Firefighter Michael Carroll
Ladder 3
Memorial Service was held
on October 20, 2001.
Always
Ready to Help
Over
at the Ladder 3 firehouse, none of the coffee cups have handles.
It's one of the many legacies of Michael Carroll, 39, who spent
16 years there. The other firefighters are not sure why he started
snapping off the handles, but just like his other habits, it
could not be stopped. He also cut a hole in the wall between
the ladder company's dormitory and a room reserved for the aide
who drives the local battalion chief around. Late at night,
if the ladder company answered an alarm and the aide stayed
in bed, Firefighter Carroll would reach through the hole, open
a dresser drawer and slam it, just to let the aide know they
had returned.
"He
was an incredible teacher for the younger firemen," said
Pat Murphy, whose idea of torture was speaking to school groups
touring the firehouse — until Firefighter Carroll helped
him.
Michael
Carroll drove the truck to the fires, coached his son, Brendan,
in baseball and doted on his wife, Nancy, and daughter, Olivia.
He was "great, great and great," said his friend Gerard
Brenkert.
During
the blizzard of 1996, he was heading uptown from New York Hospital
after his father had surgery there.
"On
every other corner, there was a poor soul looking for a cab,"
said Nancy Amigron, his sister. One by one, Firefighter Carroll
picked up the snow-covered New Yorkers and drove them home.
"We were so relieved about my father that we would have
driven anybody to California," said Mrs. Amigron, who is
planning to send some new coffee cups — without handles
— to Ladder 3.
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 9, 2001