Invoice Feehan was born to be a firefighter and died one on 9/11, however his legacy will dwell on for generations.
New York Put up photograph composite
One grey Saturday morning in 1945, days earlier than the atomic detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki introduced World Struggle II to a detailed, a US Military B-25 bomber, misplaced in thick fog, careened into the 79th flooring of the Empire State Constructing.
Excessive-test gas flooded the skyscraper’s higher tales, sparking a conflagration 913 toes within the air. The aircraft’s touchdown gear plummeted down an elevator shaft, hitting the inspiration like a bomb. Engine elements slammed onto a close-by constructing, setting off secondary blazes. Three crew members and 11 civilians had been killed.
William Patrick Feehan, a 20-year veteran of the Hearth Division of New York, was one of many first on the scene. Six miles away in Jackson Heights, Queens, 15-year-old Invoice Feehan eavesdropped on the motion over the FDNY’s radio alarm broadcast.
Many years later, particulars of the catastrophe “by no means appeared to fade from Invoice’s reminiscence,” writes Brian McDonald, within the new e book “5 Flooring Up” (Grand Central Publishing), out now. “The final time he advised the story concerning the aircraft hitting the Empire State Constructing was … just some months earlier than the World Commerce Middle assault.”
McDonald tells the story of a four-generation FDNY household, the division they serve, and the bonds that impressed their devotion to what they see as a calling, an obligation and a lifestyle.
“It’s a really particular tradition,” mentioned a grown-up Invoice Feehan in 1992, three many years after following his father into the FDNY.
“When you've got a division whose women and men are anticipated to be prepared at any second to place their life on the road, to go to the help of a stranger … I don’t assume you may pay folks to do this job. There needs to be one thing past cash that makes them try this.”
Invoice joined the division in 1959 and served at each certainly one of its 9 ranks, together with commissioner. On September 11, 2001, First Deputy Commissioner Feehan — who, regardless of his array of titles, insisted on simply being referred to as “Chief” — was serving to to direct the response from the West Avenue command heart on the base of the World Commerce Middle. With its collapse he grew to become, at age 71, the FDNY’s oldest 9/11 casualty.
He was “a residing legend,” the 9/11 Memorial Museum declared. “Half father confessor, half historical past professor, and half hearth division Yoda,” McDonald writes.
However his good run almost ended earlier than it started.
The wait to enter the division was lengthy in the Fifties, as Invoice and different Korean Struggle veterans returned to civilian lives in New York Metropolis. Simply married to the previous Betty Keegan, his sweetheart from St. John’s School, he took a job with the New York Hearth Patrol, a personal company that protected expensive gear at business hearth scenes.
In February 1958, a blaze on the six-story Elkins Paper and Twine constructing in SoHo almost killed the younger father-to-be when the burning manufacturing facility caved in on the FDNY items and Hearth Patrol crews working inside.
“The very last thing he remembered was the ground beneath him falling away,” McDonald writes. “The frenzy of air attributable to the collapse lifted him and blew him down the stairwell.”
A religious Catholic, Invoice later joked that the Holy Ghost had ejected him from the constructing. “However the near-death expertise was like an invisible scar that he would at all times carry,” says McDonald. The 2 firefighters and 4 Hearth Patrol members who misplaced their lives had been the primary of many deaths Invoice witnessed on the job.
His first baby, Elizabeth, was an toddler when Invoice lastly obtained his coveted FDNY spot. 4 kids adopted — daughter Tara and sons Billy, Michael, and John. However for Betty, the stress of her husband’s job took a heavy toll. When Michael died all of a sudden at simply 4 months of age, she spiraled right into a deep despair.
The Feehans relied on their prolonged household, together with the now-retired William, as Invoice started to climb the FDNY’s ranks. Father and son would inevitably “discuss hearth,” as they referred to as it, at any time when they obtained collectively, as the youngsters soaked of their tales.
“In a manner, [Bill’s] love for his dad and his love for the fireplace division had been one and the identical,” McDonald writes. William Patrick Feehan, a lifelong non-smoker, died of emphysema in 1975.
Invoice Feehan was a brand new lieutenant at Chinatown’s Ladder 6 in 1966 when the basement of a Chelsea artwork retailer, full of flammable lacquer and paint, caught hearth. Firefighters from Engine 18, the primary to reply, entered the smoky constructing by means of an adjoining drugstore. They'd no concept that the artwork retailer’s cellar had been expanded into the house beneath their toes. The ground crumbled, dropping ten firemen immediately into the flames and incinerating two others within the ensuing flashover.
