by Joseph Wendelken - Editor
As South Ozone Park and South Jamaica transformed from quiet rural outposts to robust communities neighboring a major transportation hub and teeming with industry, the challenges faced by the members of Engine Company 302 certainly evolved.
But addressing over 100 current and former members at the company's centennial celebration on Tuesday, FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said that "what has never changed is the qualities... that you possess. Quality, bravery, commitment."
Scoppetta and other FDNY officials, along with a representative from the firefighters union, further lauded the company's current and former members for keeping the department's proud tradition alive.
But many on the company's current roster were quick to deflect praise to their predecessors at the Rockaway Boulevard firehouse, which they share with Hook and Ladder Company 155.
"It's their legacy that we're trying to live up to," said Firefighter Theodore Parente, after FDNY bagpipers played a tribute to the company and Scoppetta presented current company leadership with an honorary plaque.
Parente, along with the company's other members, did research in the FDNY's George F. Mand Library on Randall's Island over the course of two years in preparation for the celebration. Their work resulted in a journal, distributed on Tuesday, which included copies of decades-old photographs and a history of the company.
A major turning point in Engine 302's history was the opening of Idlewild Airport, later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport, 41 years after the company formed in July, 1907.
Members of the company have responded to some of the most notable disasters in recent city history, including a plane crash at Kennedy Airport that killed 113 people in June, 1975; the Sept. 11 terror attacks in Lower Manhattan; and the Nov. 12, 2001 plane crash in Belle Harbor that killed 260 people.
But the company's veterans, some of whom traveled hundreds of miles to attend the ceremony, spoke of less newsworthy incidents that they responded to in years past.
John McCrae recalls the evening in 1977 when he pulled a child through a second-story window of a burning home on 143rd Street in South Ozone Park. He also remembers bringing an infant back to life just outside the firehouse doors with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
"It's part of the job," he said, shrugging his shoulders, when asked if decades after retiring, he considers himself a hero.
If the firehouse ever did have a hero, it was Marty Schmitt. One winter day sometime in the mid-1960s, according to many at the firehouse on Tuesday, a call came in reporting that three boys were in distress at Baisley Pond after venturing out onto its thin ice. One escaped and the second fell in and drowned. But Schmitt was able to pull the third from danger after jumping into the frigid water while tethered to a fire truck's bucket.
"I kept telling him: 'Don't let go,'" he recalled.
Others at the reunion remembered the laughs they shared with their fellow firefigthers. For years the company arranged a nativity scene outside the firehouse at Christmas time, complete with live animals that the firefighters tended. Charles Coles, who served Engine Company 302 between 1961 and 1976, laughingly recalled having to chase stray horses and goats down the Van Wyck Expressway.
"It's a rush of memories," said Coles of the reunion. "To see so many faces, you remember what you shared together."
A dinner at Russo's On The Bay in Howard Beach followed the ceremony in South Ozone Park.
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