Special Thanks Memorial Tattoos Poems & Stories Court Officers Memorial PAPD Memorial NYPD Memorial FDNY Memorial

 

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)

Back to Brian's Home Page