树立平凡英雄 美国爱国主义教育经典时刻
Firefighter Michael Curran Reilly’s coffin, draped in a flag, was taken from St. Paul Roman Catholic Church in Ramsey, N.J., to a cemetery after his funeral Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/nyregion/02funeral.html
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: September 2, 2006
9月1日，来自三个州的人们为一位救火员举行隆重的葬礼。
RAMSEY, N.J., Sept. 1 ― On July 6 friends and relatives of Michael Curran Reilly gathered at Brooklyn College for a ceremony and a celebration. He was graduating from the New York City Fire Academy at the top of his class. On Friday, 57 days and one deadly Bronx fire later, they met again, this time at a small red-brick church in New Jersey, where his helmet and his coffin lay.
Mel Evans/Associated Press
Fellow firefighters in the procession that followed the funeral Friday for Firefighter Michael Curran Reilly in Ramsey, N.J.
The black-and-yellow helmet sat on a wooden pedestal near the altar of St. Paul Roman Catholic Church in the small borough of Ramsey, where Firefighter Reilly grew up. It was a rookie’s helmet, emblazoned with “75,” his Bronx engine company. It still looked new.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stepped past it as he made his way to the podium. The mayor attended the graduation ceremony in July and remembered Firefighter Reilly striding across the stage. The mayor told him what he said he tells all probationary firefighters ― “probies,” in firefighter parlance.
“Stay safe,” Mr. Bloomberg said he told Firefighter Reilly. “I don’t suppose it’s a mayoral order. It’s more a prayer, more than anything else.”
这位平凡的英雄，25岁，周日，纽约北部的Bronx区，一?楼倒塌，他与四位同事被陷。
Firefighter Reilly, 25, was killed on Sunday in the Bronx, when the floor of a burning 99-cent store at 1575 Walton Avenue collapsed, trapping him and four colleagues in a pile of debris. He was the first New York firefighter to die in the line of duty since Jan. 23, 2005, when three firefighters were killed in two separate fires in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
At Firefighter Reilly’s funeral on Friday, hundreds of firefighters from three states ― New York, New Jersey and Connecticut ― filled the church and thousands more stood outside beneath a cloudless pale-blue sky. Ramsey itself seemed melancholy, awash in crisp blues, white gloves and polished black shoes.
Firefighter Reilly was only 25, but he had already built a distinguished firefighting career at departments and rescue squads in Ramsey, Stratford, Conn., New York City and the western desert of Iraq, where he served a seven-month tour as a military firefighter with the Marine Reserves.
Probie is another word for rookie. Yesterday, it seemed to take on a deeper meaning. People said it with respect.
James Flannery, a young firefighter who worked with Firefighter Reilly at the Stratford department, said the term was just an administrative necessity. “You give your life just the same,” he said.
One other firefighter died in the collapse on Sunday, Lt. Howard J. Carpluk Jr., 43, a 20-year veteran and a father of two. Lieutenant Carpluk’s funeral is being held on Saturday in Islip, N.Y. The deaths of Firefighter Reilly and Lieutenant Carpluk, a few weeks before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, illustrated not only the dangers of fighting fires but the humble grace of the job. It is a job that in the end draws no distinction between probie and veteran, between rushing into the twin towers and rushing into Mega 99 on Walton Avenue.
About an hour before the start of the morning service, firefighters stood on the double-yellow line on Wyckoff Avenue outside the church, filling one lane, row after row of them, chatting casually. But a few minutes after 10:30 a.m., as the church’s bell tolled, the crowd hushed, and the members of the various departments stood at attention along Wyckoff and along the church’s curved driveway. A New York City firetruck, its red lights flashing, crept up the street. Firefighter Reilly’s coffin lay atop it, draped with an American flag.
You could hear a baby cry and a bird chirp and the sound of bagpipes and snare drums. That was all. It was as if the firefighters had offered Firefighter Reilly the only thing they could at that moment: the gift of their silence, their stillness.
Inside and outside the church, colleagues, family members and politicians described two Firefighter Reillys. One was the determined firefighter, first off the truck at a Ramsey house fire in 2003, the by-the-book darling of the drill instructors at the Fire Academy who willingly took a pay cut when he joined the New York department, a lifelong dream. The other was of a dimpled, boyish young man with a prankster’s streak, respected not for saving lives and property but for rescuing his stranded younger sister, Erin, after she wrecked her car.
“It’s kind of funny to me to hear him referred to as a hero,” Erin Reilly said during a touching eulogy, as her father, Michael, stood by her side and her mother, Monica, and brother, Kevin, looked on from a front pew. “To me, he was the same kid who taught Kevin how to pull the heads off of my Barbies.”
She said Firefighter Reilly used to tell people he was a professional bullfighter, used to living the way he drove: with confidence and speed. “You can’t pick your family,” she said. “Michael was my big brother by blood, but one of my best friends by choice.”
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta also spoke of Michael Reilly, the loyal firefighter and sergeant in the Marine Reserves, and Michael Reilly, the brother, the son. One day when Firefighter Reilly was just a boy, Commissioner Scoppetta said, he stuck his head out the car window as his mother drove him. He gazed up at the sky.
