right, So we know how he got into the job, right,
Speaker 3: Your old male was on the job.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my father did thirty years Uh wow he uh.
Speaker 8: He pushed me to take the test and I actually
Speaker 8: took the test for the fire department when I was
Speaker 8: in high school. I was like seventeen years old. It's
Speaker 8: a great picture of the old man in the that's
Speaker 8: the fifth division, Frank Fellini. So my father started out
Speaker 8: in fifty engine. His feet, he was a big man.
Speaker 8: And that your dad on the left on the right,
Speaker 8: the deputy is Frank Fellin. Yeah, my dad is the
Speaker 8: boss with helmet on, all right. So he started out
Speaker 8: in fifty engine when they had two sections, right. He
Speaker 8: did a year in Vietnam and then he came home
Speaker 8: in nineteen sixty seven, he went to fifty engine they
Speaker 8: had two sections. Then he went across the floor to
Speaker 8: nineteen truck. Then he eventually went to thirty nine truck,
Speaker 8: got promoted, went to eighty engine as a lieutenant, which
Speaker 8: is the same house that I finished up in eighty
Speaker 8: and twenty three.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What now that I look at this roof, it's starting
Speaker 3: to click. I might being that smart, but.
Speaker 4: I putting them together, I'm smart.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So then he went to a thirty seven truck
Speaker 8: in the Bronx and he retired out of fifty two
Speaker 8: engine in nineteen ninety seven. Korea. Man, No, that's it
Speaker 8: just me. Yeah?
Speaker 3: Is that fifty two and fifty two?
Speaker 8: Yes, sir, right off the Henry Hudson's fifty two.
Speaker 4: That was the first company that ever had the same
Speaker 4: number in the same house way before ten fifteen times Riverdale. Right, yes, yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 4: after you take the test and then you shove off
Speaker 4: as a marie.
Speaker 8: So I decided to Uh. My high school had Navy ROTC.
Speaker 8: So while I was in high school, we had the
Speaker 8: whole program where you learn about the customs and the
Speaker 8: courtesies of the military. I had instructors that were Marines
Speaker 8: and they sent us on class trips to do Marine
Speaker 8: Corps boot Camp, Navy boot Camp, and Office Canddate school.
Speaker 8: So for four years in high school, I was fully
Speaker 8: immersed for a week in all these programs. And I said,
Speaker 8: you know, that's that's what I want to do. So
Speaker 8: I tried to get into the Naval Academy. My dream
Speaker 8: was to play football at the Naval Academy, and I
Speaker 8: didn't get in. So I decided maybe I'll try the reserves.
Speaker 8: And my father wanted me to do reserves. He wanted
Speaker 8: me to go to college. And he told me, you know,
Speaker 8: the fire apartment is going to call you. You just gotta wait, right,
Speaker 8: And I don't think I realized how easily that was
Speaker 8: going to come about. Didn't know how long it was
Speaker 8: going to take. So I enlisted in the Marine Reserves.
Speaker 8: So we did. Uh, there's my boot camp. Wow man,
Speaker 8: eighteen years old and about one hundred and sixty pounds.
Speaker 3: It looks like you just you just snuck over the boat.
Speaker 3: No bicky Bannie, big bicky Bonnie.
Speaker 5: Whatever.
Speaker 8: So I went to boot camp, which was thirteen weeks
Speaker 8: of hell, and then I went to the School of Infantry.
Speaker 8: And after that I came home and I went to school.
Speaker 8: I went to Western Connecticut in Danbury, Denbury, Connecticut.
Speaker 3: Did you go to Powis Island for boot camp?
Speaker 8: I did.
Speaker 9: That's where all marines east of the Mississippi go.
Speaker 3: All marines.
Speaker 6: What is this do?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 8: Then this doesert storm? Yeah, so I'm in college. I
Speaker 8: do a year of college, right, and uh Iraq invades
Speaker 8: the country of Kuwait in the summer of nineteen ninety
Speaker 8: and uh I get a phone call on a Thursday
Speaker 8: night and they said, pack your shit, take your car
Speaker 8: off the road, and fill out of will. We're leaving
Speaker 8: this week. Really, I think we had like four days notice.
Speaker 8: And they shipped us off to Pendleton in southern California.
Speaker 8: So we go out to Camp Pendleton and they hadn't reserved.
Speaker 8: They haven't activated reserves since the Korean War, and I
Speaker 8: think back then the president only had authorization to activate
Speaker 8: reserves for ninety days. So we go to California and
Speaker 8: they send us out into the desert to do operations
Speaker 8: and fire weapons round the clock for three weeks straight.
Speaker 8: And then they tell us all right, next week, we're
Speaker 8: gonna get on the ships in San Diego ships. Oh man,
Speaker 8: I'm into reserves. They can't do that to us, and
Speaker 8: that became the running joke. They can't do that to us.
Speaker 8: Were in Hawaii and they.
Speaker 6: Said it kind of fits pretty good in the FDNY exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they can't do it to the fireman. Yeah, So
Speaker 8: they activate us, they ship us off to Hawaii, and
Speaker 8: the next thing, you know, we say, all right, now
Speaker 8: we're going to the Philippines. Philippines, I gotta go back.
Speaker 8: I got class next semester, I gotta get back. And
Speaker 8: then when we leave the Philippines and so we're going
Speaker 8: to go to the Persian Golf and the President extended
Speaker 8: the ninety days to uh I think three hundred and
Speaker 8: sixty days, so we were in it for the long haul.
Speaker 8: So then we go to.
Speaker 6: Sally Baby. Yeah, he went to Camp Penalty. I remember him.
Speaker 6: He did the same thing. Yeah, you didn't.
Speaker 3: Buy yourself a wife in the Philippines like I did,
Speaker 3: did you?
Speaker 8: I did not.
Speaker 5: I did.
Speaker 8: So we get to the Persian Golf and they have
Speaker 8: us do a rehearsal amphibious landing in the country of Oman.
Speaker 8: So now we're like, this ship's real. And then we
Speaker 8: go to Kuwait and where we land in Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 8: we spend I guess I don't know, about a month
Speaker 8: or two in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. And those were
Speaker 8: the photographs that I put in there. That's a great
Speaker 8: photo of my fire team with our hum V behind us.
Speaker 8: I'm in the center. The guy to the right of
Speaker 8: me is currently the police commissioner in the Yonkers Police Department.
Speaker 6: No, yeah, you look kind of bad ass there.
Speaker 8: Yeah. We were hungry and tired and cold and wet.
Speaker 8: This is a an airfield that we had taken. We
Speaker 8: utilized Cobra helicopters to take out this airfield. And you
Speaker 8: can see that there's no roof on that hangar. That
Speaker 8: was an airplane hanger. And these are Russian T seventy
Speaker 8: two tanks like seventy era tanks that the Iraqis had used,
Speaker 8: and of course we destroyed quite happily.
Speaker 6: That was kind of like I remember that, I mean
Speaker 6: the war like they were kind of giving up. I mean,
Speaker 6: I know there was fighting and stuff obviously, but yeah,
Speaker 6: we took.
Speaker 9: A lot of surrenders.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, right, they were hungrier and tired, more tired
Speaker 8: than we were, and they were happy to surrender. That
Speaker 8: that last photo. It's hard to believe that we landed
Speaker 8: in Kuwait the same way, the same technology that they
Speaker 8: used in nineteen forty four World War Two. That's an
Speaker 8: amphibious craft where it's just packed with marines and they
Speaker 8: lower that ramp, they beat it, and then we.
Speaker 4: Just walk right off when they storm Normandy, right, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what did that feel like getting off that thing?
Speaker 8: Like actually bizarre, you know, to be on that craft
Speaker 8: and think that this is the same way they did
Speaker 8: it in Normandy. Of course we didn't have the same
Speaker 8: defense that we didn't meet with a machine gun fire
Speaker 8: when we got off of the thing, but it was
Speaker 8: the same technology and it's it's still utilized today, which
Speaker 8: is hard to believe.
Speaker 9: The guy that invented those things.
Speaker 8: Was actually a fisherman down in New Orleans, and I
Speaker 8: think his name was Higgins, and they call those things
Speaker 8: Higgins boats, and he invented those because they were like
Speaker 8: in the swamps and in the deltas and they were
Speaker 8: going for crawfish and shrimp and they're very low and
Speaker 8: they don't draw a lot of water, and then you
Speaker 8: can lower the ramp and you can drive vehicles off
Speaker 8: and truth.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean you guys went, well, you guys
Speaker 4: went all the way through and then they stopped you
Speaker 4: before you got into bed there, right.
Speaker 8: Well, some of the the army went into Iraq, the
Speaker 8: Marine Corps, we went into Kuwait. We liberated Kuwait City.
Speaker 8: Oh you went into Kuwait, that's right, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 8: Kuwait City.
Speaker 6: So then after that the oil things burning, right, yeah,
Speaker 6: it was one of those photographs there, those those oils,
Speaker 6: the oil wells were burning.
Speaker 8: All the time. That's the photo there that that's midday.
Speaker 9: You see the color of that sky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, how are the Kuwaiti people? Were they happy
Speaker 4: to see you guys?
Speaker 8: Oh? Absolutely? Yeah? Yeah, they met us with open arms.
Speaker 6: Yeah sure.
Speaker 3: How about the women were they throwing themselves out?
Speaker 8: You I didn't see any women. We stayed far away
Speaker 8: from that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you couldn't see. And they're all covering up.
Speaker 8: And there exactly you see the eyes on her on
Speaker 8: that one.
Speaker 3: Very hairy feet though I don't know, knuckles, hairy knuckles.
Speaker 3: I mean, so, how are you there for?
Speaker 8: We were only in Kuwait for I don't know a
Speaker 8: couple of weeks, and then they put us back on
Speaker 8: the ships and then they sent us to Somalia.
Speaker 6: Because you were doing it, Steven.
Speaker 8: We were doing it. We had to evacuate the US
Speaker 8: embassy in Somalia, and if you recall in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 8: two years later, they had the incident with the black
Speaker 8: Hawk down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my uncle was actually then ambassador in that embassy there.
Speaker 3: During the black Hawk down, he had to get his
Speaker 3: family out of there in a chaplain.
Speaker 8: Well why didn't he leave when we came? We were
Speaker 8: there in ninety one. We evacuated the embassy. Yeah, and
Speaker 8: then we left Somalia and we thought this is great,
Speaker 8: you know, we're finally going home. And a typhoon had
Speaker 8: come through the Indian Ocean and hit the country of Bangladesh,
Speaker 8: which is just east of India, and it killed one
Speaker 8: hundred and fifty thousand people.
Speaker 5: What.
Speaker 8: Oh wow, you don't hearing that one right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 8: that was summer of ninety one. That was probably one
Speaker 8: of the top ten deadliest typhoons in the history of
Speaker 8: the world. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we got set to uh doing the world typhoons.
Speaker 8: So we went there for humanitarian efforts and then uh
Speaker 8: we went to the Philippines again after that, and uh,
Speaker 8: Mount Pinatubo erupted the volcano in the Philippines.
Speaker 9: I said, man, we're never going home.
Speaker 6: I building, Yeah.
Speaker 8: So we got shirts made up that said Fifth Marine
Speaker 8: Saved the World tour like a concert shirt. It was nuts.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So then uh, we get home and we got home
Speaker 8: in July July. Third next day was fourth of July,
Speaker 8: which was appropriate. We had a nice party and I
Speaker 8: called my investigator and they said, you know, there's going
Speaker 8: to be a class next month in August. Good news
Speaker 8: and bad news. I go, what's the bad news? She goes,
Speaker 8: you you haven't had a medical in six months. They expire,
Speaker 8: so you can't go into the next class. I said, wait,
Speaker 8: hold on, hold that time out. I got called twice
Speaker 8: when I was twenty my list number I was at
Speaker 8: the top of the list. I got called twice when
Speaker 8: I was twenty and I had to defer because they said,
Speaker 8: you can't be a fireman at twenty one. We can
Speaker 8: give you a rifle and send you to a far
Speaker 8: off land. Yeah, but you can't be.
Speaker 9: A fireman.
Speaker 8: Exactly.
Speaker 9: It makes no sense, such an arbitrary rule.
Speaker 8: And then they had another class in April, and I
Speaker 8: missed that class because I was deployed. So of course
Speaker 8: I told my father. I said, yeah, they're not going
Speaker 8: to put me in the next class. They're gonna defer
Speaker 8: me again. And he said, no, no, that's bullshit, and down.
Speaker 3: This hold on son.
Speaker 8: So as luck would have it, when my father was
Speaker 8: a fireman, luck is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 9: When my father was a fireman in.
Speaker 8: Fifty engine, he had a captain named Carlos rivera ah,
Speaker 8: and it just so happened to my luck that he
Speaker 8: was the fire commissioner in nineteen ninety one. Wow. So
Speaker 8: my father made a phone call and lo and behold,
Speaker 8: they had an opening for a medical ex am. I
Speaker 8: got a new physical, and in August eleventh, I was
Speaker 8: in the fire.
Speaker 4: An amazing set of circumstances, very unusual set of circumstances.
Speaker 7: Wow, every time somebody mentions it, it kind of baffles me.
Speaker 4: So you going to Proby School, which has been a
Speaker 4: joke by then, was coming from Paris Island.
Speaker 3: You're like, yeah, it.
Speaker 8: Was eight weeks. It was a little bit of a joke.
Speaker 9: I actually was treating my squad.
Speaker 8: It made me a squad lader. I treated like they
Speaker 8: were a bunch of marines and they looked at me like,
Speaker 8: you know, what's wrong with this fucking guy? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Anybody any famous guys?
Speaker 8: You know famous? I don't know about famous, but I'll
Speaker 8: tell you what. There's only a few of them left.
Speaker 8: Doug Batterbury is and I think he's in three h three.
Speaker 9: I don't know if you guys know Doug. He's still around.
Speaker 8: You got Tommy kaneen and seventy five Engine Murph.
Speaker 9: And Rescue three.
Speaker 8: Uh. Yeah, that there's only a handful of guys left.
Speaker 3: How big was the class?
Speaker 9: Only one hundred.
Speaker 6: In that class?
Speaker 8: I don't remember that name. No.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you have high list? You were on my
Speaker 6: that was the eighty seven test, Yes, yes it was.
Speaker 6: What was your My number was seventeen fifty two. My
Speaker 6: list of one in ninety three.
Speaker 9: Four fourteen who he was.
Speaker 3: He was one and four around then.
