Timothy
B. Higgins - Side by Side Farewells to two who trained together
and entered the towers together Sept. 11 October 5, 2001
Paper fell in a strange blizzard from a darkening
sky Sept. 11 as Terry Hatton led the men from Rescue Co. 1 into
the World Trade Center's north tower. "Brother, I'm afraid this
day we may die," he told a friend as they entered. An hour later,
the order came to evacuate the teetering building, but Timothy
Higgins and the men from Squad 252 kept heading up the stairs.
They said they were on their way to help Hatton. "We'll meet you,"
Higgins shouted over his shoulder through the din to another firefighter
they passed. They buried the two men yesterday, eulogizing Hatton
at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan and Higgins at the Church
of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Lake Ronkonkoma, with uncannily
similar words. Their bodies, found a day apart last weekend only
yards from each other in the remains of the last burning building
they entered, were carried to their graves on the backs of fire
engines. The two decorated fire captains had learned their dangerous
business together as young men in the same elite Brooklyn rescue
company. "We were all guys with 100-percent attitude, all aggressive,"
said Richard Evers, a retired member of Rescue Co. 2 who in the
early 1980s helped school them in the array of saws, ropes, scuba
gear and other specialized equipment. They had been handpicked
for one of the city's busiest companies, and their captain, Ray
Downey, a department legend who also was lost Sept. 11, taught
them to press into the flames beyond where others dared to go.
"He'd say, 'You always go farther. You always go farther,'" Evers'
wife, Denise, a fire dispatcher, recalled. Higgins, 43, and Hatton,
41, were different sides of the same coin. Higgins, who grew up
in Freeport and raised his son and two daughters in Farmingville,
was always asking for more drills and pestering his elders with
questions. He had a knack, Evers remembered, for choosing the
right tool for any rescue. Hatton, a Rockville Centre native who
lived in Manhattan, was cooler, perhaps, but just as much a perfectionist.
He would take rescue tools apart after drills just to see how
they worked. Yesterday, Mayor Rudolph Giu- liani described Hatton,
who was married to a mayoral assistant, as City Hall's "resident
hero," who seemed to win a medal every week. "He reminded me of
Joe DiMaggio: quiet, self-determined, confident," the mayor said
as firefighters from all over the East Coast crowded the aisles
and stretched up Fifth Avenue. "He could have been a movie star,
but if he had been a movie star, he would've been playing roles
like Terry Hatton." Hatton's wife, Beth Petrone-Hatton, found
out she was pregnant with their first child on Sept. 12. In Lake
Ronkonkoma, Higgins' son, Christopher, recalled a man "everyone
loved to say they knew." Higgins, who has three firefighter brothers,
was renowned for his love of a capella singing, a good party,
and most of all the job. He'd crawl between legs to beat other
firefighters waiting to get at a blaze, and then he'd turn around
grinning. When his voice was heard in the smoke, firefighters
said, they always knew things would turn out OK. "His last hour
was his finest," Christopher Higgins said. "He gave himself in
an attempt to save others." Just what happened in those final
minutes on Sept. 11 will likely never be known. Handheld radio
transmissions within the buildings were heard by few who made
it out alive, and those memories are clouded by the confusion
of events. A tool belonging to Higgins' Squad 252 was quickly
found in the north stairwell area, said his brother Joseph, of
Ladder Co. 111 in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Then a firefighter took
him aside to quietly say he'd passed his brother on the 28th floor,
headed up to help Hatton. Joseph, Robert and Matthew Higgins began
a 13-day marathon of digging near the stairwell, going home only
to sleep for a few hours each day. They found another tool from
Squad 252. Late Saturday night, they found Hatton. Late Sunday
night, while they were resting, Higgins was found. "We'd like
to die of a heart attack in our sleep at home like everyone else,"
Timothy Higgins said five years ago in an interview after another
line-of-duty funeral. But for firefighters like Higgins, whose
company motto was "In Squad We Trust," some things overcome that
desire. "The instinct of a firefighter is to make sure everyone
gets out alive - you don't think twice about it," Joseph Higgins
said. "The gamble is there. You have to depend on each other."
--Elizabeth Moore and Kathryn Wellin (Newsday)
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