“He pulled his head back in, and said to his mom, ‘Does heaven have a floor?’ ”
Firefighter Michael Curran Reilly’s coffin, draped in a flag, was taken from St. Paul Roman Catholic Church in Ramsey, N.J., to a cemetery after his funeral Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/nyregion/02funeral.html
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: September 2, 2006
9月1日，来自三个州的人们为一位救火员举行隆重的葬礼。
RAMSEY, N.J., Sept. 1 ― On July 6 friends and relatives of Michael Curran Reilly gathered at Brooklyn College for a ceremony and a celebration. He was graduating from the New York City Fire Academy at the top of his class. On Friday, 57 days and one deadly Bronx fire later, they met again, this time at a small red-brick church in New Jersey, where his helmet and his coffin lay.
Mel Evans/Associated Press
Fellow firefighters in the procession that followed the funeral Friday for Firefighter Michael Curran Reilly in Ramsey, N.J.
The black-and-yellow helmet sat on a wooden pedestal near the altar of St. Paul Roman Catholic Church in the small borough of Ramsey, where Firefighter Reilly grew up. It was a rookie’s helmet, emblazoned with “75,” his Bronx engine company. It still looked new.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stepped past it as he made his way to the podium. The mayor attended the graduation ceremony in July and remembered Firefighter Reilly striding across the stage. The mayor told him what he said he tells all probationary firefighters ― “probies,” in firefighter parlance.
“Stay safe,” Mr. Bloomberg said he told Firefighter Reilly. “I don’t suppose it’s a mayoral order. It’s more a prayer, more than anything else.”
这位平凡的英雄，25岁，周日，纽约北部的Bronx区，一?楼倒塌，他与四位同事被陷。
Firefighter Reilly, 25, was killed on Sunday in the Bronx, when the floor of a burning 99-cent store at 1575 Walton Avenue collapsed, trapping him and four colleagues in a pile of debris. He was the first New York firefighter to die in the line of duty since Jan. 23, 2005, when three firefighters were killed in two separate fires in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
At Firefighter Reilly’s funeral on Friday, hundreds of firefighters from three states ― New York, New Jersey and Connecticut ― filled the church and thousands more stood outside beneath a cloudless pale-blue sky. Ramsey itself seemed melancholy, awash in crisp blues, white gloves and polished black shoes.
Firefighter Reilly was only 25, but he had already built a distinguished firefighting career at departments and rescue squads in Ramsey, Stratford, Conn., New York City and the western desert of Iraq, where he served a seven-month tour as a military firefighter with the Marine Reserves.
Probie is another word for rookie. Yesterday, it seemed to take on a deeper meaning. People said it with respect.
James Flannery, a young firefighter who worked with Firefighter Reilly at the Stratford department, said the term was just an administrative necessity. “You give your life just the same,” he said.
One other firefighter died in the collapse on Sunday, Lt. Howard J. Carpluk Jr., 43, a 20-year veteran and a father of two. Lieutenant Carpluk’s funeral is being held on Saturday in Islip, N.Y. The deaths of Firefighter Reilly and Lieutenant Carpluk, a few weeks before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, illustrated not only the dangers of fighting fires but the humble grace of the job. It is a job that in the end draws no distinction between probie and veteran, between rushing into the twin towers and rushing into Mega 99 on Walton Avenue.
About an hour before the start of the morning service, firefighters stood on the double-yellow line on Wyckoff Avenue outside the church, filling one lane, row after row of them, chatting casually. But a few minutes after 10:30 a.m., as the church’s bell tolled, the crowd hushed, and the members of the various departments stood at attention along Wyckoff and along the church’s curved driveway. A New York City firetruck, its red lights flashing, crept up the street. Firefighter Reilly’s coffin lay atop it, draped with an American flag.
You could hear a baby cry and a bird chirp and the sound of bagpipes and snare drums. That was all. It was as if the firefighters had offered Firefighter Reilly the only thing they could at that moment: the gift of their silence, their stillness.
Inside and outside the church, colleagues, family members and politicians described two Firefighter Reillys. One was the determined firefighter, first off the truck at a Ramsey house fire in 2003, the by-the-book darling of the drill instructors at the Fire Academy who willingly took a pay cut when he joined the New York department, a lifelong dream. The other was of a dimpled, boyish young man with a prankster’s streak, respected not for saving lives and property but for rescuing his stranded younger sister, Erin, after she wrecked her car.
“It’s kind of funny to me to hear him referred to as a hero,” Erin Reilly said during a touching eulogy, as her father, Michael, stood by her side and her mother, Monica, and brother, Kevin, looked on from a front pew. “To me, he was the same kid who taught Kevin how to pull the heads off of my Barbies.”
She said Firefighter Reilly used to tell people he was a professional bullfighter, used to living the way he drove: with confidence and speed. “You can’t pick your family,” she said. “Michael was my big brother by blood, but one of my best friends by choice.”
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta also spoke of Michael Reilly, the loyal firefighter and sergeant in the Marine Reserves, and Michael Reilly, the brother, the son. One day when Firefighter Reilly was just a boy, Commissioner Scoppetta said, he stuck his head out the car window as his mother drove him. He gazed up at the sky.
“He pulled his head back in, and said to his mom, ‘Does heaven have a floor?’ ”