Speaker 8: Bro, it wasn't falling around.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So being probed school and they call your name and
Speaker 3: they're like.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, thirty truck. Yeah look again. Yeah lucky. You know,
Speaker 8: some guys get lucky, you know, man, the old man. Yeah,
Speaker 8: you were just as young as you did when you
Speaker 8: were in the Thanks brother. So you probably don't believe me,
Speaker 8: But I didn't know where thirty Truck was because my
Speaker 8: father didn't talk to me in Provay school about where
Speaker 8: I was gonna go, where he wanted me to go.
Speaker 8: He just you know, let the cards fall. Of course,
Speaker 8: he made some phone calls and he wanted me to
Speaker 8: go to thirty Truck because he knew the chiefs in
Speaker 8: the sixteenth Battime. So you had Frank Griffin. He was
Speaker 8: the battalion commander. He was assault the old bastard. He
Speaker 8: survived the Jenning Street collapse. So up in the Bronx
Speaker 8: by eighty two engine there was a building that collapse
Speaker 8: and I think five or six men were trapped and
Speaker 8: he was one of the guys and he was burnt
Speaker 8: horribly on his backside. He survived that collapse. He was
Speaker 8: the one sixth Battalion commander when I got there. Then
Speaker 8: you had Nick Visconti, who later became a staff chief.
Speaker 8: My father worked with him in fifty Engine. They were
Speaker 8: ProBiS together. You had Bernie Cassidy and Tom Kennedy. Tom
Speaker 8: Kennedy became a deputy and he was one of the
Speaker 8: authors of Latice three.
Speaker 4: Right, So I walked in there. Did you say that
Speaker 4: to the guys like, listen, I don't even know worse
Speaker 4: you listen, I don't know what the fuck you guys, cubes,
Speaker 4: it's worse.
Speaker 8: So we're in provy school and they tell us all
Speaker 8: go to your firehouses. Were graduating tomorrow. You gotta go
Speaker 8: to your firehouse, bring a cake, knock on the door
Speaker 8: and introduce yourselves and get your group number. Blah blah blah. Right,
Speaker 8: So I go to the firehouse and they're not there.
Speaker 8: So I knock on the door and I wait, and
Speaker 8: I think I had my the guy I did the
Speaker 8: carpool with with me. So we waited for like an
Speaker 8: hour and a half and the companies didn't come back,
Speaker 8: so they must have been out of fire. So I said,
Speaker 8: you know, we got to go because we had to
Speaker 8: go to his firehouse, and I figured, I got to
Speaker 8: go home.
Speaker 9: You know, I'll go visit the firehouse tomorrow night. I
Speaker 9: wasn't thinking.
Speaker 8: So the next day we graduate from the academy and
Speaker 8: I go to the firehouse with my parents and the
Speaker 8: girl I was dating. The men were not happy.
Speaker 3: No cake.
Speaker 8: No, I had a cake, and then the men were
Speaker 8: not happy. So we get We get to the front door,
Speaker 8: and who answers the door? But the Captain Abe Hayman
Speaker 8: was my captain and he was He was a fireman
Speaker 8: and seventy one engine.
Speaker 9: A lieutenant in twenty eight truck.
Speaker 8: He worked in the war years, and he worked with
Speaker 8: my father, and him and my father embrace on a
Speaker 8: big hug and he invites us into the kitchen and
Speaker 8: we're sitting at the kitchen. I got my mom, the
Speaker 8: girl I'm dating, my dad, and all the guys start
Speaker 8: filtering into kitchen. And now, mind you, I'm twenty one
Speaker 8: years old and the captain is pouring me a cup
Speaker 8: of coffee. You want some milk and cream with that?
Speaker 9: The men were not happy.
Speaker 8: We had no I didn't know.
Speaker 9: They were very upset.
Speaker 3: They don't forget that.
Speaker 8: They just a yeah, yeah, So I got my group number,
Speaker 8: I left the firehouse, and I paid dearly for it
Speaker 8: for the next back in the street. Exactly so. I
Speaker 8: remember one of my first runs. I don't know if
Speaker 8: it was the first run or the second run.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 9: A grade, a first grade class.
Speaker 8: Had come to the firehouse school kids, and one of
Speaker 8: the guys says, hey, Proby, I want you to show
Speaker 8: them the rig, open every compartment and show them every tool.
Speaker 8: It'll help you, you know, be familiar with the rig,
Speaker 8: and it'll bore the ship out of them and they'll leave.
Speaker 8: So the kids we get a run. I usher the
Speaker 8: kids out of the firehouse.
Speaker 6: Let's go.
Speaker 8: You gotta go, you gotta go. We have a run.
Speaker 8: We got a report of fire. I run back. I
Speaker 8: close the compartments in the rig, I get dressed, I
Speaker 8: jump on a rig, and we tear out of the firehouse.
Speaker 8: We make the left onto Lennox Avenue, and the entire
Speaker 8: contents of the rear compartment empties.
Speaker 6: Out onto.
Speaker 3: The beat goes on.
Speaker 8: Baby. Nothing like starting off your first day.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so we get back to quarters.
Speaker 8: This is what this is what not to do. Sure,
Speaker 8: you close the compartments, close your first door.
Speaker 6: I knew you were going to say that.
Speaker 8: So we get back to the firehouse and they send
Speaker 8: me around the corner with a radio, and I was
Speaker 8: basically begging and borrowing to purchase all the tools that
Speaker 8: spilled onto the avenue from.
Speaker 9: The locals in the neighborhood.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I think I spent my first Yeah.
Speaker 6: So did any of the Obviously some of the guys
Speaker 6: there besides the captain that knew your dad, right, did
Speaker 6: they Yeah?
Speaker 8: Military, right, So my father knew all four of the officers,
Speaker 8: Captain Hayman, he was the captain at the time. Then
Speaker 8: you had Jack McDonald is a photograph with me and
Speaker 8: Jack when I was getting my thirty patch. Jack was
Speaker 8: a fireman a twenty eight truck. He did a life
Speaker 8: saving rope rescue. He got a Gordon Bennett for it.
Speaker 8: He wound up becoming a battalion chief and the president
Speaker 8: of the union. He was a great instructor, great fire officer,
Speaker 8: and he was a big mentor to me at the
Speaker 8: time I was there. And then you had Gary Wright,
Speaker 8: he was a lieutenant. He was also a fireman in
Speaker 8: twenty eight. And Kenny O'Brien was a fireman a fifty
Speaker 8: six truck. So these guys rolled from the neighborhood of
Speaker 8: the Bronx. My father knew them all, and they knew
Speaker 8: their job. They knew it well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, did you feel like they were a little tougher
Speaker 6: just because they knew you were you know, your dad
Speaker 6: and they knew that you were in the military, just
Speaker 6: not you know, you know what I'm saying in a
Speaker 6: good way. Tough in a good way at that point, right,
Speaker 6: you could.
Speaker 9: Say that I was very intimidated. You had guys.
Speaker 8: Everybody there was twice my age. You had guys there
Speaker 8: that had children that were my age. Wow.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So it was intimidating. Nick.
Speaker 8: I remember he was on vacation and I think the
Speaker 8: first time I saw him, we were out on a
Speaker 8: run and he drove past the rig and he screamed
Speaker 8: at me, I got a babysit you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: He drilled us hard. He he took that rig out
Speaker 8: every single tour, rain or shine.
Speaker 9: He drilled with us.
Speaker 8: He taught us our trade and made sure we knew
Speaker 8: what we were doing and where we were going.
Speaker 3: You ever run into a guy in your career that
Speaker 3: loved the job as much as him?
Speaker 8: No, I listened. I met a lot of guys and
Speaker 8: runs through his veins. Bro. He's the type of guy
Speaker 8: you could go to Chicago, Boston, Detroit and drop his
Speaker 8: name and guys.
Speaker 3: Going everybody, I know where you go.
Speaker 8: It's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: The last year, Hey, you know, Nick, it's unbelievable. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Who else do you think that that you, uh, you know,
Speaker 6: took took you under their wing kind of thing, you
Speaker 6: know what I mean? Who else did you feel like?
Speaker 6: There was guys a little younger? And how much time
Speaker 6: did Nick have at that time? Oh, Keith, I mean
Speaker 6: how much.
Speaker 8: I'd tell you he probably only had like twelve to
Speaker 8: fifteen years.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but he acted like he was the senior man.
Speaker 8: He wasn't the senior man, but he acted like he was.
Speaker 6: Yeah, was that younger guys that you felt like you
Speaker 6: like you were you the ones?
Speaker 8: Uh? But they put my class in and then four
Speaker 8: weeks later they put another class in. So four weeks
Speaker 8: after I graduated, Craig Sweet came to the firehouse. So
Speaker 8: we were both progised to guys and we were there
Speaker 8: together for six years before another probe became. Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so what about the middle of the road guys,
Speaker 4: Any guys in the middle of the row like that's
Speaker 4: what we were saying that you kind of.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean there were so many. Al Grogan is
Speaker 8: one of the photographs that I'm going to show you. Uh.
Speaker 8: Al was a great mentor.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 8: He was a wonderful fireman, a family man. Everything about him,
Speaker 8: I say, is with the utmost of respect. And then
Speaker 8: lo and behold, twenty five years later, his kid gets
Speaker 8: on the job and he sends him to twenty three
Speaker 8: truck and uh, one of the proudest moments of my career.
Speaker 8: I love that man, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So you know, here's a kid that he he trained
Speaker 8: and broke in and now his.
Speaker 6: Uh that trust trust you trust you enough to do
Speaker 6: that to his Yeah, I.
Speaker 9: Mean, well, no, no greater respect.
Speaker 4: Yeahd t any pictures of the Ferry truck that we've
Speaker 4: been talking that you you know you're not paying attention.
Speaker 5: I'm paying attention, said later, if you want to.
Speaker 6: Go, I'll talk about that, Greg. Greg if I remember right,
Speaker 6: because we had Craig he was he was in the military,
Speaker 6: right or his dad was.
Speaker 8: I think his father was in the Military's fallow was
Speaker 8: in twenty eight truck. Highly respected man. So here's a photo.
Speaker 8: This is a pre bunker gear. So we're wearing rubber
Speaker 8: boots and we wore our harnesses right over our dungarees.
Speaker 8: And that's myself, and then next to me is Anthony Shallow.
Speaker 8: I was in his groups. Then Kenny Harring, two men
Speaker 8: that I really looked up to and respected. They trained me,
Speaker 8: worked with me all the time. Then nicolelo and Al
Speaker 8: Mullinari is the last one. I think Al still on
Speaker 8: the job. Wow. I don't know if you know any
Speaker 8: of those guys.
Speaker 5: We have just a picture of the old school rig
Speaker 5: back that was.
Speaker 8: Our first rig that was a mac And I think
Speaker 8: the striking thing about this photograph if you look in
Speaker 8: the background, every single one of those buildings is vacant.
Speaker 3: I look at it that they're all.
Speaker 5: Bricked up man in the background, a bunch of tools
Speaker 5: on the floor there. I do.
Speaker 8: Guys running off with Elliott must have been working state.
Speaker 6: Did you feel like most of the buildings were like
Speaker 6: that in the in the area when you got there,
Speaker 6: not most of.
Speaker 8: Them were vacant. I think we probably had one hundred
Speaker 8: and fifty vacant buildings in our first two area, but
Speaker 8: predominantly tenements, then brownstones and projects. Yeah, so I got
Speaker 8: a good mix of building construction and types.
Speaker 9: Yeah, right, And then my.
Speaker 8: Second day tour, we caught a job. My first day,
Speaker 8: you caught a job on your first d My first day,
Speaker 8: we caught a job. So this is before they had
Speaker 8: the fast truck. There was no such thing as a
Speaker 8: fast truck. So if you were third due, you got
Speaker 8: put to work. So we get there third due, and
Speaker 8: they sent us to the upper floors. We did searches,
Speaker 8: and then I think we went down to the fire
Speaker 8: apartment to pull ceilings. But we would go to fires
Speaker 8: all the way south to one hundred and fifteenth Street
Speaker 8: and get put to work where twenty six truck is,
Speaker 8: and we'd go to forty three truck and forty truck
Speaker 8: and twenty three truck, thirty four truck, twenty eight truck,
Speaker 8: we'd go to the Bronx fifty five truck. We'd be
Speaker 8: third doe and we get put to work. And then
Speaker 8: they invented the fast truck and that ended that. So
Speaker 8: then you were third duo. You were standing in the street,
Speaker 8: which we didn't appreciate. So yeah, the first day tour,
Speaker 8: we caught a job. My second day tour, we catch
Speaker 8: another job and twenty eight truck is out, so it's
Speaker 8: one of their boxes. We get in first two and
Speaker 8: sixty nine had the line and I think it was
Speaker 8: up on one hundred and forty first Street and seven
Speaker 8: to eighth Avenue and we get into the apartment and
Speaker 8: the officer hands me a dead kid. We go out
Speaker 8: in the hallway. I'm doing CPR. The kid was like
Speaker 8: three years old, and then the boss came out with
Speaker 8: his brother. It was like five years old. So that
Speaker 8: was my second day in the job. Two dead kids. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I don't even walk on you. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 8: crazy way to start your career. And then I came
Speaker 8: home and told my father about that, and he says, well,
Speaker 8: I guess if you're not going to quit after this,
Speaker 8: you're not going.
Speaker 3: To quit, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Basically get used to seeing that.
Speaker 5: I got a class.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the class too, medal you got while
Speaker 3: you're in I don't.
Speaker 8: Have any good pictures of that fire. That fire was
Speaker 8: in a project.
Speaker 3: How long we are by them?
Speaker 9: Maybe five six years?
Speaker 8: Oh? All right. We were at a box and we
Speaker 8: were taking up and we were backing out of the
Speaker 8: block because of double parked cars, and civilian pointed up
Speaker 8: and said, ye know fire mean, look, there's a fire.
Speaker 8: So we got into the building. Another situation where twenty
Speaker 8: eight truck I think should have been first due on
Speaker 8: a ticket, but we wound up getting in first. And
Speaker 8: the show for John Barry crackerjack fireman, excellent fireman. He
Speaker 8: says to me, I think the stick is going to
Speaker 8: reach that window. It was fire was on the eighth floor.
Speaker 8: So he put the rig up onto the sidewalk and
Speaker 8: he was able to get the larial straight up to
Speaker 8: the eighth floor. And I had the ov so I
Speaker 8: went up. I got to the windows and the company
Speaker 8: was in the public hall waiting for a line, and
Speaker 8: I asked the chief. I said, you want me to
Speaker 8: take these windows? He said, no, don't take the windows yet.
Speaker 8: Hold up.
Speaker 9: So I just opened the window.
Speaker 8: I slipped in and there was a woman unconscious on
Speaker 8: the floor right undneath the window.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 8: So I took her back out onto the tip of
Speaker 8: the aerial and uh, because that was the only room
Speaker 8: that wasn't on fire, the one we put the aerial too,
Speaker 8: and I held her on the tip of the aerial.
