Firefighter
Tarel Coleman
Squad 252
Memorial
Service was held
on November 17, 2001.
Unbridled
and Unabashed
Firefighter Tarel Coleman's friends, co-workers and football
teammates called him "Prozac." Not because he took the mood-balancing
drug, but because sometimes he needed to calm down a little.
While many people have a childhood story involving matches,
Firefighter Coleman's firebug past cost him some hair. At 5,
he stuck his head into the incinerator in his family's apartment
building in Queens. "We didn't notice anything," Firefighter
Coleman's brother, John Coleman Jr. , also a firefighter, "until
we got upstairs and saw that he had no eyebrows, no eyelashes
and no hairline." His chattiness and high-strung curiosity were
viewed as charm by his friends. Whenever he prepared a lasagna
dinner for his mother, Laurel Jackson, in her Jamaica, Queens,
home, she would just watch her son patiently, with her head
propped on her hand. "You couldn't stop him," she said. "You
had to sit there and listen." Firefighter Coleman, 32, had an
intensity that was viewed with dread by his team's opponents
and by the referees of the league games he played for the Fire
Department. Everyone knew, after all, that he did not suffer
bad calls gladly. Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on
December 10, 2001.
Bravest
Football Club
Newsday
Article
Squad
252
Article
about Black History Month in Tribute