Friday Photo: An FDNY Memorial

for Brooklyn Firefighter Louis Valentino, killed in 1996

Memorial to Firefighter Louis Valentino

This memorial to Firefighter Louis Valentino is on Court Street, just outside of Carroll Park in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Firefighter Valentino joined the FDNY in 1984. By 1993, he was a member of Rescue 2 in Crown Heights, an elite unit whose purpose is to rescue firefighters in trouble. 

On February 5, 1996, Rescue 2 was searching an illegal garage in Flatlands for wounded firefighters. Firefighter Valentino was killed, the only firefighter who died that day.

Louis Valentino Jr. lived in Carroll Gardens as a child. He played softball on the FDNY team. He was named for his father. His mother saluted his casket. He had a brother, a sister-in-law, and two nieces. He had a wife. 

Rescue 2 Firefighter Louis Valentino

I lived in Carroll Gardens from 2010 - 2013, from when my son was born until he was three. We spent a lot of time in Carroll Park, and I would often stop at the memorial.

I imagine many who pass by without pausing to read the plaque (not pictured) mistake it for a 9/11 memorial. I know 9/11 is where the mind first goes when you think of firefighters dying in the line of duty. Mine does, too, and I grew up in a fire-family, listening to stories about fatal fires and the firefighters lost to them. 

The Last Men Out by Tom Downey is about Rescue 2, before, during, and after 9/11. The book details the tragedy of Valentino's death. Tom Downey is also from a fire-family; his uncle is the legendary Captain Ray Downey, who helmed Rescue 2 and was killed on 9/11.

I read Downey's book while researching my novel, Ashes of Fiery Weather, which is about the women of a Brooklyn, New York family of firefighters. Ashes begins with the line-of-duty death of a firefighter whose loss has a devastating effect on his mother and sister, his wife and his children. In early drafts, Sean was killed along with five others in a fire loosely based on the Waldbaum's fire of '78, which killed six firefighters. When I read about Louis Valentino, though, I changed the story so that Sean's death was the fire's only fatality. Not because it was more tragic, or less. It's neither. That's why. 

The post-9/11 reverence for the FDNY and their customs surrounding line-of-duty deaths was strange to watch. Bu it's always this way, I remember thinking. I believe I said it aloud a few times while listening to reporters talking about the FDNY Emerald Society Pipes & Drums playing "Going Home" and "Amazing Grace" at funerals. The purple and black bunting draped over the firehouse doors. The widow, or sometimes an older child, holding the helmet.  

Downey's nonfiction book, and I hope my novel, stand as a testament to how firefighters have always mourned the lost, whether one or 343. 

Never Forget. Any of them.

Engraving, Carroll Park