Speaker 9: She was unconscious, so there was no way I was.
Speaker 8: Carrying her down.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no way going down.
Speaker 8: I don't think.
Speaker 9: I don't think I could have carried a Teddy Bear
Speaker 9: down that thing.
Speaker 3: You would have taken the express route down.
Speaker 6: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So I just held her on the tip of
Speaker 8: the aerial and then uh, after the brothers put the
Speaker 8: fire out, we went back into the window and then
Speaker 8: took her in the interior. She made it. She made it.
Speaker 9: I think she was seventy years old. Yeah she survived.
Speaker 6: Yeah, tump old bird.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Those women, they went to more fires than I did.
Speaker 6: You would get there, open up the door, the woman
Speaker 6: would be like, yeah, it's two rooms in the back
Speaker 6: on the Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah exactly. And I got my face piece on taking
Speaker 8: it down that area.
Speaker 3: That will be like putting on a Santa clous.
Speaker 8: It wouldn't have been pretty.
Speaker 6: I have to say this, So I think I've said
Speaker 6: this before on the podcast. So I got on May
Speaker 6: ninety three and I was just like throwing myself into
Speaker 6: the job.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: I loved the whole thing. Fire is right. Wasn't buffy
Speaker 6: about the rig and what year and the engine and
Speaker 6: all this other bullshit. I just wanted to know who
Speaker 6: was working, right. I just wanted to learn. And I
Speaker 6: remember I say this. I remember sitting in the watch
Speaker 6: even I would obviously always take the watch. Whoever had
Speaker 6: the senior guy was I would. When I was working,
Speaker 6: I would take the watch and I would listen to
Speaker 6: the radio and it would scan, right, obviously be on Queens,
Speaker 6: but if they weren't talking on Queens, it would scan
Speaker 6: and I would in Manhattan boop box one two four seven,
Speaker 6: you know box box one, four three five, right, you know,
Speaker 6: all hands going to work, you know, and then it
Speaker 6: would come over over the bitch box, you know, second
Speaker 6: alarm in the Borough of Manhattan, you know fourteen, you
Speaker 6: know one hundred and thirty eighth Street and sixth Avenue.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: It was just over and over and over to like ridiculousness.
Speaker 6: And I would look at the map. We had the
Speaker 6: map with all the firehouses, right yeah, and I would
Speaker 6: like you just made me think about this before twenty
Speaker 6: eight thirty.
Speaker 8: Twenty three, very close together.
Speaker 6: I mean, when you think about you guys had to
Speaker 6: be running in like we ran in with the same companies,
Speaker 6: but not always you guys are running in with the
Speaker 6: same If you stayed in your groups, you were probably
Speaker 6: seeing the same guys as multiple times. Twenty four right,
Speaker 6: and it was just like this incredible And I remember
Speaker 6: saying like after like I think I was there probably
Speaker 6: like three years. I was in one seventeen in Astoria,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, I gotta start, I gotta start thinking,
Speaker 6: you know, I wanted to do more work, you know,
Speaker 6: and I can move thirty. I put in for thirty
Speaker 6: three truck. I went to go see the captain. But
Speaker 6: I remember thinking like that that was incredible, how and
Speaker 6: that that's in ninety one two three, right, I mean,
Speaker 6: And I went off for a few years. You know.
Speaker 6: It started obviously, like everybody you know, started dying down.
Speaker 6: But I remember remember in.
Speaker 8: Nineteen ninety one forty truck was number one in the
Speaker 8: city for osws, which one forty truck there were number
Speaker 8: one in the city and we ran in with them
Speaker 8: all time.
Speaker 6: So they were one hundred and.
Speaker 8: Twenty fifth Street. There were three firehouses one hundred and
Speaker 8: twenty fifth Street. You had thirty five or fourteen thirty
Speaker 8: six engine were by themselves.
Speaker 9: They got closed and O three.
Speaker 3: They were back to around the corner from each other,
Speaker 3: right around the court.
Speaker 8: They're two hundred and fifty feet away from each other,
Speaker 8: right and then on the west side of twenty fifth Street,
Speaker 8: you had thirty seven and forty and uh, we were
Speaker 8: one hundred and thirty third Street. Eighty and twenty three
Speaker 8: is one hundred and thirty ninth Street, sixty nine twenty eight,
Speaker 8: one hundred and forty third Street. These firehouses are right
Speaker 8: on top of each other, and Manhattan at the top
Speaker 8: of the island is only a mile wide.
Speaker 3: Now, how would it were they like?
Speaker 4: Because I know the Bronx is like, it's your whatever
Speaker 4: you are on the ticket, that's what you do. Brooklyn
Speaker 4: is like, I get there, I first due what was
Speaker 4: it like up there?
Speaker 8: And so we were gentlemen. If if we were first
Speaker 8: doing the ticket, excuse me, If we were second doing
Speaker 8: the ticket and we got in and the first two
Speaker 8: company was nowhere in sight, then we would take it.
Speaker 8: But if we saw them coming, we're not gonna cut
Speaker 8: them off. We're gonna wait, let them in the block.
Speaker 8: And if we had any details on the rig from Brooklyn,
Speaker 8: we would drive even slower because you knew that they
Speaker 8: were going crazy in the back of the rig.
Speaker 3: What the fuck you guys doing?
Speaker 6: But you know what, And again, if you if you're
Speaker 6: working so closely with these companies. Yeah, you know two
Speaker 6: ninety one oh three, you know, to get to one
Speaker 6: oh seven, it's it's like thirty blocks, forty blocks, Like
Speaker 6: it's some ridiculous thing.
Speaker 8: We would go five blocks in any direction. That's when
Speaker 8: you weren't first do.
Speaker 6: Anymore, right, that's crazy, So you would think that. That's
Speaker 6: why I think that comes from, even in the Bronx
Speaker 6: is it's you're so close, right that it would be
Speaker 6: stupid to try and screw somebody out of something just
Speaker 6: because this time out.
Speaker 4: Bro, When I was in too ten, here's two ten,
Speaker 4: here's two nine to one on two, they were close, bro,
Speaker 4: and they would come down myrtle l abe, one of
Speaker 4: the first ones I ever had. I was leaning.
Speaker 3: Back like this because I thought it was going to
Speaker 3: be a crash.
Speaker 6: Holy oh, they're a little closer. They're a little closer
Speaker 6: over there.
Speaker 8: Different worlds, yeah, Yeah, it's interesting how different areas of
Speaker 8: the city act so differently.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Different.
Speaker 4: When you talk to the guys who were there for
Speaker 4: a while when you got there, what did they say,
Speaker 4: It was like like during the fucking war years over.
Speaker 8: There, man, they would tell stories that were unbelievable, right, yeah, unbelieva.
Speaker 6: Meanwhile, you think you're going to fight like you and
Speaker 6: you will go, oh yeah, right, you like holy shit,
Speaker 6: Like it's got to be comparable.
Speaker 8: I can't imagine its busier than the imagine, right. No,
Speaker 8: but it was because these guys knew their job.
Speaker 9: And they knew it well.
Speaker 4: I listened to the old audio and I laughed myself.
Speaker 4: Sterical man like his companies going all over the place.
Speaker 4: No available companies, you know, send me what you got.
Speaker 3: My father told me.
Speaker 8: My father told me the night Martin Luther, doctor Martin
Speaker 8: Luther King was assassinated, there was like thirteen old Hands
Speaker 8: or greater fires in the sixteenth Battalion. And he told
Speaker 8: me every fire company that came into Manhattan and operated
Speaker 8: in the sixteenth Battalion.
Speaker 9: That night got a unit citation.
Speaker 8: Wow, thirteen old hands fires. I mean there must have
Speaker 8: been companies from all over the city getting in first two.
Speaker 6: Think about I was just going to say that too.
Speaker 6: Think about a second or third alarm by thirty truck. Yeah,
Speaker 6: every company in the whole north of Manhattan.
Speaker 8: Is there, correct, right? I mean, so now you've got
Speaker 8: relocators everywhere.
Speaker 6: Your backfill and everything whatever you can backfill as quick
Speaker 6: as possible. You're not sending somebody from South Queen. I
Speaker 6: mean you can right, It's going to take them for
Speaker 6: three hours to get that.
Speaker 8: And I remember several occasions where we would come back
Speaker 8: to quarters after a job and there would be a
Speaker 8: pile of shoes on the apparatus floor because the relocators
Speaker 8: courted job. That was great. Yeah, good night.
Speaker 3: What's the most jobs you ever went to? Thirty in
Speaker 3: a tour?
Speaker 8: I remember more than one occasion where we went to
Speaker 8: three or four jobs in a night. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 8: photograph there, the black and white photo. I think that
Speaker 8: was in the morning. It was, as we affectionately called it,
Speaker 8: a Harlem sunrise, and that was probably a three job
Speaker 8: night there. So on the left there is Ali Pasha.
Speaker 8: He did like ten or twelve years in the engine
Speaker 8: and then went across the Florida truck and did another
Speaker 8: twelve years in the truck. Wow. Then I mentioned Al Grogan,
Speaker 8: his son is in twenty three truck. Now I'm in
Speaker 8: the center. Then you got Jimmy Curran and Craig Thweet.
Speaker 8: Jimmy Curran was the strongest man I ever met in
Speaker 8: my life. Not just the strongest fireman, the strongest man.
Speaker 8: We used to wrestle around with him and see if
Speaker 8: we could pin him to the kitchen table, and he
Speaker 8: would throw four of us off of him without effort.
Speaker 5: Yeah, get away from me.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I saw him carry people under one arm and climb
Speaker 9: up a ladder and down a ladder like it.
Speaker 8: Was a child.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 3: He a big guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he was a big dude. It was a big
Speaker 8: really strong, great fireman. And then next to him is
Speaker 8: Craig Tweet. We came on together. It was four weeks
Speaker 8: after me and he eventually uh went to Brooklyn. I
Speaker 8: think he went to one thirteen and then he got
Speaker 8: himself into Rescue three and retired out of Rescue three. Right,
Speaker 8: and his father was in twenty eight truck his.
Speaker 6: Most day of rufe ol prescy. He's got that picture
Speaker 6: of his dad hanging from the rope like.
Speaker 8: Correct, correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, goode because on my list right here it says
Speaker 4: formed a life saving rope. Yeah, So go through it,
Speaker 4: don't leave anything out, give me all the details out,
Speaker 4: all of them.
Speaker 8: That previous picture on my right is Al Grogan, on
Speaker 8: my left is Jimmy Current. Both of those guys were
Speaker 8: working and I remember it very vividly because it was
Speaker 8: the first night that we had bunker gear, so it
Speaker 8: must have been the fall of ninety four, and it
Speaker 8: was our second job of the night. It was a
Speaker 8: middle of the night and once again we catch a
Speaker 8: job and it's not our first do area. So we
Speaker 8: roll in. It's forty trucks area, but forty's out, they're
Speaker 8: out something else, so thirty seven's got the line. We
Speaker 8: pull up.
Speaker 9: There's people all over this building.
Speaker 8: I fire on two floors and the fire escapes are
Speaker 8: filled with people.
Speaker 9: So Jimmy Kurrn was the chauffeur. He put me up
Speaker 9: to the roof.
Speaker 8: I had the roof position. I went up the aeriel
Speaker 8: and he said to me, I'm gonna take the aerial
Speaker 8: away because I got to get these people. I said, okay,
Speaker 8: And I remember getting up on the roof and twenty
Speaker 8: six truck was up there with me. So we took
Speaker 8: the bulkhead, we took the skylight, and in the rear
Speaker 8: of the building there was a shaft. It was probably
Speaker 8: eight foot by eight foot and it was enclosed, so
Speaker 8: there was no way to get into that shaft with
Speaker 8: a portable ladder.
Speaker 9: There was no access from the rear and I.
Speaker 8: Peer over the side and fire is on two floors
Speaker 8: in the front of the building. Now I'm in the
Speaker 8: middle towards the rear, and there's a woman on the
Speaker 8: floor above and smoke is chugging out of the window
Speaker 8: below her and over her head as an elderly woman.
Speaker 8: I said, all right, there's only one way to get her.
Speaker 6: We gotta go.
Speaker 8: So I told radar to the officer and the inside
Speaker 8: team let them know where she was, and twenty six
Speaker 8: truck hooked me up and lowered me into that shaft. Yeah,
Speaker 8: it was a little nutty because when I got to
Speaker 8: the window, she wasn't there anymore. I said, she either
Speaker 8: jumped or now she's unconscious, right, So I maneuvering myself
Speaker 8: so that I could get into the window. I got
Speaker 8: into the window, I unclipped myself from the life saving
Speaker 8: rope and she was there on the floor unconscious.
Speaker 6: No way.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I picked her up, and then I said,
Speaker 8: how the hell am I going to get her out
Speaker 8: of this apartment? Because there's no way I can pick
Speaker 8: her up and go back out that window. Put the
Speaker 8: rope back on myself. So fortunately the inside team had
Speaker 8: made their way into that room at that moment, and
Speaker 8: we were able to take get drag her out and
Speaker 8: carry her out through the interior to building. So I
Speaker 8: was very fortunate that it was successful and then we
Speaker 8: were able to save a life. But she made it too.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And then Jimmy Curran, the guy that was the chauffeur.
Speaker 8: I think he grabbed like three people at that job,
Speaker 8: and uh he.
Speaker 9: Went to Metal Day that year. He got two separate
Speaker 9: metals for two separate fires.
Speaker 8: It was insane. And then one the one grab he made,
Speaker 8: he went into the window and there was an unconscious
Speaker 8: guy on a wheelchair. So he picks the guy up,
Speaker 8: throws the wheelchair, and goes back out the window onto
Speaker 8: the aerial ladder and he's taking her down the taking
Speaker 8: the guy down the aerial and one of his frigging
Speaker 8: legs falls off. He's got prosthetic legs, so everybody in
Speaker 8: the street is screaming his legs off. Crazy shit.
Speaker 3: Did you get a medal for that day?
Speaker 8: I did not get a medal. We got a unit.
Speaker 9: Citation really take the unit. I think Jimmy.
Speaker 8: Might have gotten a metal because he grabbed like two
Speaker 8: or three people and we got a unit citation. Yeah,
Speaker 8: that was that was.
Speaker 3: Great going on a rope.
Speaker 8: Well I didn't take her out on a rope, so
Speaker 8: that's probably why the chief didn't.
Speaker 3: Not what you you went over the side on it.
Speaker 6: You listen, you're you're comparing that now, right right, you
Speaker 6: take somebody off a ladder. I see it online all
Speaker 6: the time. Oh, nice grab. I'm like, dude, that's not
Speaker 6: a grab. Like I taking somebody out of a window.