Ladder 6 arrived on the second alarm for a rescue effort that devolved into a grim restoration operation. Invoice and his males labored a bucket brigade to dig out their comrades’ our bodies. The twenty third Avenue Hearth, because the blaze grew to become identified, was the deadliest day in New York firefighting historical past – till 2001.
Within the Seventies, Will was a captain main Engine 59 in Harlem, a neighborhood infamous for its five-story walk-up tenements. Blazes there all appeared to begin in the identical inaccessible spot, which the home become its motto: “5 flooring up, and 5 rooms in.”
By 1985, after stints as workers chief of operations and of fireside prevention, Invoice was often called “essentially the most broadly skilled hearth officer within the division,” McDonald writes.
“I’ve cherished each place I’ve labored, I’ve cherished each rank I’ve had,” Invoice mentioned in 1992. “However there was at all times that factor … Let me see what the following one is about.”
In the meantime, he was passing the torch of service alongside. In 1989, daughter Tara married Brian Davan, a second-generation firefighter from Breezy Level, Queens. Their son Connor was Invoice’s visitor at particular FDNY occasions, like fireboat cruises on New York Harbor. His youngest son John was the valedictorian of the Hearth Academy’s Class of 1995.
“For some, particularly those that have had family members on the job, the choice to grow to be a firefighter is instinctual,” McDonald notes. “Virtually as if not taking the job goes in opposition to their very nature.”
Invoice received the respect of politicians on each side of the aisle as he hit the division’s highest echelons. In 1993, outgoing Mayor David Dinkins appointed him the FDNY’s twenty eighth hearth commissioner — though Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani would definitely identify his personal choose the second he was sworn in.
Giuliani did, however saved Invoice on as first deputy commissioner. The chief shortly discovered a solution to get on the brand new mayor’s good aspect.
“Rudy was a fireplace buff,” McDonald explains, and “it was no secret that the mayor was sad in his marriage” to newscaster Donna Hanover. “Chief Feehan made positive phrase of any hearth over two alarms obtained to Gracie Mansion immediately” — an excuse Giuliani fortunately used to escape the mayoral residence.
When Betty died in 1996 after a protracted sequence of hospitalizations, Invoice threw himself much more deeply into his work. “The division nonetheless supplied the ballast in his life,” McDonald writes. “With out it he’d be set adrift.”
He was on the division’s MetroTech Middle headquarters in Queens on the intense, cloudless morning of September 11, 2001, when terrorists plowed the primary airplane into the World Commerce Middle’s North Tower. Invoice and the remainder of the brass glimpsed the smoking skyscraper from their workplace home windows, then rushed to the scene.
He was there, donning his white chief’s helmet, when the second aircraft exploded over his head. “A wheel housing from the jet crashed to the road simply yards away,” McDonald writes, primarily based on the accounts of surviving colleagues. “Then got here physique elements.”
“That is no place for a 71-year-old,” Hearth Commissioner Thomas Von Essen confided to a different chief on the command publish within the North Tower’s foyer. However Invoice ignored Von Essen’s order to depart the scene and work from an workplace as an alternative.
Witnesses place Invoice at a West Avenue loading dock when the South Tower pancaked all the way down to earth at 9:59 am. There, he and Chief of Division Peter Ganci directed makes an attempt to rescue firefighters from the rubble. Invoice was at Ganci’s aspect 29 minutes later when the North Tower fell, killing them each.
‘The purest type of love is to cherish one another each day. By no means depart a second’s doubt that you simply love together with your entire coronary heart and soul.’
Invoice Feehan, paying tribute to a fallen firefighter
“The truest sort of love is to put down your life for one other,” Invoice as soon as mentioned, in certainly one of his effortlessly eloquent Hearth Division eulogies. “However the purest type of love is to cherish one another each day. By no means depart a second’s doubt that you simply love together with your entire coronary heart and soul.”
After the chief’s loss of life, Brian Davan and son John remained with the division, the place each presently function battalion chiefs. Connor Davan, after graduating from Siena School, joined the FDNY in 2016.
Connor was simply 8 years outdated in 2001. At his grandfather’s wake, McDonald writes, an aged former firefighter approached him.
“I labored with Chief Feehan in 59 Engine,” the person mentioned. “Are you aware the place that's?’
The little boy nodded resolutely.
“5 flooring up,” he answered. “And 5 rooms in.”
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