By Mike Nolan
The Daily Southtown
MOUNT GREENWOOD, Ill. — Fire academy students at Moraine Valley Community College have a new “guardian angel.”
A fire engine taken out of service by the Orland Fire Protection District has been donated to the school in memory of Chicago Firefighter Daniel Capuano, who died in December after falling down an open elevator shaft while battling a fire.
“He’s going to be their guardian angel as they train,” Orland Fire Protection District Chief Michael Schofield said at a ceremony at the Palos Hills school on Wednesday.
Capuano, a 15-year veteran of the Chicago Fire Department who lived in the Mount Greenwood community, took several courses at Moraine over the years, his daughter Amanda said.
With the donation of the engine students, “will remember what a hero he was for years to come,” she told a crowd that included area firefighters and school officials.
She and her mother, Julie, Capuano’s parents Mike and Jacqui, brother Patrick and his children, daughter Delilah and son Bodhi, stood by the truck as a firefighter color guard walked past them at the end of the ceremony. At one point, Capuano’s father put his hand on the side of the truck above where the Orland district had put the words “In Memory of Daniel Capuano, Dec. 14, 2015.”
Capuano also worked for more than 16 years as a part-time firefighter in Evergreen Park, and “a lot of our guys in Orland worked with Dan in Evergreen Park,” Schofield said.
The 43-year-old Capuano was searching through heavy smoke on the second floor of a vacant warehouse in the 9200 block of South Baltimore Avenue in Chicago when he fell down an open elevator shaft. He and his wife had been married for 20 years and, in addition to their daughter, had two sons.
Schofield said the engine is “going to serve new recruits (students at Moraine’s fire academy) going forward.
“They’re going to see his name on this engine and they’re going to remember him,” he said. “They’re going to know you’re not guaranteed to go home every day. It’s a dangerous job.”
Andrew Hufnagl, coordinator of fire science and emergency medical services at Moraine, said the school and the Orland district have a “long standing working relationship,” and that six current or former firefighters and officers with the district are instructors at Moraine. He told Capuano’s family, “We promise you we will use his name and try to make him proud every day.”
Joseph Murphy, chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees, said the donation will be a “lasting memory to an outstanding man,” while Moraine’s president, Sylvia Jenkins, said the engine will be a “tremendous instructional tool and much needed.”
The fire district, along with Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison, R-Palos Park, began working on the donation after the district learned that Moraine’s current fire engine was out of commission and there wasn’t money to get it repaired. Morrison, at the ceremony, said the engine “could have easily been discarded as a trade-in” by the department, but that the district realized it “could still provide valuable service.”
Morrison, who said his father is a retired Chicago firefighter, told Capuano’s family, “Thank you for allowing us to honor your husband’s remarkable dedication, and the sacrifice he made.”
Orland had been using the engine since 1999, and although it had been maintained as a reserve, rather than front-line engine for several years, it had been kept in top operating condition, Schofield said. It was formally retired about nine months ago, when the district got a new piece of equipment, he said.
Noting that district residents attend Moraine, Schofield said the donation made perfect sense.
“If we can keep the taxpayers’ money in the area and help Moraine Valley, it helps everybody,” he said.
Copyright 2016 The Daily Southtown