From
Boyhood, a Fireman Michael Vernon Kiefer wanted to be a New York
City fireman as long as anyone can remember. As a toddler, he
and his father, Bud, would visit the firehouse in Franklin Square,
N.Y., so that he could sit on the trucks. As a schoolboy, his
impression of a siren was so convincing that he once caused a
bus driver to pull over abruptly. And his sisters were often drilled
on how to rescue their dolls from pretend fires in the backyard
shed. And as a teenager about to undergo an appendectomy, he was
anxious, not about the operation, but whether the surgery would
keep him from passing the New York Fire Department's physical
someday, his parents recalled. As a young man, Michael Kiefer
worked as an emergency medical technician and met his fiancée,
Jamie Huggler, a physician's assistant. When he finally got the
chance in late 2000 to be a full-fledged New York City firefighter
at age 25, he was all nerves until he learned he had been assigned
to Ladder Company 132, one of Brooklyn's busiest. "He was lucky
in a way," said Bud Kiefer, "because a lot of people today are
50 years old and don't know what they want to be when they grew
up. He knew." Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on January
20, 2002.
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