Chief Leader – September 09, 2014
by SARAH DORSEY
Fire Capt. Peter J. Casey was enthusiastic enough about his job that his son, Brian, remembers as a child hearing his dad yell out the car window, “Hey, brother!” whenever he saw an FDNY sticker on a nearby car.
“He lived the FDNY as long as I can remember,” Brian said of his father, who died of multiple myeloma at age 66.
13 Added to Plaque
He spoke to THE CHIEF-LEADER at a Sept. 4 ceremony honoring the 13 department members who died of Sept. 11-related illnesses over the last year. Their names were added to a plaque in the lobby of FDNY headquarters at MetroTech in downtown Brooklyn.
Captain Casey was good not just at a blaze but with the community, his son recalled. In the days before Williamsburg was gentrified, he struck up a conversation with a local kid living near the firehouse in a building outside which the fire officer’s car had just been stolen. He learned the kid—Brian thinks he was 12 or 13—liked to draw, and Captain Casey let him put the Williamsburg bridge on the back of his bunker jacket and some crude flames on the sides of another vehicle, his old Chevy Nova.
“It didn’t look right—it wasn’t even very good,” his son recalled, smiling at the silly design a 13-year-old would think looked cool. “It helped him get on the community’s side.”
He could apparently think fast during a fire, too. Peter’s sister, Mary Colleran, described another incident when his firefighters were stuck in a large blaze and grew concerned they wouldn’t find their way out. Captain Casey called to the chauffeur on the radio to turn the truck’s siren on. It helped guide them out of the building.
A former Marine who fought in Vietnam, he was used to shielding the tough parts of his work from his family; his sister said he told them he never saw any fighting, until one day she found photos of the dead in Da Nang.
Like so many of his colleagues, he spent months doing recovery work at the World Trade Center site, and when he was diagnosed with the blood cancer 10 years ago, Captain Casey had just adopted an infant from China with his wife.
“He started to get better for a while,” Mr. Casey said, noting that his young daughter gave him a stronger will to live. “He kept fighting it.”
At the ceremony, each member’s name was called and a bell was rung. A family member laid a white rose by the wall. Firefighter Regina Wilson sang “Amazing Grace.”
Still Taking Its Toll
“They say time heals all wounds, but we know it’s not that simple,” Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told the families. Sept. 11 “still continues to take far too many of the best among us,” he said, describing those who died as “the long blue line of heroes who watch over us and inspire us all.”
The memorial wall now has 89 names, and health advocates fear the numbers will rise as more develop cancer and other ailments. Since the Zadroga Act began accepting cancer patients for medical care and economic compensation, more than 2,800 civilians and uniformed workers have had their cancers certified as caused by the terrorist attacks.
The other names added to the wall last week are Firefighter William H. Quick of Ladder Co. 134, Firefighter Willie T. Franklin Jr. of Engine Co. 65, Battalion Chief Thomas R. Van Doran of Battalion 3, Firefighter Walter Torres of Engine Co. 328, Battalion Chief Richard D. Arazosa of Battalion 19, Supervising Fire Marshal Emil K. Harnischfeger of the Bureau of Fire Investigation, Paramedic Rudolph T. Havelka of the EMS Bureau of Training, Emergency Medical Technician Francis A. Charles of EMS Station 58, Paramedic John W. Wyatt, Jr. of EMS Station 22, Lieutenant Thomas J. Greaney of Ladder Co. 175, Firefighter Keith E. Atlas of Engine Co. 35, and Lieutenant Steven B. Reisman of Engine Co. 307.
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