Firefighters, police officers and National Guardsmen packed a Bronx firehouse yesterday to honor a hero they all could claim as one of their own.
A year after Christian Engeldrum was killed in Iraq, a permanent plaque was dedicated at the Co-op City firehouse where he worked before heading overseas with his Guard unit.
Mayor Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta led the roster of speakers praising the 39-year-old cop-turned-firefighter, whose sooty and worn turnout coat hung draped against an American flag high on the back wall of the Ladder 61/Engine 66 firehouse.
"It's beautiful. It's wonderful. I can't thank everybody enough," said Engeldrum's widow, Sharon, cradling the infant daughter, Kristian, her husband didn't live to see and flanked by their sons, Sean, 19, and Royce, 17.
"Chris was an incredible man who led an incredible life," she said, "and I'm just glad I got to share it with him."
One of the firefighters who helped raise a torn American flag amid the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center, Engeldrum was killed Nov. 29, 2004, when a roadside bomb ripped apart his Humvee outside Baghdad.
The mayor and others recalled Engeldrum's accomplishments - as a police officer in the 47th Precinct in the north Bronx, then as a firefighter assigned to Ladder 61 and as a sergeant in the Fighting 69th unit of the National Guard. He also had served in the first Gulf War.
"I'm honored to be with you today," the mayor told the crowd, "but I wish more than anything that we were not here. Nothing would please me more than if we never had to inscribe another name on the wall of any firehouse in this city."
rkappstatter@nydailynews.com
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