Fred
Ill Jr. was a skinny kid from the Bronx, and he made up for
it by being better than you.
A
captain in the New York Fire Department, he gained fame two
years ago for saving the life of a man who was pushed onto the
subway tracks. The duty of a firefighter ends right about there,
but simple lifesaving was not enough for Captain Ill. He later
stayed nearby as the man learned to walk on artificial legs,
and he helped to find scholarships for the man's children.
He
put in extra effort as a father of three, a baseball and basketball
coach, a reservist in the Army Corps of Engineers and, of course,
a firehouse leader.
"Everything
he did, he did it over the top," said Chris Flatley, a
firefighter at Ladder Company 2 in Manhattan. The men there,
on East 51st Street, say that Captain Ill, 49, was the first
captain to dedicate himself to the house, which officers are
wont to treat as a stressful, temporary steppingstone.
The
firefighters could not resist occasionally pulling pranks on
such a man. Once they watched as Captain Ill called in a report
of a suspicious package, though they knew he was looking at
a newly installed sculpture.
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 24, 2001.
This story was gotten at Legacy.com
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