Newsday

Hero.

In her eulogy, Erin Reilly, 23, marveled at the word, saying all the adulation for her brother at times sounded strange to her.

"It's very funny when you keep hearing him referred to as a hero," the sister told thousands of family, friends and firefighters from as far away as California who came to St. Paul's Catholic Church in the town where the Reilly children grew up. "To me, he was the same kid who taught Kevin how to pull the heads off my Barbies."

With that, everyone laughed: Brother Kevin Reilly from his seat in the front pew near their mother, Monica Reilly. And Michael Reilly, their father, who stood behind Erin Reilly as she shared several joyous memories of her fallen brother, who died at age 25 last Sunday after battling a Bronx blaze.

While lightening the sorrow, Erin Reilly also spoke of her brother's loyalty, bravery and compassion.

"He always had a big heart, and he was always looking out for the well-being of others," she said.

Reilly and Lt. Howard Carpluk Jr. died of injuries they suffered in a fire in a 99-cent store on Walton Avenue in the Mount Eden section of the Bronx, after the first floor collapsed beneath them and several other firefighters. Officials believe the fire began in a refrigeration unit in the back of the store.

Reilly, who had joined the FDNY only four months earlier, died of a heart attack less than two hours later.

Carpluk, 43, of Yaphank, a 20-year veteran, died from his injuries the next day. His funeral Mass will be offered at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 754 Montauk Hwy. in Islip.

Michael Reilly, an Iraq war veteran, began serving as a Ramsey rescue volunteer at age 16 before joining the Marines. Then he was a member of the fire department in Stamford, Conn., before realizing his dream of becoming a New York City firefighter.

Members of the rescue squad and both fire departments were among the half-mile-long formation of firefighters that stood along Wyckoff Avenue, a tree-lined, two-lane street in this town 25 miles west of the city, to pay tribute to Reilly.

In his eulogy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said losing someone so special yet so young made this death especially painful.

"What would I do if it was my child?" the mayor said, pondering aloud a question he said he asks himself at each funeral of a city employee who dies in the line of duty. "I've never had a good answer for that."

While saying that Reilly was "a hero in the truest sense of the word," Bloomberg told the firefighter's family: "The loss you feel is terrible. But I guess we have to draw strength from the fact that it is shared by everyone here in this church."

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said Reilly was born to fight fires.

"Michael didn't join the Fire Department just because it provided a paycheck," Scoppetta said. "He wanted to excel in the toughest arena with the greatest fire department in the world."

Capt. Robert Alfieri told the congregation that Reilly "did it by the book. There was nothing Mike or anyone else could have done to prevent that tragic outcome."

Outside the church, Matthew Crowley, a probationary firefighter who graduated from the city's Fire Academy with Reilly in July, was asked about his colleague's death.

"It's the job we chose," said Crowley, 29, a Long Beach resident who works in a Harlem firehouse. "We know what can happen, but it happened to one of us."