By noon on Friday, Oct. 5, the
sun had finally cleared the apartment buildings facing St. Ignatius Loyola
Church on Park Avenue. It was a summer sun, bright and hot, and if you were
standing on the steps of the church or lingering on the sidewalk, you found
yourself moving toward the street, where it was shady. There was no traffic in
the southbound lanes. Cars were being diverted at East 85th Street so the
avenue would be clear when the family of Firefighter Thomas Cullen III stepped
from the cool darkness of the church into the sunshine.
There were 15 funerals or memorial services for fallen
firefighters on Oct. 5. Had there been just one or two, there would have been
many more blue uniforms inside the church or lingering in the street, waiting
to perform rituals now so terribly familiar: the honor guard, the final salute,
the bagpipers’ laments. The Fire Department is so drained of men and material
that it asked colleagues from Paramus and Englewood, N.J., to bring their
ladder truck
into Manhattan to help salute Firefighter
Cullen. The yellow Englewood rig was parked near the sidewalk, the Paramus
truck on the far side of the southbound lanes, and from their raised towers
hung an American flag.
“They don’t have enough trucks
to cover all the funerals,” one of the Englewood firefighters said. Underneath
the flag was Squad 41’s rig, which in other times would receive the
firefighter’s flag-draped casket. On this day, at this service, there was no
casket.
The memorial mass was long and sad. A few hundred firefighters
were in the pews, along with Firefighter Cullen’s family and friends-so young,
those friends. Cullen was just a month into his 31st year on Sept. 11. His
colleagues, in dress uniforms, clutched his memorial card as they knelt to
pray. On the front was a picture of Cullen in full battle dress; on the back
was a heartbreaking farewell from his wife, Susan: “When I was young, I dreamed
of finding someone really special who would come into my life …. When I grew older, I found that person …. ”
Outside, some of Cullen’s colleagues gathered in small groups in
the shade. Many had duties to perform once mass was over. Four bagpipers sat
under a tree on the Park Avenue median. A fireman with a bugle paced nearby. An
officer in a white hat drew a line in the street with a piece of chalk. Men
from Engine Companies 22 and 44 wandered about in their bunker pants, boots and
work shirts. They were on call.
Through it all, life as the
Upper East Side knows it went on almost as if nothing else were going on. Two
young blondes dressed in the black of fashion and not of mourning strolled by,
each attached to a cell phone. A young father in shorts and a T-shirt hurried
by, his young son on his shoulders. Under the young father’s right arm was a
copy of Stephen Ambrose’s Band of
Brothers . He passed groups of firefighters from Boston, Mineola, Larchmont
and Elizabeth, N.J., chatting quietly with their NYFD brethren. A little boy,
no more than 3, pointed as an honor guard stepped into the street. “Why do they
have flags?” he asked his nanny. “For the fireman who died,” she replied. He
grabbed her hand and started to pull her away. “I don’t want to be here,” he
said. “Where’s mommy?” The nanny gathered the child into her arms and whispered
comfort.
The small talk and the waiting
stopped around noon, when applause from inside the church signaled the end of
the mass and the beginning of one last ritual. Firemen in heavy blue jackets,
blue shirts, blue ties and white gloves streamed from the church and deployed
on the street in three rows, to the left of the chalk mark. As Cullen’s widow
and family emerged from the church, the firefighters came to attention and
saluted. They all looked straight ahead; some of the men in the front row were
crying; some shoulders sagged forward. The bagpipers played “Going Home.” The
bugler played “Taps” and missed the high note. The pipers sounded again, this
time with “America the Beautiful,” and Thomas Cullen’s widow and family and
friends walked slowly past the lines of saluting firemen. They disappeared into
an anteroom in the church’s basement. An officer shouted “Dismissed,” and the
firefighters broke ranks and hugged each other and lit their cigarettes with
little Bic lighters.
Fifteen times on this lovely October day, the lines of
firefighters saluted and wept. They will continue these terrible and beautiful
rituals until each of the 350 fallen have been prayed for and saluted for their
extraordinary sacrifice.
Seeing them weep, seeing them embrace, seeing them struggle to
straighten their shoulders, you wonder how they will get through this terrible
time. But then you remember the pride they take in being called “The Bravest.”
