Newsday
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The Mass and procession through Brooklyn yesterday were both a remembrance of the six firefighters killed fighting the Waldbaum’s fire 30 years ago and a reunion for disparate families and old friends.
Catherine Bouton, whose husband, Charles, was one of the firefighters who perished when the Sheepshead Bay supermarket’s roof caved in Aug. 2, 1978, walked the four blocks from Engine Company 276’s firehouse in Borough Park to St. Brendan Church with five of her six children. Like many of the others, she is a regular at the annual ceremony, which she said serves as a remembrance for those lost.
“Seeing the other widows and families,” said Bouton, of Coram, “I realize what good friends we have.”
The lifelong friendships were cemented by one of the worst pre-9/11 fire disasters in New York City history. Each year since, surviving relatives have walked with firefighting colleagues past and present from the firehouse on East 14th Street to the church on Avenue O.
“It’s like a club,” said retired firefighter Vinny Petrocelli, of Brooklyn, who had the day off from nearby Ladder 153 the day of the fire. “And this is part of the job. What can you do about it?”
The procession — accompanied by bagpipers through a neighborhood of Hasidic Jews watching through their windows — was hardly the mournful funeral march typical of firefighter funerals.
William O’Connor IV, a police officer in the NYPD’s transit bureau, smiled as he walked with his children Lauren, 8, and William V, 5. The parade, which honored the grandfather they never met, was their first, he said.
“We were the kids in the picture back then,” said O’Connor, of Staten Island. “Now it’s these kids.”
The memories and stories about the six firefighters — Bouton of Farmingville, William O’Connor of Brooklyn, Harold Hastings of Hicksville, James McManus of Staten Island, George Rice of Islip Terrace and Lt. James Cutillo of Brentwood — will live on not just in the annual ceremonies but at all family gatherings where they are remembered, Msgr. John Delendick said during the Mass.
“They are still present with us at weddings and first Communions,” he said. “If Jesus is with us, they are with us.”
Donna Hastings, whose firefighter husband Harold died in the blaze, said the widows and surviving firefighters share an eternal bond.
“It doesn’t matter how many years pass,” said Hastings, who lived in Hicksville in 1978 but has since moved to Florida. “The other widows and families are always in my heart.”
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