Firefighter
Vincent Kane
Engine 22
Memorial
Service was held
on October 6th, 2001
Laid
to Rest
on November 26, 2001
Strumming
in the Park Among the city's thousands of firefighters, Vincent
Kane stood out. He lived on the Upper East Side and spent hours
in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And he went
to performances of the New York Philharmonic ‹ something that
still amazes his friends in Engine Company 22. "Most firefighters
don't even know what the Philharmonic is," said one of them,
Michael Ruddick. He was also an environmentalist who regularly
patrolled the firehouse trash bins for recyclables. And not
long ago, he became a vegetarian ‹ though the other firefighters
insisted on piling red meat onto his plate anyway. "My daughter
would be serving turkey on a holiday, and he would have the
artificial kind," said his mother, Joan. "We had to laugh when
he'd do that." Firefighter Kane, 37, grew up in Breezy Point,
Queens, where he became a volunteer fireman at 17. "He was always
giving," Mrs. Kane said. He loved to play tunes by the Grateful
Dead or the Beatles on his guitar. His neighbors on East 80th
Street, who nicknamed him "the Mayor," listened for the music
wafting softly from his apartment late at night. He kept a guitar
in his locker at the firehouse, too, and would sometimes announce
to his colleagues that he was heading out to play it in the
park. "I used to tell him he was straying as far away from the
normal firefighter stereotype as he possibly could," Mr. Ruddick
said. Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 29,
2001
Newsday
Article