Speaker 6: It's not a grab. Right, Well, if they're unconscious, it
Speaker 6: is talking about treking a woman out from.
Speaker 8: I agree, I agree. That's a removal. That's a removal, right.
Speaker 8: You don't get medals for that pretty exposure.
Speaker 6: Well, this is what I'm saying. Nowadays, things are, you know,
Speaker 6: a little bit different. You know, back then there were
Speaker 6: guys doing you were just doing your job, you know
Speaker 6: what I mean, the cheap would Did.
Speaker 3: You get the Al sasset for that one?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 8: That was when I was in four truck. I got
Speaker 8: the Al Sassin medal?
Speaker 3: Did I skip ahead? Oh yeah, I'm sorry?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, coops, there's I'm falling all over the place.
Speaker 8: I don't know, I don't know. Full out of his pocket.
Speaker 8: If you throw a couple of those pictures up.
Speaker 9: I'll talk about some of the pictures.
Speaker 3: He put some of those pictures up.
Speaker 5: Oh, are we done with thirty Truck or no?
Speaker 8: Uh no, there's a couple of pictures at thirty up there.
Speaker 8: That was when I got my front piece for thirty
Speaker 8: got off probation. That was Jack McDonald. He uh he
Speaker 8: was one of my lieutenants. Like I said, he was
Speaker 8: a fireman in twenty eight where he got the Gordon
Speaker 8: Bennett for a life saving rope.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 9: So there were a lot of life saving ropes in
Speaker 9: Harlem and they still are.
Speaker 6: I think I love that shirt this.
Speaker 8: Past metal day, uh the polo two guys from twenty
Speaker 8: eight Truck got a medal, a guy from Squad forty one. Yeah,
Speaker 8: there's life saving ropes done on a regular basis in
Speaker 8: the sixteenth to time. I think just because of the
Speaker 8: types of buildings and it's just just the way it
Speaker 8: worked out.
Speaker 6: Every year there was always one. And I understand the
Speaker 6: same thing, like how has that happened? Crazy buildings? But again,
Speaker 6: we don't have really enclosed chafts in a lot of
Speaker 6: areas in the city, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 6: that's like you said, that's a perfect scenario that people
Speaker 6: can't go anywhere. You can't get a lot of there,
Speaker 6: you can't get the aerial there.
Speaker 8: There's a photo of a group of us on a
Speaker 8: rooftop there.
Speaker 9: If you can find that guns.
Speaker 5: Uh did I show to you before?
Speaker 8: I don't think you brought it up yet? Do it?
Speaker 8: Do we?
Speaker 5: When we went over it, you didn't see it right?
Speaker 8: No, earlier I saw it, but you haven't shown it yet.
Speaker 9: Since we're on.
Speaker 8: The rooftop. Rooftop the whole company standing up on the
Speaker 8: roof proby picture because.
Speaker 3: You can find it, don't working. I mean, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: go and look at it. I find it. No, you
Speaker 3: did it.
Speaker 5: You can't give me the pressure some little bit.
Speaker 8: So that's me on the left.
Speaker 9: Then the next guy is Bruce Garcia.
Speaker 8: Bruce Garcia did a life saving rope in probably ninety
Speaker 8: one or ninety two.
Speaker 9: I had just got into the firehouse. He went to
Speaker 9: the rear of the building.
Speaker 8: He sees a guy hanging out the window on the
Speaker 8: top floor, and the buildings don't connect in the rear,
Speaker 8: so he goes to the front and I guess because
Speaker 8: it was nighttime and because of the smoke condition, he
Speaker 8: didn't see there was a fence in between the two roofs.
Speaker 8: There was no way for him to get from one
Speaker 8: roof to the other for the exposure. So he put
Speaker 8: his fingers in the chain link fence and swung his
Speaker 8: body six stories above the street around that fence to
Speaker 8: get over to the other roof with a life saving
Speaker 8: rope across his shoulder. Then he ran to the back,
Speaker 8: tied off to a substantial object, and then the second
Speaker 8: du roof went up on the area, lowered him and
Speaker 8: he did a roof rope rescue. Wow. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 6: His son was asking Eve how he did it. Did
Speaker 6: you ask him how he gets his balls in his pants?
Speaker 6: A lot of big one at a time, I don't know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, a lot of courage. His son went to seventy
Speaker 8: one engine. That's Bruce Garcia, he's deceased. Then the next
Speaker 8: guy is John Barry. I mentioned him. John was a
Speaker 8: great fireman. He was always at the right place at
Speaker 8: the right time. The center guy, that was John Murray.
Speaker 8: He was the senior man when I got to the firehouse.
Speaker 8: He probably had twenty five or so years and you
Speaker 8: could see he doesn't even have a coat. And the
Speaker 8: two guys to my left there, they don't even have
Speaker 8: rubber boots on, so a lot of guys wore combat
Speaker 8: boots back then. It was much quicker. If you had
Speaker 8: the ov or the roof, you could get up an
Speaker 8: aerial quicker. You could get into a window quick, you
Speaker 8: could go up a fire escape. And guys didn't wear
Speaker 8: the rubber boots unless they were on the inside. The
Speaker 8: boss there is Gary Wright. I mentioned him earlier. He
Speaker 8: was a lieutenant and thirty, but he was a fireman
Speaker 8: in twenty eight so he knew the buildings, he knew
Speaker 8: the area, he knew the guys. He was a great,
Speaker 8: great fire officer. I think when he was a fireman
Speaker 8: they called him the squirrel because he could climb anything.
Speaker 5: I like it.
Speaker 9: And then Craig three is the last one.
Speaker 8: He's the one that ended up in Rescue three and
Speaker 8: we came about four weeks apart.
Speaker 9: That was one of our first multiples.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what we named from the multiple.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that was a good job.
Speaker 5: I got one more Proby pick of you.
Speaker 8: So this is I was a drill instructor at Proby School.
Speaker 8: The Fight Department has hundreds of guys that served in
Speaker 8: the Marine Corps. We had a Marine Corps Association and
Speaker 8: we get together every year. The Marine Corps birthday is
Speaker 8: the tenth of November and we celebrate it as if
Speaker 8: it's our own. And I got to meet a lot
Speaker 8: of great guys on the job through the Marine Corps
Speaker 8: session that I never would have met otherwise. Joe backert
Speaker 8: two thirty six. And the guy that got me into
Speaker 8: the drill instructor program was a guy named Joe Higgins
Speaker 8: from one to eleven. I think you heard of him. Yeah,
Speaker 8: So Joe and Bobby were a drill instructor and they
Speaker 8: asked me to come out and we ran the place
Speaker 8: like a bunch of marines and that was That was
Speaker 8: a fun experience. I did that for like two years.
Speaker 8: Make any of the kids ship their pants, No, we
Speaker 8: broke their balls, but we always try to.
Speaker 9: Teach them a lesson.
Speaker 3: You look like Joe Hagen's with the hacktab.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well he did, Haigin said when he was on
Speaker 6: the show. He's still one of my favorite shows actually,
Speaker 6: but he said how he loved Like again, you never know,
Speaker 6: you think it's gonna it's not for me, right whatever,
Speaker 6: you know, and it all of a sudden you come
Speaker 6: out of this thing two years later, and it's like,
Speaker 6: you know, a little in a thirty year Korea or whatever. Right,
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, there's this little thing that you
Speaker 6: could look back on and you say, yourself, man, that
Speaker 6: was a pretty good time. Like I'm glad I did that.
Speaker 6: You know, whatever it is, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: You get a little gig here or there, and you think, ah, man,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna be out of going the fires and ship,
Speaker 6: you know, But it works out good.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I had a lot of fun. I was there
Speaker 8: twelve years, and I was single the whole time.
Speaker 6: He had some panties going at him, no doubt.
Speaker 8: So fast forward to two thousand and one. I'm making
Speaker 8: a grab at a window and I'm holding onto the
Speaker 8: child guard. I'm at the tip of the portable. I'm
Speaker 8: in the third floor.
Speaker 9: I'm opening the window the child guard, let's go.
Speaker 8: I fall off the ladder. So I broke two bones
Speaker 8: in my leg. I tore a couple of ligaments. I
Speaker 8: tore my hamstring, I tore my calf, I broke three ribs.
Speaker 8: Long story short. I was at a commission out of
Speaker 8: work for a year, like duty medically for a year,
Speaker 8: and then I signed up to drive the one to
Speaker 8: six battalion for a year. And one of my best friends,
Speaker 8: Paul Conrad, he's a deputy chief. Now. We grew up together.
Speaker 8: We've known each other since we're eight years old. We
Speaker 8: got on a fire department. There's Paul there with my
Speaker 8: beautiful wife in the center. Paul's a deputy chief. Now.
Speaker 8: Paul says to me, what are you doing every day?
Speaker 8: I said, I'm going to physical therapy.
Speaker 9: I'm trying to fix my leg, and I'm trying to.
Speaker 8: Get back to work.
Speaker 9: He goes, well, why don't you come to study.
Speaker 8: Group with us.
Speaker 9: We meet once a week.
Speaker 8: You know, we drink some beers, we'll throw some questions
Speaker 8: each other, and we'll study. I said, all right, get
Speaker 8: me out of the house. So thanks to Paul and
Speaker 8: the study group, we we persevered and I got promoted
Speaker 8: to lieutenant. Look at that, Yeah, very fortunate.
Speaker 3: So yeah, you wind up on your feet.
Speaker 9: Yeah, my feet hurt from landing on him.
Speaker 8: So I go down to Midtown and Tom Jensen is
Speaker 8: the third division commander.
Speaker 9: So I call him up and I go to visit him.
Speaker 8: I say, Chief, you know, I put on my class
Speaker 8: as go to tell him who I am, and then
Speaker 8: I'm signed to his division. He goes, I know who
Speaker 8: you are. He was a fireman in thirty truck. Now
Speaker 8: he's the third division commander.
Speaker 6: How so you know if you came from thirty and
Speaker 6: now you know you got a guy from thirty bouncing
Speaker 6: around like what else.
Speaker 8: Could Yes, that's how it works. That's how it works,
Speaker 8: you know. I mean he didn't give me a list number,
Speaker 8: but he took care of me. So I was working
Speaker 8: in a fifty four engine. I think I was doing
Speaker 8: a vacation and a guy by the name of Bill
Speaker 8: Carlson was in for truck. You may have heard of him. No, good,
Speaker 8: good dude, he says to me. Do you like it here?
Speaker 8: I said, I love it here. I didn't think I
Speaker 8: was going to between getting promoted to lieutenant and going
Speaker 8: to midtown Manhattan from the ghetto. I was like a
Speaker 8: fish out of water, and I didn't think I was
Speaker 8: gonna like it. But I loved it. And he said, well,
Speaker 8: if you want, I could speak to the battalion and
Speaker 8: you know, maybe we can get you to stay here.
Speaker 9: I said, well, I would love that. So the battalion
Speaker 9: commander at the time was Charlie Williams.
Speaker 8: He was a captain of two eighty three and he
Speaker 8: worked in hallm back in the day, worked in the
Speaker 8: rescue and he was friends with Patty Brown. Patty Brown
Speaker 8: was a captain of sixty nine engine when I was
Speaker 8: a proby, So you know, I did the right thing
Speaker 8: and he endorsed me. Charlie Williams endorsed me, and I
Speaker 8: got the spot in four truck.
Speaker 6: What is it like working in that firehouse?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 6: Nuts man?
Speaker 8: That's nuts Well, first of all, it's two thousand and three,
Speaker 8: so it's very fresh after nine to eleven, and that
Speaker 8: firehouse unfortunately lost fifteen guys. Wow. So that front door
Speaker 8: was like incredible a museum. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 8: it's a block from Times Square. You got all the hotels,
Speaker 8: all the theaters, you got all these buildings with tons
Speaker 8: of people in them.
Speaker 9: It was like married. I was not married yet.
Speaker 4: By the way, I don't want to get off track,
Speaker 4: but you're god to go back to the picture of
Speaker 4: him and his old lady.
Speaker 3: You've done good, bro. You're a part of that I
Speaker 3: am married up club. Check it out.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's my second wife.
Speaker 3: Good for you. That's all right, buddy. I'm on my
Speaker 3: third all right, good for.
Speaker 6: You, good for you. You know shit. Yeah.
Speaker 8: So I did five years in four truck and we
Speaker 8: had a great time there. We went to Good five
Speaker 8: and we went to a lot of weird ship. We
Speaker 8: went to the subways, a lot of weird ship. I
Speaker 8: had the Cory Little plane crash. He crashed into MD
Speaker 8: I was working for that. We had cruise ships that crash.
Speaker 8: I had a submarine crash next to the Intrepid that
Speaker 8: was tied untied off the dock and it was slamming
Speaker 8: into other boats. We went to that. We had a
Speaker 8: helicopter crash in the Hudson River. That was a funny story.
Speaker 8: We get to the river and the helicopters in the
Speaker 8: water and we're hearing all this radio chatter, and a
Speaker 8: boat pulls up to the pier and on the loudspeakers,
Speaker 8: everybody get off. So you know the beast. You ever
Speaker 8: see the beast on the West side of Manhattan. It's
Speaker 8: like a tourist boar. It's a speedboat. So the guy
Speaker 8: throws everybody off the boat and he yells fire department,
Speaker 8: get on the boat. We didn't have a boat, so
Speaker 8: let's get on the Beast. So we get on the beast.
Speaker 8: We got like three companies and a battalion chief on
Speaker 8: the beast. It turns out the guy's a fireman in
Speaker 8: Jersey and he does this as a sidekick. So he
Speaker 8: takes us to the helicopter and the chief is calling
Speaker 8: the shore and we didn't have our call signs or whatever,
Speaker 8: so he was just saying, uh uh Division three to
Speaker 8: the beast. That was our call sign, the Beast, and
Speaker 8: there it is best.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: They threw everybody off the boat all the tours, and
Speaker 8: they filled it up with fire companies and and guys.
Speaker 9: From rescue one, I guess.
Speaker 8: And we went out there and and we saved eight
Speaker 8: people from the helicopter.
Speaker 9: Every single one of them survived.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 7: Yeah, a shameless plug right there for this guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the beast gets a nice uh very little.
Speaker 5: That's awesome.
Speaker 8: So he was like a DJ on the sign and
Speaker 8: he was a fireman I think in Newark or some shit.
Speaker 8: That was great.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So we saw a lot of crazy stuff, helicopters and
Speaker 8: planes and subways, high rises and then if we were lucky,
Speaker 8: we're ninth and tenth Avenue. We had five story tenements,
Speaker 8: bread and butter Ah, how did you.
Speaker 6: Deal with the traffic.
