Firefighter Gerald Atwood
Ladder 21
Memorial Service Held
on June 27, 2002
Why
don't we drive down to Florida," Gerald Atwood suggested on the spur of the
moment last spring.
"You're
crazy," said his wife, Barbara Swat- Atwood -- not with a 2-year-old boy
and a baby daughter in tow. But he talked her into it, and they were off.
For
if Mr. Atwood, 38, a firefighter with Ladder Company 21 in Manhattan, loved anything
as much as fixing up their house in Marine Park, Brooklyn, his wife said, it was
getting out and "seeing new things, meeting new people." In Florida,
those new people included a retired New York firefighter working there as a bartender;
Mr. Atwood reveled in talking to him and "finding a common bond."
Her
husband had "an infectious laugh," she said, and regularly dressed up
as the firehouse Santa Claus. And while a lot of firefighters had second jobs,
"he was able to work it out without that," because his time at home
was so precious.
"He
always said that if money wasn't an object he'd have 20 kids," she said.
"His daughter was just becoming Daddy's little girl." A third child,
the couple learned in July, is on the way.
Newsday
Article
Another
Newsday Article
Boston.com
Article
Back
To Firefighter Index