By Matthew Chayes
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2007 Newsday, Inc.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — There were the photos of Daniel Pujdak as a young boy wearing Superman pajamas and playing Little League baseball, and recent shots of Pujdak partying with his firehouse buddies and embracing his girlfriend.
Then there was Pujdak’s body nearby, dressed in a New York City Fire Department uniform, his hands clutching rosary beads, lying in a coffin decorated with the department’s emblem. An honor guard stood next to his body at a wake in Brooklyn.
As hundreds of mourners filed past, the photo collage, Pujdak’s firefighting gear and floral arrangements featuring logos of his beloved Yankees and his alma mater, SUNY Cortland, showed mourners how Pujdak lived his life.
Pujdak, 23, who had been assigned to Ladder ' in his childhood neighborhood of Greenpoint, died Thursday night after he fell off a four-story building in Williamsburg. Fire marshals believe an unattended lit cigarette in a penthouse artist’s studio ignited a windowsill fire Pujdak was helping to battle, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. According to a preliminary investigation, Pujdak lost his balance while trying to get his footing on the roof.
His funeral will be tomorrow morning in St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church in Greenpoint, and Pujdak will be cremated.
Hundreds of mourners - fellow firefighters, friends and strangers who had never met Pujdak but wanted to pay their respects - waited for close to an hour outside Evergreen Funeral Home.
Paramedics and fire companies from across the five boroughs who appeared to be on duty made special trips to the funeral parlor. Ushers escorted them to the front of a line of mourners that stretched to the end of Nassau Avenue and snaked around the block on McGuinness Boulevard.
Across Nassau Avenue, which police cordoned off to traffic, shoppers in this Polish enclave stood on the block in front of the stores on the first day of the wake.
Many firefighters leaving the wake yesterday said they were too distraught to talk to reporters about Pujdak.
A 23-year veteran, Firefighter Bruce Stanley, of Ladder 80 in Staten Island, didn’t know Pujdak, who, as the “roof man,” was responsible for cutting a hole in the top of the building to vent smoke and was carrying a power saw when he fell. But Stanley called together some of his younger colleagues in his Port Richmond firehouse to offer tips for climbing ladders with heavy tools, Stanley said. Yesterday, Stanley went to Brooklyn in uniform to pay his respects to Pujdak. “This kid truly was a firefighter’s firefighter,” Stanley said.
Pujdak’s family has asked that donations be made to a scholarship fund at Pujdak’s high school alma mater, St. Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows and to the New York Firefighters Burn Center Foundation in the Bronx.