Chief Leader – May 02, 2017
by BOB HENNELLY
An estimated 10,000 firefighters from across the nation and Canada came to Central Ave. in Bethpage, L.I. to pay their respects to Firefighter William Tolley April 27, forming a line of salute that extended for one-and-a-half miles. The FDNY estimated the crowd was at least 10,000.
The 44-year-old Firefighter died April 20 after he fell five stories from a tower ladder during a two-alarm blaze in Ridgewood, Queens. Mr. Tolley was assigned to Engine Company 135 and had been on the job for 14 years.
Daughter Rivets Crowd
The church of St. Martin of Tours was packed, but all eyes were on Mr. Tolley’s 8-year-old daughter, Isabella, who wore her father’s blue dress cap and wrapped herself in a blanket that bore a larger-than-life picture of her dad.
The church altar was bursting with bright pastel-colored flowers still fresh from the parish’s Easter Sunday service that the Tolley family had attended. The Catholic funeral mass offered by Father Patrick Woods was a mix of religious ritual and intimate recollections of Mr. Tolley’s life from his family and FDNY colleagues.
Firefighter Tolley was recalled as one of those rare individuals who had managed to live out two divergent lifelong ambitions: to be a drummer in a world-renowned heavy-metal band and a New York City Firefighter. According to reporting in Billboard, Mr. Tolley’s band, Internal Bleeding, was set to embark on a national tour in a few weeks.
“He was playing Monday in Moscow” and on Thursday he’d be back on the job working overtime, Firefighter Jarrett Kotarski, of Ladder 135, said in his eulogy. “He chased down his dreams and caught them. He grew up to be a rock star and a hero.”
A Gadget Geek
Mr. Kotarski brought some comic relief to the occasion by recalling Mr. Tolley’s endless pursuit, online and at firefighting expos, of the latest in firefighting gadgetry. “Lights and sirens were his be-all and end-all,” he said. “Even if it was a crazy siren from Brazil that was illegal here because it made people deaf.”
Like many of the speakers, Mr. Kotarski spoke directly to young Isabella, telling her that she was “our little girl now,” referring to her father’s colleagues at Ladder 135. “Now you can count on at least 40 overprotective and overbearing dads watching over you.”
In his remarks, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said that even before Mr. Tolley was sworn in as an FDNY Firefighter, he had raced to the World Trade Center on 9/11 as a member of a Long Island Volunteer Fire Department. “He was a young man with a big smile and an even-bigger heart,” Mr. Nigro said. “We will never forget Billy, and we will watch over his family always.”
Mayor de Blasio said that Mr. Tolley’s first-hand experience of the horrors of the World Trade Center in the immediate aftermath of the attack would have discouraged many, but that “his yearning to serve was only fortified.”
Rocker As Suburban Dad
“One friend said of him that he was a hard rocker and also a Firefighter with a baby seat in the back of a mini-van. Talk about range,” Mr. de Blasio said.
Mr. Tolley’s older brother, Bob, said that since he was five years old, his brother Billy wanted to be a Firefighter, and he recalled “the elation” in his voice the day he got the call from the FDNY. From then on, he said, his younger brother never wavered in his enthusiasm for the job. “Not even once was there ever a trepidation about going to work,” he said.
Commissioner Nigro posthumously assigned Firefighter Tolley to the department’s Special Operations Command, which retroactively entitled him to a 12-percent salary differential that will boost the pension received by his family by at least $5,000 a year.
Cause of Fall Unknown
As per all line-of-duty deaths, the circumstances surrounding Mr. Tolley’s is subject to a thorough investigation by the FDNY. What is known so far is that he stepped from the bucket of the tower ladder that took him to the roof of the building at 16-15 Putnam Ave. in Ridgewood so he could provide ventilation for the fire three floors below. Somehow he lost his footing.
In the immediate aftermath of the Queens fire, Mr. Nigro said Mr. Tolley’s death was “a terrible tragedy for the department…Especially on the heels—one month after the death of EMT Yadira Arroyo,” who had been fatally run down by her own ambulance after it was commandeered by a man with a long arrest record and schizophrenia.
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