Speaker 8: You can't let it bother you because it will It'll
Speaker 8: drive you crazy. I know I would. Yeah during the holidays,
Speaker 8: forget dude, if I want to.
Speaker 4: When I was at sixteen truck, if you went on
Speaker 4: a run, yeah, even if it was a full slot,
Speaker 4: it would take an.
Speaker 3: Hour to get back to the funny house.
Speaker 8: Correct, all these people coming to look at a stupid
Speaker 8: Christmas tree?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that's that's all you had. You had to
Speaker 6: make a mental like note to yourself like.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean that are You're gonna go crazy?
Speaker 3: Well, there was a lot to look at.
Speaker 8: There were some sites.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, here, how about the triple sub cellar you
Speaker 6: like that?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 8: Yeah, those were fun. These were fun. It was fun
Speaker 8: swapping bottles while you were underground. Yeah, fun, good stuff.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I don't remember reading that in the riggs.
Speaker 4: Yeah that you have a lot of junior guys, did
Speaker 4: you learn?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: It was great. I got to train and it was
Speaker 8: unique to be in that position. I was always a
Speaker 8: young guy in the job, and I was in a
Speaker 8: firehouse with a lot of senior guys, and then to
Speaker 8: switch roles like that, and now to be training guys.
Speaker 8: It was great. And and some of those guys are
Speaker 8: captains and chiefs.
Speaker 9: H the guys that were under me, which it feels good.
Speaker 3: I'd like the transitions being a boss.
Speaker 8: I did not.
Speaker 9: I did not like that transition.
Speaker 6: That's like the spotlight there man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And the phone rang off the hook truck officer department,
Speaker 8: phone truck officer, DEPARTMA phone truck off all the time.
Speaker 8: And I would get questions that I just you know,
Speaker 8: I would shake my head and scratch my head, like, uh,
Speaker 8: they're at a construction site on tenth Avenue, and uh,
Speaker 8: they want to move the hydrant?
Speaker 9: What do I gotta do?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 3: Say?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 8: Yeah? You want to I don't have Yeah, there's a
Speaker 8: couple of four truck pictures there.
Speaker 5: To get to that.
Speaker 3: Dude getting ready. I would to move a hydrant over on.
Speaker 6: Sorry, my boy, Davy Turner, Oh yes, I did, my guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: This must have been a crazy time of year. Yeah.
Speaker 8: So we had a stuck elevator and we got some
Speaker 8: guy named Ryan out of the elevator.
Speaker 9: Ah, him in the center.
Speaker 8: He's a little guy, right, He's a little guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little guy with a lot of money.
Speaker 8: He's got some money. He has a handle that it
Speaker 8: puts his gloves on and takes them off for him.
Speaker 8: He doesn't even put gloves where do you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know the ship in the corner and that's
Speaker 6: that that elevator.
Speaker 8: Huh. Yeah, the elevators of Midtown were sucked up. They worked,
Speaker 8: they didn't smell like piss, and someone had music in them.
Speaker 8: That was in New Year's Eve. There's a picture there
Speaker 8: with the Lombardi trophy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So there's a guy from forty truck and he's working
Speaker 8: part time as a security guard for ESPN in Times Square.
Speaker 8: So he comes to the firehouse and he's got the
Speaker 8: Lombardi trophy and he goes, you guys want to take
Speaker 8: pictures with the trophy.
Speaker 3: So the real trophy.
Speaker 9: This is the real deal, the real trophy.
Speaker 8: He's going to a party at ESPN and he's got
Speaker 8: to deliver the trophy.
Speaker 9: He works security for ESPN.
Speaker 8: So we all take photographs with the trophy. I got
Speaker 8: a great shot there. Then he takes out the special
Speaker 8: cloth to clean it off. He got all our fingerprints off,
Speaker 8: and then he puts it in this big patted box
Speaker 8: and he locks it with like three locks and he
Speaker 8: says lou Can, I, can you do me a favor?
Speaker 9: I go, what's that? He goes, Can I leave the
Speaker 9: box in the firehouse?
Speaker 8: I work in forty truck and I'm gonna go out
Speaker 8: for a little while, but then I'm gonna.
Speaker 9: Come back and get the box. I said, okay, no problem.
Speaker 8: He leaves me. He leaves the Lombardi trophy in the
Speaker 8: firehouse locked up on the apperass for and he leaves.
Speaker 8: He comes back. It's about four o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 8: We come back from a run and he's banging on
Speaker 8: the firehouse front door.
Speaker 9: He can't get in.
Speaker 8: He doesn't have a key, he doesn't know the combo,
Speaker 8: he's legless, and he goes, I'm gonna lose my job.
Speaker 8: What happened? He goes, I lost the key for the trophy?
Speaker 6: Unbelieva, Hello, mister George.
Speaker 3: How might you pay for the for the new guy?
Speaker 5: Twenty bucks?
Speaker 8: No, too much?
Speaker 6: Too much?
Speaker 8: Lost the key for the Lombardi trophy, which is sitting
Speaker 8: in the firehouse. I said, well, you know, do me
Speaker 8: a favorite, get that trophy and get the fuck out of.
Speaker 4: Here before somebody gets in trouble, before I get blamed.
Speaker 10: Yeah, shit, all right, We have one more we get
Speaker 10: marked big ah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's uh Saint Patrick's Cathedral. On one of the
Speaker 8: anniversaries of nine to eleven, we always go to mass
Speaker 8: at Saint Pat's and Cardinal Dolon invited us up on
Speaker 8: the altar for a photo. I thought that was a
Speaker 8: great shot. A big guy all the way in the back. Bro.
Speaker 10: Yeah size, there's there's another guy right next to him.
Speaker 8: I think that guy is a fireman out in Limbrook Maguire.
Speaker 3: That's Ray Maguire.
Speaker 8: I think that's long ago. Was that guy gets in every.
Speaker 5: Everywhere on the other side.
Speaker 8: It's unbelievable that you knew who that was. His brother,
Speaker 8: him and his brother like, well, it looks like Ray
Speaker 8: because it is.
Speaker 5: That's a huge bitch.
Speaker 3: God, you're right tonight, tonight.
Speaker 8: That's a big bitchny.
Speaker 5: Sorry, sorry, right, we love you, love you. Right.
Speaker 6: So did you actually ever stop uh studying or you
Speaker 6: kept studying the whole time?
Speaker 9: I was very fortunate.
Speaker 8: I was a lieutenant for two years and they gave
Speaker 8: a captain's test, so we never stopped studying. And then
Speaker 8: uh I passed the captain's test with the steam pipe explosion.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that that was the.
Speaker 8: See that must have been seven. That was uh Park
Speaker 8: Avenue and forty second Street. So we come down seventh Amn,
Speaker 8: and we make the left on forty second Street. Rescue
Speaker 8: one is in front of us, and as we're going
Speaker 8: towards the site, all you see is thousands.
Speaker 9: Of people running towards us.
Speaker 8: Now remember this is post nine to eleven. Yeah, and
Speaker 8: all these people are running towards us.
Speaker 9: We go, what the hell? And then in the middle
Speaker 9: of the street you.
Speaker 8: See thousands of high heeled shoes. The women were just
Speaker 8: kicking their shoes off and running for their lives. Wow.
Speaker 8: And then when we got to the site, there was
Speaker 8: a tow truck in the hole and the guys are
Speaker 8: just coming out of steam and bricks raining down on
Speaker 8: top of the rig. And there was a city bush
Speaker 8: on Lexington Avenue. So we went up to the bus
Speaker 8: and the chief We couldn't talk to the chief on
Speaker 8: the handy talking. There was no radio communication because this
Speaker 8: thing was roaring like a jet engine. And the chiefs
Speaker 8: just do me a favor and evacuate that bus. And
Speaker 8: we opened up the bus and there was like twenty
Speaker 8: or thirty people just frozen in fear on the bus. Wow.
Speaker 8: And we were standing in like two and a half
Speaker 8: feet of water, which must have been two hundred degrees.
Speaker 8: So we had to carry all the people off the
Speaker 8: bus to dry land on forty second Street.
Speaker 3: What happened to tow Trusty.
Speaker 8: I think the tow truck driver was killed. And the
Speaker 8: woman he was with that was in the truck, I
Speaker 8: think she she got like severe burns. She went to
Speaker 8: the burn center. Yeah, it was it was a mess. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 8: that was nuts. And it's not something that you trained for.
Speaker 8: It's not something you ever expect to see.
Speaker 3: Uh, it's Manhattan odd ball.
Speaker 8: Manhattan odd ball.
Speaker 9: There's so many of them happened.
Speaker 6: If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 8: It's gonna happen in Manhattan.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: A lot of chiefs that go up the chain make
Speaker 8: sure that they work a stint in the ninth Battalion
Speaker 8: or the third Division.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 8: My captain when I was in four truck was a
Speaker 8: guy by the name of Mike Myers. You might have
Speaker 8: heard of Mikey, Yeah, of course.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So he started out one seventy five, he went to
Speaker 8: rescue four and now he's the chief of training. Yep.
Speaker 8: So he was a captain when I was there, and
Speaker 8: then he went to the ninth Battalion, or I should
Speaker 8: say he stayed in the night Battalion. Then he went
Speaker 8: to the third Division and went up the chain quite rapidly,
Speaker 8: And that was the thing to do. I had division commanders.
Speaker 8: I mentioned Tom Jensen, before, we had Tom mccavanaugh, we
Speaker 8: had John Sudnick.
Speaker 5: So it was no.
Speaker 8: Accident that these guys became three and four star chiefs.
Speaker 9: And they worked in Midtown.
Speaker 8: I think they were all told, like, you know, if
Speaker 8: you're a rising star, you got to work there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you get you study, you take the captains
Speaker 4: tests were on that list.
Speaker 8: That was a tough test. That was a test that
Speaker 8: only like two hundred guys passed. Really, Yeah, they made
Speaker 8: that test really difficult, and I was right in the
Speaker 8: middle of the pack. I think I was probably like
Speaker 8: one hundred and ten, maybe somewhere around here.
Speaker 4: You find you know, you find your where you should
Speaker 4: be as an officer. And then then yeah, promoting captain right, And.
Speaker 8: I felt like, you know, becoming a captain is no
Speaker 8: different than being a lieutenant as far as being on
Speaker 8: the rig, your responsibilities are a little different, but as
Speaker 8: far as being a company officer and being on the apparatus,
Speaker 8: there's no difference.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna bet that this guy gets a good spot
Speaker 4: as account. I'm gonna go on a limb here. So
Speaker 4: once again I got lucky.
Speaker 8: And one of the guys in the sixteenth Battalion, the
Speaker 8: battalion commander, Frank Donnelly, I just happened to drive when
Speaker 8: I was a fireman driving the sixteenth Battalion, oh five
Speaker 8: years prior. H He calls me up and election He's like, Steve, Yeah,
Speaker 8: he says, listen, Uh, twenty three truck is going to
Speaker 8: open up. The guy scored number one on the chief's list,
Speaker 8: Jimmy Brosie. He's now the head of the union, the
Speaker 8: president of the UFOA, Deputy chief Jim Brosie. He's getting
Speaker 8: promoted to the battalion chief and I want to put
Speaker 8: you in twenty three.
Speaker 9: So I said, sure, you want my left arm.
Speaker 8: I'm all right, arm, what do I gotta give you?
Speaker 8: And he says, did you just sit tight? And when
Speaker 8: he gets promoted, I'm putting you in twenty three? I said,
Speaker 8: thank you, sir, And I just waited. I bounced for
Speaker 8: about two years, and uh, well you did bounce that long.
Speaker 8: I did. There were a lot of captains in the
Speaker 8: division when I got promoted. And you know, the nice
Speaker 8: thing was I worked a lot of city wide, so
Speaker 8: I had not worked in other borrows previously. So I
Speaker 8: started off in Harlem. I go to Midtown and now
Speaker 8: I'm back in the South Bronx and Harlem. And when
Speaker 8: i'm surplus, this senting me all over the city. I'm
Speaker 8: working in one seventy five, I'm working in two thirty six.
Speaker 8: I'm working in places I never dreamed of working in before.
Speaker 8: I've heard of them. I knew guys at worked there,
Speaker 8: and it was a great experience to go see these
Speaker 8: other companies and work in Brooklyn and work in Queens.
Speaker 8: I worked a couple of tours in Staten Island and
Speaker 8: it was a great experience. I got to see guys
Speaker 8: that I knew from previous years. I played on the
Speaker 8: football team for two years, so I would run into
Speaker 8: the guys that were on a football team, guys from
Speaker 8: the Marine Corps Association.
Speaker 3: It was great, cool, a lot with Big Philly Tofano.
Speaker 8: I worked with Phil. I played with Phil.
Speaker 4: Also, Yeah, great guy man, great guy you play at football.
Speaker 9: I was a wide receiver and I kicked.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I gat you played in high school too. I was
Speaker 3: gonna ask you before that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I played in high school and I played one
Speaker 8: year in college. It was Division three.
Speaker 6: Sot an sure.
Speaker 8: Yeah, wood he was a big dude.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I had a pair of gloves when I played
Speaker 8: high school football. I was a ligneman and I had
Speaker 8: lineman gloves. They were padded and they were really good gloves.
Speaker 8: And when I came to the fire department team, I
Speaker 8: still had them. I gave them to Woody and he
Speaker 8: wore those gloves. He goes, man, these are good gloves. Yeah,
Speaker 8: they're expensive gloves, and he he wore and he loved them.
Speaker 8: And I loved Woody. He was a great guy. Everybody
Speaker 8: knew him, loved him.
Speaker 3: Two guys who went to Too Young Bro both of
Speaker 3: them Philly, Philly and Woody.
Speaker 8: Yeah. And I was good friends with Tommy Cullen. He
Speaker 8: was in in place I think to ninety.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 8: I think it's on Long Island.
Speaker 4: Heard you know, I actually heard that the busiest fly
Speaker 4: company in the world, in.
Speaker 3: The world, in the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I just read that somewhere.
Speaker 8: He transfers from ninety to Squad forty one.
Speaker 9: Tommy call it and I said.
Speaker 8: To him, I go, what the hell are you going
Speaker 8: to squad forty one for nobody likes them? That's okay.
Speaker 8: I'm from two ninety.
Speaker 6: I've been I've been hated my career.
Speaker 8: Tommy Collin was killed on the eleventh, along with another
Speaker 8: two dozen guys from the football team.
Speaker 3: That sucks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was a guy that was uh Sterling right,
Speaker 6: Sterling was if.
Speaker 8: I remember Bronco, Broy Fletcher, Patty Lions.
Speaker 6: Oh, Patty Lyons, so many names. Okay, he was a
Speaker 6: good guy.
