Battalion
Chief Edward Geraghty
Battalion
9
Memorial Service
held on October 25, 2001
'His Talent Was His Mind'
Several
years ago, Battalion Chief Edward F. Geraghty was put in charge of the
Fire Department's training school on Randall's Island. On his first
day, he gave the new recruits a pep talk, telling them what he expected.
After he was done, he turned around to find the school's instructors staring
strangely at him. "What did I do wrong?" he asked. One replied, "You're not
supposed to be nice, you're supposed to scare the hell out of them." That
would have been difficult for Chief Geraghty, said his wife, Mary. "I was
married to Eddie for 17 years and I saw him in a bad mood twice." Even last
year, when her father became terminally ill and had to move in with them,
when they found out their middle son, James, 12, had juvenile diabetes and
when they had a fire in their house that displaced them for several weeks,
he kept an optimistic outlook and his sense of humor. She said, "He would
always say, `Life doesn't get any better than this.' " Chief Geraghty, 45,
oversaw five firehouses on Manhattan's West Side, all of which responded
to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Mrs. Geraghty used to go downstairs
every morning and find her husband already reading and studying. "His talent
was his mind," she said. Now, when she rises, she sits at the bottom of the
stairs as the sun comes up with a picture of him and tells him, "Good morning." Profile
published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on March 10, 2002
Newsday Article
Lightwatcher.org Article
Irish Tribute
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