heroes

9/11, heroes, Support our troops, World Trade Center

9/11 hero FDNY LT Kevin Dowdell’s sons answer the call

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The Dowdells

In his New York Daily News column today, Michael Daly writes of brave men:

Fire Lt. Kevin Dowdell was killed at the World Trade Center, but his living spirit carried one son into the FDNY and another to West Point. The older son, 24-year-old Army 1st Lt. Patrick Dowdell, departed for Iraq on St. Patrick’s Day. He was in the air even as his brother, 23-year-old Firefighter James Dowdell, marched in the parade for the first time as a member of the FDNY Emerald Society Pipes and Drums. The father was as fine a man as I have met, and the sons are everything he could have hoped they would become … I only wish I had known what to say. I would have had a hard enough time mustering the right words if he were going to a war with the whole country behind him, but when Americans think about the Iraq war at all, a majority think we should just leave…
…
Patrick was on the way when Flaherty donned his big bearskin hat and raised his staff and led the band up Fifth Ave. Among those who followed was James Dowdell of Ladder 174. At the postparade gathering, Flaherty informed everybody not already aware that Patrick was on the way to Iraq, appropriately with a stopover in Shannon, Ireland. The band then played “The Army Goes Rolling Along,” the official Army song, in his honor.

The Dowdell boys’ mother was there, rightly proud of the two phenomenal sons of a phenomenal dad. Rosellen Dowdell has already lost a husband. Now her older son was heading into a war where the American toll has reached 4,000 dead. Still, she manages to laugh when she recounts what Patrick and James say to her as they place themselves in harm’s way. “They tell me, ‘It’s what we do,'” she said.

heroes

Hometown heroes: FDNY firefighters rescue two women

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FDNY Ladder 18 firefighters rescue two lower Eastside women

In this morning’s New York Post:

The women were in an apartment on the third floor of the building at 1223 FDR Drive at around 4:30 p.m. when the fire broke out, a Fire Department spokesman said. Firefighters Charles Maloney and Steven Katz of Ladder 18 followed the screams of the health-care provider, in her 50s, who was trapped behind a child-guard screen … Maloney, in a bucket ladder outside of the building, removed the guard and pulled the aide to safety. Katz then went into the apartment and carried the bed-ridden elderly woman, in her 70s, from the blaze.

“That’s what we do, we come to work everyday hoping we can do this,” said Maloney of their heroism.