Speaker 8: Sometimes when I look at the the photograph of the
Speaker 8: three forty three, a guy's picture, and I go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: I forgot he died too, It's just it's overwhelming. It's
Speaker 8: it's beyond the comprehension.
Speaker 6: It really is.
Speaker 3: You get up to the truck over there. Finally, when
Speaker 3: do you go there?
Speaker 8: Two years? So two years so I got promoted in
Speaker 8: eight and then twenty ten, I get assigned to a
Speaker 8: lot of twenty three.
Speaker 6: And I followed there. I got all that thought, Yeah,
Speaker 6: did you work in thirty truck?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 6: When I was covering Nicol what to do? Then go
Speaker 6: over there.
Speaker 5: I told him to.
Speaker 8: Slow down, turn on the blue lights in the rear.
Speaker 8: What lights are a police cause.
Speaker 3: That sounds like bro, you do that perfect?
Speaker 8: Twelve years Yeah, a little working tools, our baby carriages.
Speaker 6: I love it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, that's great. All right, So you go up
Speaker 4: to twenty three and uh, you know.
Speaker 6: Something about your dad? What were you saying?
Speaker 8: Oh right, yeah, oh yeah, my father was a lieutenant
Speaker 8: eighty engine So it was a unique experience. I had
Speaker 8: worked in the firehouse as a fireman. There's my pops
Speaker 8: medal day and eight. Wow, that was the steam pipe
Speaker 8: explosion metal that we got, the Al Sasser medal.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was gonna ask you if you got a medal
Speaker 3: for that? Should look down right here.
Speaker 8: There you go.
Speaker 4: So yeah, so it was a unique experien Pretty sure
Speaker 4: the guy's gonna be leaning over like this.
Speaker 8: He's got some medals, you know what I mean, Mexican
Speaker 8: War General.
Speaker 5: The NYPD badge. I think it's gonna up here is.
Speaker 6: Your pop's still around.
Speaker 8: He's still around, and you gotta get him on a
Speaker 8: show eighty two years old. No him, he'll be on
Speaker 8: a show. He'll be talking for four hours, three another
Speaker 8: hour kill us. When he worked They called him Larry
Speaker 8: the Lip because he never shut up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we'll get him, we'll get.
Speaker 5: Him, We'll get him. Yea.
Speaker 8: He worked in the South Bronx in nineteen six, so
Speaker 8: there's a picture. I put that in because I was
Speaker 8: not on a job. Then this is in the late seventies.
Speaker 8: And if you look in the center at the photograph,
Speaker 8: that's the Crossbronx Expressway and this is looking south.
Speaker 9: So I guess it's an aerial photograph.
Speaker 3: I thought this was from the movie War in the World.
Speaker 8: It does look like it, right right, So in the
Speaker 8: center of the photo where then the Cross Bronx Expressway is,
Speaker 8: that's the firehouse. That's forty six engine and twenty seven truck,
Speaker 8: and it's right next to a police precinct.
Speaker 6: And then from the par you could see it when
Speaker 6: you go you can.
Speaker 8: Still see it. Yeah, So that's Washington Avenue just to
Speaker 8: the left of the firehouse, and then you can see
Speaker 8: like a black border there that's Third Avenue and Rescue
Speaker 8: three incidentally is presently in this photograph as well. They're
Speaker 8: just south of forty six and twenty seven, so you
Speaker 8: could see how that.
Speaker 9: Place looks like London during World War Two.
Speaker 3: Blitz Creek.
Speaker 8: Unbelievable.
Speaker 6: That is that little does that say we are here
Speaker 6: on that little thing, which.
Speaker 8: As you are here, because that is a photograph that's
Speaker 8: in the firehouse. It's hanging up in the firehouse, and
Speaker 8: I took a picture of us. Said, man, I gotta
Speaker 8: show these guys this photograph.
Speaker 9: So I know they were busy in Brooklyn.
Speaker 8: I know there's good fire stories around the city, but
Speaker 8: the South Bronx was in its heyday, was a war zone. Yeah,
Speaker 8: that's crazy.
Speaker 4: A lot of the kids playing in the burnt out
Speaker 4: cars there's no buildings around, or the jumping out of
Speaker 4: the second story on a pile of.
Speaker 5: Mat I talk.
Speaker 6: I talk about when I was a kid, we used
Speaker 6: to go upstate. We used to take the Major dig
Speaker 6: in past Yankee Stadium to get on the GW and
Speaker 6: I remember those buildings that were right there before you
Speaker 6: get you know that rep before you get it. It's
Speaker 6: always traffic there, it's always backed up. But I remember
Speaker 6: as a kid looking at the back seat, all those
Speaker 6: buildings that are on that hill all burnt out. They
Speaker 6: were all burnt and they all had either like the
Speaker 6: the hug window with the plant or the guy in
Speaker 6: the Shadow or whatever it was, right right, I remember
Speaker 6: looking at that Queens we didn't have Yeah, we didn't
Speaker 6: not like that Bacons at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, look at what the Bronx is burning.
Speaker 8: That was That was a Dinkins thing. Mayor Dinkins had
Speaker 8: paintings on the window, someone holding a cup.
Speaker 5: Of tea, drink tea.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was ridiculous.
Speaker 8: So it didn't look like a vacant building.
Speaker 4: Yeah that we've been to fifteen times before.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, And now you go past those buildings and nice,
Speaker 6: but you know, oh.
Speaker 8: They've been renovated. Yeah. Yeah, they pumped billions of dollars
Speaker 8: into those neighborhoods.
Speaker 6: You having some hipster in.
Speaker 4: That eventy seven World Series when they had them.
Speaker 8: There was a fire in the outfield.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah they were burning, Howard Brown.
Speaker 9: Burning the Bronx is burning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you ain't shipping.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Those were the guys that taught me.
Speaker 8: They they learned in the South Bronx and Harlem back
Speaker 8: in the hey day when they were going to fires
Speaker 8: all the time. And that's uh, those were the guys
Speaker 8: that taught me.
Speaker 4: It must have been going to so many fires, bro,
Speaker 4: like you think every period think they go to work
Speaker 4: but those guys.
Speaker 3: You can't fathom the amount of matter work that those guys.
Speaker 8: My father said, nobody did twenty fours. They did straight towards.
Speaker 5: They worked.
Speaker 8: And everybody in the Bronx, every fireman in the Bronx
Speaker 8: lived in the Bronx.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say all lived in the Bronx, man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, nobody was commuting. You're taking the train to work.
Speaker 3: Is your dad originally from the Bronx.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's from Soundview in the Bronx.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a Yankee fan guns.
Speaker 5: Yeah, from the Bronx.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I mean he used to go to football games and
Speaker 8: baseball games at the Polo Grounds. Oh man, we gotta
Speaker 8: get this on, bro. Now, it's projects.
Speaker 3: We gotta get it is it is? Yeah, we gotta
Speaker 3: get the lip on.
Speaker 4: Great, what you could be with him, and you could
Speaker 4: speed him up if he gets hung up.
Speaker 9: You know, there's no speeding him up.
Speaker 6: But he had a couple of We've had a couple
Speaker 6: of eight year old guys and their son as well.
Speaker 6: They just sit on the sideline and they say, hey, Pop,
Speaker 6: tell them the story with this. Yeah, like just to
Speaker 6: keep them on, you know, on Yeah, because they forget
Speaker 6: a lot of shit, I forget.
Speaker 8: I forgot shit too.
Speaker 6: Yeah eighty two.
Speaker 5: You're just talking about what?
Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Oh I I wanted to ask you before we got
Speaker 4: too far, but you got when when the Laaney got there,
Speaker 4: or you weren't gone by that.
Speaker 8: No, I was gone al ready. I got promoted on three.
Speaker 8: He must have gotten there right after.
Speaker 3: He painted a picture of his first couple of fucking
Speaker 3: months there. He had a hot time.
Speaker 6: Just it sounded pretty similar like.
Speaker 8: It was a tough place. Yeah, yeah, you just remind
Speaker 8: me another story. A couple of probes were working in
Speaker 8: in fifty nine and thirty and there's two probies on
Speaker 8: the house watch in the middle of the night, there's
Speaker 8: a knock at the door, and fifty nine to thirty
Speaker 8: had a lot of verbal alarms, with a lot of
Speaker 8: fires that were verbals, and you were talking the days
Speaker 8: before cell phones, so you either use the payphone or
Speaker 8: people would come to the firehouse. So the knock at
Speaker 8: the door and the lady says, hey, fire, and the
Speaker 8: building next door is on fire. So the prob says
Speaker 8: to the other prob, you want to come with me
Speaker 8: and check it out, and he goes okay, So they
Speaker 8: walk next door. They go up to the second floor
Speaker 8: and sure enough the apartment's ripping. So they come back downstairs.
Speaker 8: Neither one of them brought a key. So now they're
Speaker 8: standing outside the firehouse knocking on the door. There's a fire.
Speaker 8: Oh man, can you imagine? I had that happened to
Speaker 8: me as a proby.
Speaker 4: Somebody came knocking on the door and they said, the
Speaker 4: fire in the Chinese place. So I gotta go to
Speaker 4: out of the proby. I was sitting on the watch
Speaker 4: with the guy. He gives me radio. He goes going
Speaker 4: on around the corner. It's the middle of the daytime.
Speaker 4: See what's going on. I turned the corner. It's blowing
Speaker 4: out like fucking three windows on the top of the Chinese.
Speaker 3: I was like a paddic to run back to the far.
Speaker 3: I didn't even guve the radio.
Speaker 5: I ran back.
Speaker 8: Awesome things. What not to do?
Speaker 6: Right? Patty Lee is in the chat. That's all the
Speaker 6: tenant He wrote little Why didn't you walk past Whitecoff
Speaker 6: Avenue when you were a kid in uh in Queens?
Speaker 6: So Whitecoff Avenue like that was like ridge with and
Speaker 6: that went like from the good area.
Speaker 3: Nick Obacca, you were going downhill if.
Speaker 6: You went past Whiteclough, it was like falling off a cliff, man,
Speaker 6: it was just like right there. And then you know
Speaker 6: one twenty four was on Saint Nick over there and
Speaker 6: talker truck.
Speaker 3: So, dude, I'm there in the seventies there.
Speaker 4: We'll never forget one time of My father owned the
Speaker 4: camera store Nickoboaca Avenue in that area down there, so
Speaker 4: I work with him in the summertime. You drive up past,
Speaker 4: he takes me down. Wilson stops the car and he says,
Speaker 4: I want to let you know this is white. Dad
Speaker 4: works three jobs to keep you out of the ship.
Speaker 4: And I used that.
Speaker 8: On my.
Speaker 6: Did you ever see the picture If you ever see
Speaker 6: a picture from Nickobaca Avenue where one twenty four is
Speaker 6: parked and there's like ten factories on fire and everything.
Speaker 4: His father pictures from the camera store, walked out with
Speaker 4: a one ten camera to some of.
Speaker 8: The best far is that tanker truck one?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah that was Billy.
Speaker 9: Carlson's father was a captain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, all this Carlson Carlson, you heard him. He'll
Speaker 4: see him on the boat trip. He always comes.
Speaker 8: That fuck.
Speaker 6: Dude again, you talk about Keith, it's he's like Billy's
Speaker 6: kind of close. Right, Yeah, he's yahout.
Speaker 8: You would say, we're.
Speaker 3: Got a little buffed Tom and Keith a little.
Speaker 4: Yeahs the buff he's just he just got he's.
Speaker 6: A little buffy.
Speaker 8: But but Billy, he's buffy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, he loves all.
Speaker 8: Was a member of the New Jersey Metro Fire Photographers Association.
Speaker 8: He used to bring a bustload of the Buffs to
Speaker 8: the firehouse every year. Oh yeah, yeah, and then he
Speaker 8: would bring him. He would bring him to rescue three.
Speaker 8: He'd bring him to the firehouses and hopefully they catch
Speaker 8: a job while they were driving around the city. Ah,
Speaker 8: look at that.
Speaker 3: Well all right, just went down and bring it.
Speaker 6: Oh no, little Birdie Turpin now like nugget, little nugget,
Speaker 6: a little nugget.
Speaker 3: Yes, Jose, there wasn't v im on Nikoboker Avenue.
Speaker 6: Yes, I don't remember that.
Speaker 3: That was the Yeah, I think it's still left.
Speaker 6: That was bred, white and Blue. Right, they had the
Speaker 6: stars and ship all over.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, man, all right, all right, where are we
Speaker 3: back at?
Speaker 9: All right, let's look at some more pictures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, come on, Pete, pick them up.
Speaker 6: Well he's got he's twenty three now, Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah,
Speaker 6: this is.
Speaker 9: A great shot. This is all the captains that won
Speaker 9: six Battalion minus sixty nine Engine.
Speaker 8: So uh rolf, I told you look at a rack
Speaker 8: on the guy's chest. Man Mike Gaffney on the left,
Speaker 8: he's still in fifty nine Engine. John Gormley is a
Speaker 8: battalion chief down the seven Battalion. Jimmy Leach in the
Speaker 8: pipe band, he's retired myself. And then Matt Hagen, he
Speaker 8: was the captain of eighty Engine. He just retired recently. Wow.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was a great shot. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 9: great shot.
Speaker 5: I blew it up a little bit, so you have
Speaker 5: another one.
Speaker 8: This is after an early morning jab job. The boys
Speaker 8: in twenty three, Uh, absolute professionals. They always did their job,
Speaker 8: they did it well. They made my job so easy
Speaker 8: as the captain, and I have the utmost respect. My
Speaker 8: My goal was always to make the guys as good
Speaker 8: or better than I was, and to be half as
Speaker 8: good as the guys that taught me. And these guys
Speaker 8: are all better firemen than I ever was. They're great guys.
Speaker 8: They always were in position, they always did the right thing,
Speaker 8: and like I said, they made my job easy. You
Speaker 8: love that, absolutely all right, that's a captain's dream right there.
Speaker 6: Like Disney World, you just have to show up.
Speaker 8: Was just show for full law. Robi told me that,
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, so Rob knows the guy on the far
Speaker 8: right there, that's Scorbo. So Pete Sorbo got on the job.
Speaker 8: I think he got I.
Speaker 6: Know, I know, yeah.
Speaker 8: So Pete got out and O two and I was
Speaker 8: still in thirty. So I remember when he got on
Speaker 8: and made remember Probi in twenty three and then in
Speaker 8: twenty ten I get promoted the captain, I get assigned
Speaker 8: to twenty three. He's still there, and of course I
Speaker 8: snatched him up to be my chauffeur. He was a chauffeur, extraordinary,
Speaker 8: great fireman, funny as hell. We had a million laughs.
