Daily News Editorial Board
纽约Daily News
(MCT)
Timothy Klein, the 1,157th New York City firefighter to have lost his life in the line of duty, knew painfully well the perils of his job, and not only because, at age 31, he was in his sixth year with the department. Battling blazes was a family tradition. No doubt, every time he saw his dad Patrick don the FDNY uniform and leave for work, young Timmy both swelled with pride and felt real trepidation — never knowing how that tour might end.
Photos: Brooklyn House Fire Kills FDNY Firefighter, Others Injured
His education in risk and loss continued in 2019, when Klein lost a Ladder 170 comrade and fellow son of a firefighter, Steven Pollard, who died after falling through a gap in the Belt Parkway.At the funeral, Klein delivered a eulogy, saying through tears of “his Canarsie brother”: “I was with Steve the night he passed. Steve Pollard died not thinking of himself but trying to help others.”
The son of Queens who in those remarks referred to himself as “a Rockaway guy” surely felt further pangs of pain this February, when firefighter Jesse Gerhard, just two years his senior, collapsed and died in his Far Rockaway firehouse一天后俄文shing into a burning building.
His intimate awareness of the dangers of the life he had chosen does nothing to diminish the anguish of his mother, his father and his three sisters, or of his friends and colleagues and city. But there is no doubt Klein had his eyes wide open to the lethal hazards all around himas he battled the flames of a three-alarm house fire in Canarsie Sunday— a blaze that would also take the life of21-year-old Carlos Richards, who lived in the home.
“We have a sign that hangs above the front door inside our firehouse,” Klein said in paying tribute to Pollard. “It reads: ‘What you see here, what you hear here, what you say here, when you leave here, let it stay here.’ ” Let what Timothy Klein did for his fellow New Yorkers echo far and wide.
©2022 New York Daily News. Visitnydailynews.com. Distributed byTribune Content Agency, LLC.
