By Wil Cruz
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
The names of five Nassau firefighters who died in the line of duty will be added to the New York State Fallen Firefighters Memorial on the Plaza today in Albany.
The names of the firefighters — John Husser, Peter Lund, James O’Neil, Jeffrey Wiener and Glenn Winuk - will be engraved during a ceremony this morning. Twenty-five New York firefighters will be honored for sacrificing their lives; 19 of them died in 2005.
Hundreds are expected to attend the ceremony, including family members of those being honored.
“We gather at this time of the year to remember those comrades that went down,” said Gunnar Neilson, former president of the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York, which contributed to the building of the memorial in 1999.
Neilson, 71, was part of a group, including Gov. George Pataki, that set the creation of the memorial in motion in 1997.
“Everybody had a great deal of interest in this,” Neilson said. “We felt that this was going to be a great tribute. It’s something simple, but it’s something to memorialize our fallen firefighters.”
At the end of the ceremony — which, as in the past, is being held during Fire Prevention Week — there will be 2,314 names on the wall. The list of fallen firefighters goes back to 1811.
The Nassau volunteer firefighters will be remembered for their ultimate sacrifices.
John Husser, of the Rockville Centre Fire Department, and James O’Neil, of Hempstead’s department, died of heart attacks after fighting fires. Peter Lund, a retired lieutenant with the Fire Department of New York and a Woodmere volunteer, also died of a heart attack after battling a fire alongside his son.
Jeffrey Wiener, a volunteer for the Lynbrook Fire Department, died while serving in the war in Afghanistan.
Glenn Winuk was a volunteer for the Jericho Fire Department who left his law office on Sept. 11 to go to the World Trade Center, where he died.
The names of three city firefighters - Richard Sclafani, Curtis Meyran and John Bellew — who died in two separate fires in January 2005, also will be added to the memorial wall.