Speaker 8: And we had a rule after the meal. First of all,
Speaker 8: there was no television in the dining area of eighteen
Speaker 8: twenty three in the no television, and they had a
Speaker 8: rule after the meal, nobody was to get up.
Speaker 9: You had to sit there and you had.
Speaker 8: To converse and talk for at least an hour. And
Speaker 8: there was a guy that was a lieutenant there, Mike Galgano,
Speaker 8: and he was the.
Speaker 9: One I know, yes, familiar. He was a fireman in
Speaker 9: one to twenty.
Speaker 6: I know him.
Speaker 8: And then he went to Squad two, Squad one, Yeah right,
Speaker 8: instead I rescue too. I think he went to Squad one.
Speaker 8: But at any rate, he was a lieutenant in twenty
Speaker 8: three truck and that was his rules. After the meal,
Speaker 8: I want you guys to sit here, and we're just
Speaker 8: going to converse.
Speaker 9: And we called it the Galgano Hour.
Speaker 8: And uh, guys who put their phones down. There was
Speaker 8: no television, and we would just sit there and we
Speaker 8: would laugh and tell stories and joke and it was
Speaker 8: just a great They still do it now, they still
Speaker 8: do it.
Speaker 3: It's a great audition, great audition.
Speaker 8: That's been for many, many years. And uh, I think
Speaker 8: it's a it's a great lesson for a lot of
Speaker 8: young guys. You know, put your frigging phone down, have
Speaker 8: a conversation. You might learn something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you guarantee put the phone down already.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 4: And imagine, I mean when I got out, cell phones
Speaker 4: would kind of just they weren't as prevalent.
Speaker 3: As they are now.
Speaker 4: But I see even when I passed the firehouse, guys
Speaker 4: outside on the cell phone.
Speaker 8: From and I've worked in many firehouses in the sixth
Speaker 8: division that had signs right outside the kitchen no cell phones.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 8: Yeah, most firehouses have TVs in the dining air, some
Speaker 8: do not, and a lot of firehouses now have to
Speaker 8: sign no phones because people are on their phones the
Speaker 8: entire meal, or they're watching TV in tire mill.
Speaker 6: And you can have twelve guys not even fucking looking
Speaker 6: at each other, you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't get it. I go to a diner
Speaker 8: and I see four young people at a diner and
Speaker 8: they're all eating their food with their phone like that,
Speaker 8: right now, why'd you go out to eat?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Freaking stay home. I don't understand it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe QC Beas Maybe you can put that question
Speaker 4: if QC Bee's becomes a member, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well we have a new member.
Speaker 4: By the way, I'll put it up to Captain Ellie.
Speaker 4: Were there for the eighty twenty three second alarm and quarters?
Speaker 8: No that happened, Uh, probably the end of two thousand
Speaker 8: and eight. I got the spot two years later. So
Speaker 8: I was the recipient of a brand new firehouse.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, there's Mark.
Speaker 3: Thank you Mark, Mark.
Speaker 5: Yes, I want to share that.
Speaker 3: What I'm going to say another name, Ganza you know
Speaker 3: what to do proppuccini.
Speaker 5: Oh, which one do you want? Actually? Because one? Which
Speaker 5: one do you want?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 5: Are you dragging him?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 5: Which one do we want?
Speaker 3: For QC Beast?
Speaker 8: But fixed income?
Speaker 7: Yeah they have but the uh which what am I
Speaker 7: playing for them?
Speaker 6: Though?
Speaker 5: Come on, oh my man, I was gonna play the birdies.
Speaker 8: But okay, Rob knows it was Thanksgiving Day two thousand
Speaker 8: and eight.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it's QC Beast.
Speaker 8: Hold on a minute, ready.
Speaker 3: Macaccini works.
Speaker 4: If I got to hear about one more over time
Speaker 4: of he's working one more tour all over time, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna fucking vomit.
Speaker 3: Guy, he's always working over time, but he can't afford fortnight.
Speaker 6: What's the matter?
Speaker 5: What's getting all worked up over here? Easy?
Speaker 4: You have told me, don't put those fucking guys questions
Speaker 4: unless they played for it.
Speaker 3: That was you.
Speaker 5: Sorry, we got we got a photos that got a
Speaker 5: couple of saving two for.
Speaker 6: I forgot about.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's some legends in this photogra So McCluskey talks
Speaker 8: a lot about e J. Tierney.
Speaker 9: E J is the one who's front and center there.
Speaker 8: We lost him to nine to eleven cancer and this
Speaker 8: was a dinner in his honor.
Speaker 9: I think it was the chiefs dinner.
Speaker 8: And this is just a crew almost all officers, but
Speaker 8: all guys that worked in the sixteenth of time in
Speaker 8: the companies or chiefs. So that's an amazing photographs.
Speaker 3: Left, who's that kneeling down all the way on the.
Speaker 8: Left, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I thought that was that's that rock over loup Ronaldi.
Speaker 8: No, I'm not sure who that is.
Speaker 5: They're great.
Speaker 8: I'd have to look at a bigger photo.
Speaker 6: A lot of dust in that picture, a lot.
Speaker 3: Of dust, you know. I know what I hear when
Speaker 3: I see that.
Speaker 8: A lot of chiefs, A couple of staff chiefs in there.
Speaker 8: Yeah wow, Yeah, that's like who's who the sixteenth Battalion
Speaker 8: in the eighties and Grace right there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, there we go.
Speaker 8: A couple more photos, I think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh oh, here we go.
Speaker 3: Oh good lord.
Speaker 8: So that was affectionately known as the missile strike. It
Speaker 8: looked like that building got hit by a missile. Where
Speaker 8: this was on one hundred and forty fourth Street in
Speaker 8: Manhattan and on the corner of Broadway.
Speaker 3: I thought, I was crazy.
Speaker 6: Good thing they were working on the building.
Speaker 8: Did this guy this guy went into the apartment with
Speaker 8: two gallons of gasoline poured all over the apartment and
Speaker 8: threw a road flare and there and ran out and
Speaker 8: we got there and it was it was a sixth
Speaker 8: story building. We were kind enough to make it a
Speaker 8: five story.
Speaker 6: I usually say we didn't do some good.
Speaker 8: No, we didn't do so hot that day. This is
Speaker 8: the same building, a different corner. So there was fire
Speaker 8: throughout that entire top shug shugging. That building was like
Speaker 8: one hundred and fifty by one hundred and fifty. That
Speaker 8: was one of those best jobs in my career.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: That was the first time I ever got on a
Speaker 8: handy talking and told the chief we're bailing out of
Speaker 8: this place. Yeahs coming from that Mike Malarkey had the
Speaker 8: nozzle and eighty engine. I was screaming at him to
Speaker 8: open the line up, and he said it was wide
Speaker 8: open right over our heads. It wasn't cool and ship,
Speaker 8: what are you talking about it? Yeah, Milwaukee that that
Speaker 8: job probably ended three careers and no doubt.
Speaker 9: And there were a lot of hurt feelings too.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you hurt feelings in three quarters.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, got another job for you.
Speaker 8: This is a this is I think fire on the
Speaker 8: second floor, communication up to the third floor. And the
Speaker 8: reason I posted this picture is because I remember it.
Speaker 8: It was on September eleventh, I think in twenty twenty.
Speaker 8: So we had all gone down to the trade center
Speaker 8: and paid our respects and they came in to do
Speaker 8: the night tour and we're in this apartment. We put
Speaker 8: the fire out and the kid in the bucket comes in.
Speaker 8: Off the bucket is Carlo Sarrow. His father was killed
Speaker 8: on nine to eleven in four truck. Then on the
Speaker 8: can with me is Jesse Barnes, his father was killed
Speaker 8: in twenty five truck on nine to eleven. And then
Speaker 8: coming down the hallway, my good friend Chris Blackwell, his
Speaker 8: son is in Squad forty one. So I got three
Speaker 8: kids in this apartment. All of their fathers were killed.
Speaker 8: And that's tough, man, But it is a good thing
Speaker 8: to see the guys, the kids doing that stuff.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's all the time. I know, Angeline's son
Speaker 6: just got on the job, right, I mean, it's just
Speaker 6: every time I see that. You know, I say all
Speaker 6: the time, fucking social media is a cancer. You know,
Speaker 6: it's just garbage. But then I see, you know, a
Speaker 6: story like Angeline's son, and I think there's a couple
Speaker 6: of other guys in that, and it just it makes
Speaker 6: me proud, right, I mean, I just you know the
Speaker 6: fact that you had those guys in your place and
Speaker 6: then and their sons are coming to work in your type,
Speaker 6: in your place at all the firehouses they can work,
Speaker 6: They're coming to work in your place, right, I mean.
Speaker 8: To have three legacies in the fire department at once.
Speaker 8: I wanted to tell all three of them to sit
Speaker 8: in the corner.
Speaker 6: Not yeah right, It's like I'm gonna be.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah. If you get hurt, I'm gonna be pissed
Speaker 8: off of you.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, David private Ryan stay here.
Speaker 8: You lost some of the good men. And uh, it's
Speaker 8: great that these guys, uh and girls are carrying on
Speaker 8: the legacy of their fathers. Yeah yeah, I was immense pride.
Speaker 10: Steve and I were talking during the pre show and
Speaker 10: I was trying to figure out how many members have
Speaker 10: joined since nine to eleven family members are part of
Speaker 10: FT and Y now and I was just trying to
Speaker 10: look it up and there's no I can't find it
Speaker 10: out with them, it's.
Speaker 8: Over one hundred, it is.
Speaker 4: We got to we got the Geese boys.
Speaker 6: Where did Allen's kid go?
Speaker 3: He just went, you know, he's probably I think he's
Speaker 3: in the Canama now right now.
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, so many guys. Yeah yeah, So that's why
Speaker 8: I posted that picture.
Speaker 5: No worries. One more great two more good jobs. Your
Speaker 5: last photo jack job.
Speaker 8: That was the one I mentioned. Pete Sobo was the chauffeur.
Speaker 8: We had Timmy Dawn and Sean hanniberg uh Brady wear them.
Speaker 8: They were all working this fire. And I don't know
Speaker 8: who took this picture. Is a great photograph. I don't
Speaker 8: have that many photographs of fire pictures.
Speaker 6: That's a great uh. That to me is like when
Speaker 6: I say all the time, like on the on the thing,
Speaker 6: if I post something like when you turn the corner, yeah,
Speaker 6: and you and you see fire out the window, like
Speaker 6: that's a perfect thing. Like you're like, that's a good job.
Speaker 8: You could tell that's a nozzle man's dream.
Speaker 6: It's gonna be a.
Speaker 8: Good jobey inventing. Yep.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And you know it's funny. I don't have a lot
Speaker 8: of pictures of when I was in thirty because it
Speaker 8: was before.
Speaker 9: Us cell phones.
Speaker 8: Now we got citizen app we can get photographs of
Speaker 8: the job.
Speaker 3: Well, we've been there on the way.
Speaker 8: Yes, you can get a build them size up on
Speaker 8: the way. It's crazy. Whatever are is?
Speaker 3: He said, one hundred and fifty five.
Speaker 8: I believe that because what I say over one hundred
Speaker 8: I believe that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, they said Ageline, that's where Angeline's son went.
Speaker 6: One fifty.
Speaker 8: Yeah, oh, one fifty five. Okay, that's great, it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 8: there's so many guys. I mean, I don't even want
Speaker 8: to list them from memory because I know I'm gonna
Speaker 8: miss so many.
Speaker 9: But there's so many guys. And like I said, and girls.
Speaker 8: That are on the job now their father's Paris on
Speaker 8: nine to eleven, and uh, what a wonderful tribute and
Speaker 8: honor to their follows and to their legacy.
Speaker 3: You got a bunch of guys in off my house
Speaker 3: rough even boys, boys. What's his names? The daughter from uh.
Speaker 6: From oh Smith, Yes, Joseph.
Speaker 8: Yes, Smith was in has Matt Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was in a busy engine company before.
Speaker 8: Yeah, she was in she was in thirty nine. We
Speaker 8: were at the same time.
Speaker 5: I think she's still there.
Speaker 8: She went to has Matt or the has Matt engine. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 8: what's the mad engine in Queens, like a seventy four.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's where she went. She wasn't thirty nine engine.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think she was the first one, right, the first
Speaker 7: family member to join.
Speaker 5: Is that what he did? She was He was one
Speaker 5: of the first ones.
Speaker 8: I think she has and I believe her father was
Speaker 8: a marine as well. We brought a piece of steel
Speaker 8: down to Quantico, Virginia. If you guys ever happened to
Speaker 8: go to Quantico. There's a museum, the Marine Corps Museum,
Speaker 8: just off the path, not inside the museum, but outside,
Speaker 8: just off the path, there's.
Speaker 9: A two pieces of World Trade Center steel and.
Speaker 8: We have all the names of the guys from FDNY
Speaker 8: that were killed on nine to eleven that were in
Speaker 8: the Marine Corps.
Speaker 6: Nice.
Speaker 8: Yeah, all right, that's down a Quantico.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another one. I got two more.
Speaker 6: So this is just.
Speaker 8: Another one of the proudest moments in my career. This
Speaker 8: is a metal day, I think in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 8: The guy in the center is the recipient of the
Speaker 8: Gancy Medal, the highest medal that you can receive. Wow.
Speaker 9: He also did a roof rope rescue.
Speaker 8: He rescued a five year old girl in a top
Speaker 8: floor window at a job in Washington Heights and Abe
Speaker 8: Miller is his name, And there's one of the proudest
Speaker 8: moments of my career. I think that this outshines any
Speaker 8: accomplishment that I ever had. To have a guy in
Speaker 8: your company receive the highest medal and also for roof
Speaker 8: rope rescue. What a proud moment. Not only did he
Speaker 8: get the Gancy Medal, but he was also invited to
Speaker 8: the White House and President Biden gave him the Medal
Speaker 8: of Freedom or whatever, the civilian highest honor. Also receive
Speaker 8: that medal at the White House. Yeah. So, Abe, he's
Speaker 8: one of my all stars and I have tremendous pride
Speaker 8: in him and I standing behind him.
Speaker 6: Steve, I'm gonna, I don't wanna. I had the same
Speaker 6: exact scenario. That's the guy I was in squad boss
Speaker 6: in the squad and bones McCoy right. He he got
Speaker 6: the Gancy And when we got the word, I was
Speaker 6: out fishing with my chauffeur who was in the squad.
Speaker 6: We were out fishing and I sat down and I
Speaker 6: was like overwhelmed, like how proud, Like I was like
Speaker 6: to have that, Like I couldn't believe like it was
Speaker 6: as if I got it.
Speaker 8: Yes, that's how I felt. I told him, this is
Speaker 8: one of the proudest moments in my career. And I
Speaker 8: was so happy for him.
Speaker 6: I agree. I was so happy for that guy.
