cont'd
from Patrick's Home Page
On it, Waters has just rushed to the north tower, where a command
post has been set up in the lobby. He checks in, gets his assignment
and then leaves. In the final minutes of his life, she said, he
is wearing "kind of a concentrated look." "It was a little unsettling
to watch it," she said. It is not easy for her to talk about,
either. "But after you watch it a couple of times, you feel better,
seeing him doing his job, I guess." His body was recovered Sept.
30. She is glad that through the documentary, she was given the
chance to see him alive one last time. Waters, 45, was always
happy to do his job for the New York City Fire Department - his
wife said it was
almost "disgusting" how much he loved going to work in the morning.
Raised in Inwood, he had been a businessman, earning good money
and doing lots of travel as an internal auditor for an insurance
company, when his number came up on the FDNY test he had taken
years earlier. He passed on the opportunity, but the attraction
of the job "kept calling him" and finally, in 1983, he traded
his jacket and tie for turnout gear and those shoulder patches
with the World Trade Center standing out on the New York City
skyline. He worked for Engine Co. 217 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Ladder
Co. 108 in Williamsburg, Ladder Co. 106 and a string of other
houses. By the time he made captain in 2000 and was assigned to
the Haz-Mat Co. 1 in Maspeth, he knew every type of ladder truck
the department owned and had won a citation for jumping into the
icy East River to help rescue seven people after Greenpoint's
India Street Pier collapsed in 1997. But when his wife met him
25 years ago, what attracted him to her was something different:
"He made me laugh," she said. "I'm too serious sometimes." She
laughed at the memory. They would have been married 20 years next
month. One more memory she wanted to share: Her husband was a
"really big" Yankees fan. After the attack, the Manhattan law
firm where she works as a legal secretary, Kaye Scholer LLP, gave
the family World Series tickets, and their two boys - Christopher,
14, and Daniel, 10 - made up a big poster with Waters' picture
on it. "And they wrote on it, 'Yankee Fan To The End,'" she said,
bursting into tears. -- Elizabeth Moore (Newsday)
Back
to Patrick's Home Page