The
Way He Wanted to Die / A wounded, heroic fire captain now missing in rubble
September
19, 2001
Three months ago, at a time when death seemed everywhere, Capt.
Brian Hickey and his wife, Donna, had just finished burying two
of his men from Rescue 4. They had been killed with another firefighter
in a hardware store blaze in Astoria on Father's Day. Hickey himself
bore the wounds of a blast that had blown him into a ceiling that
day. A sense of mourning cloaked the city. But the captain, who
always knew who he was and who he wanted to be, told his wife
to take heart.
"Everyone's got to die one day; it's inescapable," he
said that night. "I hope I go that way."
Now, at a time when death is everywhere, the Rescue 4 captain
has been lost, along with other members of his company, in the
cascade of flame, stone and metal that once was the World Trade
Center. Outside his firehouse in Woodside on Monday, a thousand
New Yorkers lit the dark with candles, said Hail Marys and sang
the "Star Spangled Banner."
Inside, at a handmade kitchen table, Donna Hickey remembered her
husband's words and said she's going to be OK. Brian Hickey had
volunteered for an overtime shift when he was lost in the Twin
Towers collapse, and after a week of private hell, his wife no
longer believes he will be found alive. She said she's at peace,
knowing that he meant what he said -- this is the way he wanted
to die.
Hickey had said the same thing in a different way at his dining
room table this past April during an interview about fire protection.
"Young guys always think they're going to live forever,"
said the Bethpage volunteer and former fire commissioner. "But
you can never lose sight of what our job really is."
Hickey's job as a city rescue captain was to pull people out of
burning buildings, to haul them out of holes and out of wrecked
cars, and out from under the tracks of subway trains and the fuselages
of crashed planes. He presided over a company of men so admired
that buffs all over the country line up to bid at auction for
their cast- off garments.
He described his calling in "FDNY: Brothers in Battle,"
a movie he made with his late, younger brother Ray, a television
editor and Bethpage volunteer who died of cancer soon after the
film aired on the Arts & Entertainment channel in 1992.
"I have no ambition in this world but one, and that is to
be a fireman," Hickey quotes a turn-of-the-century New York
fire chief, Edward Crocker, as the film opens. "The position
may, in the eyes of some, appear to be a lowly one; but we who
know the work which a fireman has to do, believe his is a noble
calling. Our proudest moment is to save ... lives. Under the impulse
of such thoughts, the nobility of the occupation thrills us and
stimulates us to deeds of daring, even of supreme sacrifice."
Hickey found his calling when he was 18 years old and a friend
invited him to the Bethpage firehouse. He was so taken with the
life that he put off going to college to join.
"It's a brotherhood, it's a camaraderie, it's a club that
you belong to," he said in the April interview. "Ask
a young firefighter why they joined and they'll say, 'I want to
fight fires, I want to save lives.' But it's not really your main
reason for doing it. It's to belong to the club and do something
exciting."
The fun stopped on the night of May 25, 1978, when a man who had
just been fired from a swimming pool store got drunk and torched
the building. Two members of Hickey's brotherhood, Bethpage Capt.
Joseph Dunn, 25, and firefighter Robert Hassett, 21, were trapped
in the blaze and died.
And Brian Hickey's life changed.
"From that point on I took it more serious. I was 24 at the
time. I changed. I went down a different road as far as what I
thought was important and not important."
The road took a permanent turn 20 years ago when he joined the
New York City Fire Department. He started with an engine company
in Harlem, then went to a ladder company in the Bronx. After tours
in Woodside and South Jamaica in Queens, he was promoted to captain
three years ago.
Meanwhile, he kept active at home on Long Island, becoming an
instructor at the Nassau County Fire Academy and a commissioner
in Bethpage.
As a Bethpage commissioner, Hickey successfully pushed for greater
cooperation with other departments to improve response times and
became known as a vocal critic of Long Island's firefighting system
-- something that angered many of his volunteer peers.
In an article in Fire News three years ago, Hickey made his point
bluntly. "Nassau County is approaching an era that will soon
be called to judgment because of the cost of running the Volunteer
Fire Service." He decried "outlandish" equipment
purchases and "outrageous" budget increases in local
departments without corresponding improvements in service.
"I'm a loud mouth, but I've been around long enough to see
what's happening," Hickey said in April. He said he wasn't
concerned about whether his views made him unpopular in his hometown.
"You don't realize until you're older what our job really
is," he said. "You realize it's more dangerous."
When a gas can spilled by a teenager seeped into the basement
of a hardware building supply store in Astoria and onto some electrical
wiring, bursting into flames on Father's Day, Hickey again faced
danger.
He had led four of his men into the building with a water can
and demolition tools when the chemicals in the basement exploded,
hurling them against the ceiling. Hickey and three of the men
managed to escape as the floor collapsed beneath them. But Firefighter
Brian Fahey, a fellow instructor at the Nassau Fire Academy, was
not so lucky.
As a dazed and wounded Hickey struggled to regain his bearings,
his radio crackled with a terse mayday from Fahey, who was was
trapped in the basement. Fire crews launched a frenetic effort
to pull him out of the inferno but were driven back. The driver
of Hickey's rig, Harry Ford, lay dead on the sidewalk under toppled
masonry. Another firefighter, John Downing, was found nearby.
A preliminary probe concluded this was one of the few fatal fires
in city history that couldn't be chalked up to poor training,
or misplaced resources, or anything other than freak bad luck.
Hickey was philosophical -- except for one thing.
"The only thing that hurt him, hurt him deeply," his
wife said, "was that he couldn't save their lives. He had
no control."
Hickey used his sick leave as a gift, taking his youngest son
Kevin to the driving range almost every day, buying the 9-year-old
his own set of clubs and teaching him to swing.
The Hickey's oldest son Daniel, 23, is in the Marines. Dennis,
18, finished high school last year. Last week, they held a sweet
16 party for their daughter Jackie. It took place in the meeting
hall at the Bethpage firehouse. Rescue 4 firefighter Bill Pollack
catered the meal.
"She was in a beautiful red dress," Donna Hickey recalled.
"The deejay asked her to go get her dad, and they danced
to 'Lady in Red.' It was unbelievable. My daughter's got that
for the rest of her life."
Looking back, the firefighter's wife says her husband had prepared
her for the possibility of widowhood from the very beginning of
their marriage, and she had accepted it. From the time Donna was
16, she recalled, "he was all mine."
She was cutting third period at Bethpage High School to go to
the diner one day and was looking for someone with a car. Brian
Hickey had a beat-up old black Chevrolet with holes in the roof.
It was good enough. From then on, they skipped third period every
day to go to the diner.
Donna Hickey has few regrets. "This was a calling. This is
his calling. He knew the dangers and was never, never afraid,
because his heart was in the job. It's his life. He was one of
the fortunate people who go through this life never questioning,
'What am I going to be, what am I going to do?'
"I'm very proud of him. He's a hero. It's a big loss for
the city of New York."
Then she laughed, a deeply happy laugh.
"But I had him."
-- Elizabeth Moore (Newsday)
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