Speaker 8: And like I said earlier, it was always my goal
Speaker 8: as a company officer to make my men greater than
Speaker 8: I was, greater fireman, and I think I achieved that.
Speaker 8: Those guys are absolute all stars. I would follow any
Speaker 8: one of them anywhere.
Speaker 6: I agree. Yeah, and that guy Bones John McCoy. He
Speaker 6: I called him Bones because of Star Trek, but he uh,
Speaker 6: he was one of the first guys that came to
Speaker 6: the squad after nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know he you know he we took
Speaker 4: a shine to him right away.
Speaker 8: Man, he was a good dude then. Yeah, he just
Speaker 8: got the.
Speaker 3: Get your fucking shine box.
Speaker 8: I don't know if you heard, I don't shine anymore.
Speaker 5: I don't know, while I.
Speaker 8: Don't know shines anymore.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is the last one you wanted to show.
Speaker 9: Oh, so that's uh full circle. This was in the
Speaker 9: middle of the night.
Speaker 8: I was I got a phone call. I was working
Speaker 8: at twenty three. I got a phone call. They said
Speaker 8: we need you to go to the sixteenth battalion. One
Speaker 8: of the chiefs has a family emergency. We need you
Speaker 8: to get there as soon as possible. So they moved
Speaker 8: one of the firemen, Tommy Furlong, he's in the photograph there.
Speaker 8: They moved him over from eighty engine and made him
Speaker 8: the acting officer in eighty. And they took the boss
Speaker 8: from eighty and put him in twenty three. And I
Speaker 8: went to the one six battalion. I got there not
Speaker 8: even ten minutes after I arrived. This run comes in
Speaker 8: and then you lost the whole block. You lost the
Speaker 8: whole block.
Speaker 3: You're not how to do it.
Speaker 8: So this this is on the corner. This is on
Speaker 8: the corner of one hundred and thirty fourth Street and
Speaker 8: Lenox Avenue, a half a block away from thirty truck.
Speaker 8: So it's a full circle, full circle moment. I think
Speaker 8: if you look closely in the picture you might see
Speaker 8: one of the tools that fell off my rig that
Speaker 8: first week.
Speaker 6: You had to be like laughing at yourself, like what
Speaker 6: that's going on here? Man? Yeah, like a.
Speaker 9: Circle right around the corner from where it started.
Speaker 8: So that was one of my last fires as an
Speaker 8: acting battalion chief, and it was right around the corner
Speaker 8: from the firehouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how'd they send you off? How was your last tour?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 8: I was having some issues and I got hurt, so
Speaker 8: I wound up tapping out and then uh I did
Speaker 8: my last year, unlike duty at the academy before. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so I didn't have a last tour in the firehouse,
Speaker 8: so to speak.
Speaker 6: Yeah so, but I.
Speaker 8: Had a good career. Like I said, my feet from
Speaker 8: landing on them all the time, always landing on my feet.
Speaker 8: I was very fortunate, very fortunate or what else.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've never done this before.
Speaker 8: I had pop time, pop time. Some guys have cop time.
Speaker 8: I have pop time.
Speaker 6: The more this is what I say, the more we
Speaker 6: do this. It really comes down to if you do
Speaker 6: the right thing wherever you are, even if you're not
Speaker 6: in the best place at that time, inevitably you're gonna
Speaker 6: at the more time you do, you're gonna come around
Speaker 6: and somebody's gonna know you happened with leeb Right, he
Speaker 6: got on the squad because the guy you know knew him. Sure,
Speaker 6: Chief Richardson knew him when he was bouncing in three
Speaker 6: twenty three. Right, And it's just the same thing happened
Speaker 6: to you like you. You know, God was at thirty truck.
Speaker 6: He remembers you, and you know.
Speaker 9: I always to say it's it's not only who you know,
Speaker 9: it's who knows you.
Speaker 6: Really, it does matter. If you do the right thing,
Speaker 6: people are going to try and yeah, you in their spots,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 3: So don't sending you one more picture?
Speaker 8: That said me, all right, oh boy, I hope it's
Speaker 8: a good one. I hope it's a good one.
Speaker 6: Rob.
Speaker 5: Just send it somebody straight to my email. Could you
Speaker 5: do that?
Speaker 8: I said to you my phone.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, okay, give me a few seconds.
Speaker 6: Carl. Somebody said, Carl Sharrow. Three sons and a daughter
Speaker 6: on the job.
Speaker 9: That's correct. Yeah, for sorrows yep.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot more than we probably think.
Speaker 8: Giving their mother some gray hairs.
Speaker 5: I would love to get that information. I'm not going
Speaker 5: to try to do that for next time. I always they.
Speaker 8: Actually took a photograph. I saw a photograph that had
Speaker 8: all the legacy kids at the Fire Academy one picture. Yeah,
Speaker 8: probably about two or three years ago.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 8: And there's more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got another one coming in Hot off the
Speaker 4: Press via gans Off the press, it's of somebody else.
Speaker 8: But oh.
Speaker 5: Come on, come on, come on, take the money and run.
Speaker 5: Pull it up right now.
Speaker 8: So while you're looking for that photo, I did fourteen
Speaker 8: years in twenty three truck and I asked someone to
Speaker 8: senior guys, guys that worked there in the eighties, I said,
Speaker 8: do you ever remember in the history of the company
Speaker 8: someone being there, captain being there longer than you know,
Speaker 8: ten years? And they said, no, I don't think that's
Speaker 8: ever happened. So they think they think there has been
Speaker 8: a they think the longest tenured captain in the history
Speaker 8: of the company. Wow, thank you, good for you, cap.
Speaker 8: Get myself on the back.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah, oh.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, let me see if I can blow that
Speaker 7: up while you guys are looking at it.
Speaker 8: That's Danny Quinn on the left, and he's uh, he's
Speaker 8: a lieutenant in a place I think one twenty I
Speaker 8: don't know where that is, somewhere.
Speaker 6: Maybe three letter three number that job.
Speaker 8: And then Pete Sorbo, he was my chauf for Extraordinary.
Speaker 8: He's since been promoted to lieutenant and he's at the Rock.
Speaker 8: I think he got promoted about two years ago. So yeah,
Speaker 8: that's a great photo. That must have been when I
Speaker 8: first got to twenty three because uh little Quen Yeah
Speaker 8: nice and clean, nice and white yeah clean, yeah, what
Speaker 8: do you have it? Now?
Speaker 3: Where do you got to live? The little man Cave?
Speaker 9: I think they're hanging in my garage.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, tower load of two three and now he's
Speaker 4: in Tower lad of one two.
Speaker 5: Oh one twelve.
Speaker 7: There we go there, just give me a few seconds.
Speaker 4: Coming in hot right now, hot from David Williams somebody
Speaker 4: else that we were just speaking about. There he is
Speaker 4: Joe Angeline the third going a lot of.
Speaker 3: One fifty a. Look who that is next to him?
Speaker 3: Brough your buddy.
Speaker 6: Big al Yeah how big?
Speaker 8: How Benjamin from Rescue one?
Speaker 4: Yeah that is that's Davey Williams from Rescue one. He's
Speaker 4: got that rescue three forty three rescue rate that he
Speaker 4: tastes the places.
Speaker 8: He's a great guy.
Speaker 6: Guy.
Speaker 4: Won't answer my phone calls when I asked him to
Speaker 4: come on the show, but he's a great guy.
Speaker 3: On than that, I love Davy. He must be watching
Speaker 3: tonight if he sent me.
Speaker 5: That must right my gun.
Speaker 10: Sorry made a little bit bigger for us, And you
Speaker 10: wanted to get a little close flat top on this guy's.
Speaker 3: Head, Williams's what Kirk Lester said.
Speaker 6: You can always tell what decade he was by his hair,
Speaker 6: and he said the flat top was the eighties.
Speaker 3: He was a military guy too.
Speaker 4: I think he was like a mind guy, one of
Speaker 4: the guys, and I forget what he was Vietnam Gay.
Speaker 3: It'd be great if he came on the show. He
Speaker 3: could tell us the story.
Speaker 8: Dave, Yeah, come on, one more military guys story. When
Speaker 8: I was in the Marine Corps, we had a company
Speaker 8: gunny gunnery sergeant. His name was Mike Curtin, and he
Speaker 8: was a cop in the seven to five precincts. And
Speaker 8: my cousin, Robert, Robert Yeager was also a cop in
Speaker 8: the seven five And when Curtin went to es U
Speaker 8: he became a sergeant.
Speaker 9: He went to SU.
Speaker 8: He brought my cousin over with him, and Curtin, Vigiano,
Speaker 8: and Delera, all three of them were killed on that
Speaker 8: truck two in Harlem b SU. And my cousin Robert
Speaker 8: fortunately was out and for Totten serving warrants or some shit,
Speaker 8: so he was spared that day. I had five cousins
Speaker 8: that were city cops. All of them survived that day
Speaker 8: and of course myself. So we were a very lucky family.
Speaker 8: I thought i'd mentioned the Vigianos and Carton. My Carton
Speaker 8: was exemplary marine. He was a drill instructor back in
Speaker 8: the day, a cop in the seven to five, a
Speaker 8: sergeant inn e s U Truck two. And he was
Speaker 8: also killed in nine to eleven. So I shout out
Speaker 8: to the Vigiano family.
Speaker 6: The family we didn't do what we talked about it
Speaker 6: in the free show. We wanted to mention Georgie mont right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, So his his funeral, I believe is tomorrow.
Speaker 4: He was dispatcher in Brooklyn, right right, So we'll raise
Speaker 4: a glass to him as well.
Speaker 8: Baby baby.
Speaker 3: Got drinking tonight.
Speaker 5: No, okay, I'll save it for the weekend, right, I think.
Speaker 3: That time right now?
Speaker 8: Gun?
Speaker 5: What time is that? My friend? It is time for
Speaker 5: of the day. There he is taken away, cap.
Speaker 8: I guess my old school tip would just be simply
Speaker 8: to uh, seek respect, not attention, be humble, but be confident,
Speaker 8: and always set the example because you never know who's
Speaker 8: watching you. You never know what kind of example you're setting,
Speaker 8: and who's trying to be inspired by the example that
Speaker 8: you're setting. And you never know. You might train a
Speaker 8: guy someday who becomes a captain and then.
Speaker 9: You send your son to his firehouse.
Speaker 8: It happens. It happened to me. So leading by example
Speaker 8: is of the utmost importance. When you don't feel like drilling,
Speaker 8: when you don't feel like doing the right thing, someone's
Speaker 8: watching you.
Speaker 9: So do the right thing all the time.
Speaker 6: Do the right thing.
Speaker 8: First part.
Speaker 6: Yeah, humble, I love that.
Speaker 8: Yes, that's what you should aspire to do in your career.
Speaker 8: Be respected and not just get attention, because we all
Speaker 8: know there's no better compliment than that guy's a good fireman.
Speaker 3: Excellent. Yeah, great show, great, thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you, bro.
Speaker 8: I'm humbled, And what an honor was to come on. Oh,
Speaker 8: I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 4: Hey, by the way, do you ever see Procaccini's old lady?
Speaker 4: We call them thiss iss Procaccini's husband going on.
Speaker 6: We don't really, we don't really talk.
Speaker 3: Like any shout out. I never met her anything.
Speaker 8: So thank you for everybody made comments, left comments and the.
Speaker 3: All that stuff.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: When you got guns held in safety tip, oh.
Speaker 3: Ship, thank you let me grab one.
Speaker 5: Oh you know I'm gonna use one ahead, Okay, okay,
Speaker 5: here we go up.
Speaker 1: The First Responders Center for Excellence is a not for
Speaker 1: profit organization dedicated to protecting their lives and livelihoods of
Speaker 1: first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to bring
Speaker 1: greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety,
Speaker 1: and well being of firefighters, EMS personnel, and other first
Speaker 1: responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Fallen
Speaker 1: Firefighter Foundation.
Speaker 3: This is a simple one, bro.
Speaker 4: It's been hot as fuck out, so drink and stay hydrated.
Speaker 4: Because by the time you either see your dark piss
Speaker 4: or you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated. So make sure
Speaker 4: you're hydrated throughout the day. And that is the old
Speaker 4: school health and safety tip. Who do we got next week?
Speaker 6: Ruff? I was just gonna mention that next week is
Speaker 6: the holiday. It's July third is a Thursday, so it's
Speaker 6: been a little tough to fill that spot. So we
Speaker 6: might have to figure something out this week. We have
Speaker 6: some time after that. We're booked until September.
Speaker 4: Basically, if Davey Williams would call me, maybe we can
Speaker 4: film a show like on a Wednesday, a Rescue one
Speaker 4: show and post a Rescue one show and post it
Speaker 4: on a Thursday. If Davy Williams would call me and
Speaker 4: we could do that with Hash Hagen. I already got
Speaker 4: a Hash, I got Muley and possibly Joel Davey Williams
Speaker 4: come on, we'll do a rescue one show.
Speaker 3: If he may be watching right now, I.
Speaker 4: Don't know he could be, but anyway away.
Speaker 3: All right, guys, that's all I got. Great guest, great
Speaker 3: career caps.
Speaker 6: Thanks brother, Thanks, enjoy your retirement.
Speaker 8: I ask you a.
Speaker 3: Question, have you had the dream yet?
Speaker 9: I've had a couple of repetitive dreams.
Speaker 3: One one way, you can't find your bunky gear, and
Speaker 3: you get.
Speaker 8: I have no gear and I'm on the radia.
Speaker 3: Everybody has it.
Speaker 8: Everybody has that. That's amazing. And another dream that I've
Speaker 8: been having is to try I call myself and make
Speaker 8: myself available for overtime. Excuse me, I call the division
Speaker 8: and uh, I realized, yeah, I'll take it.
Speaker 6: I realized that money.
Speaker 5: I got no gear.
Speaker 3: That's it, man, I have no gear. I gotta run
Speaker 3: every guy I talk to.
Speaker 8: Isn't that weird? That's that's weird.
Speaker 3: Repeated dream. I still have it. I'm out ten years,
Speaker 3: I still have it.
Speaker 8: That's crazy. Yeah, and I call work and I make
Speaker 8: myself available for overtime.
Speaker 6: I'm available money.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't know how they're gonna pay me, but
Speaker 8: i'm available, right, excellent?
Speaker 4: All right, guys, we'll figure something out for Thursday. Until then,
Speaker 4: stay low Ago, thanks for tuning in, and take a
Speaker 4: couple of shekels out of your pocket for thanks.
Speaker 8: Thanks for having me man, Thank you.
Speaker 6: See it was an honor.
Speaker 5: All right, guys, have a good night in South Florida.
Speaker 5: Enjoy I love that