by JOHN LAUINGER
Queens high school is receiving a life-saving device in tribute to a city firefighter who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Terry Farrell, a 45-year-old member of the FDNY's elite Rescue 4 unit in Woodside, rushed into the flaming south tower shortly after it was struck.
Today, more than six years after Farrell sacrificed his life trying to save others, Msgr. McClancy Memorial High School in East Elmhurst is being presented with an automated external defibrillator, courtesy of the Terry Farrell Firefighters Scholarship Fund.
Used to treat patients in cardiac arrest, the defibrillator delivers an electric shock to the patient's heart, which momentarily stuns the organ, giving it a chance to restart normal activity.
Since cardiac arrest is fatal if not treated within minutes, defibrillators can be the difference between life and death, said Terry Farrell's oldest brother Dennis, who is to present the device to the school today along with current Rescue 4 members.
"It's a very simple piece of equipment that could potentially save a member of the staff, the faculty or even a student," said Dennis Farrell, 59, a former Nassau County detective.
McClancy's president, Brother Joseph Rocco, said the school was overjoyed to learn it would be receiving the defibrillator, because it had already been planning to purchase the life-saving instrument, which costs $1,300 to $2,000.
"We're really very appreciative, because to get one of these is very costly," Rocco said. "We have to have it for our athletic programs."
Launched shortly before Christmas 2001 by the fallen firefighter's five brothers, the fund (terryfarrellfund.org) started by providing assistance, including scholarships, to children of firefighters and police officers who had died in the line of duty or from illness or other causes. Its charitable reach extends mostly from Long Island to Brooklyn and Queens.
As its fund-raising capability has grown, the brothers have taken on additional causes, such as recruiting bone marrow donors and giving defibrillators to local schools. It has presented the life-saving devices to a few Long Island schools a year for roughly the past three years.
"This is actually our first school in New York City," Farrell said of McClancy, noting that doing good works in his brother's name has enabled the Farrell family to turn its tremendous loss into a wealth of positives.
"You don't have to run into a building that is collapsing to be a hero necessarily," he said. "You just have to take some time and make a minimal sacrifice.
"And who knows, within all of us there could be the gift that saves someone else's life," Farrell said.
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