Lieutenant William E. McGinn, FDNY
June 18, 1958 –
September 11, 2001
Much has been
said and written about the cowardly, dishonorable attacks on the
United States on the 11th of September. However, enough
cannot be said of the bravery
exhibited by the rescuers
who worried not of their own safety, but that of the innocent
individuals trapped within the Twin Towers of
the World Trade Center. This page is dedicated to one of those brave men who
made the ultimate sacrifice and saved the
lives of
approximately 25,000 people, my brother-in-law, Lt. Bill McGinn, FDNY.
Bill’s unit,
Squad 18 Manhattan, witnessed the first plane crash into Tower 1, and
immediately headed toward danger, where they were among the first on the scene.
They entered the North Tower, and in full gear, made it to about the 70th
Floor via the stairs, assisting in the rescue.
They saved countless lives.
We are now told
that following the collapse of the South Tower, they were given the order to
evacuate, and were trapped on the staircase at about the 12th floor
when the North Tower fell. Bill’s body was recovered on Thursday, September 27th,
and he was laid to rest in his Staten Island birthplace on Friday, October 5,
2001, with full Fire Department honors.
Bill was the best
man I have ever, and probably will ever know.
Remember this:
Firemen do not lose their lives – they give them.
Below are his
obituary from the Staten Island Advance of September 30, 2001,
written by his wife Anne; the poignant words of
his brother Mike McGinn
expressed at Bill’s Funeral Mass on October 5, 2001; and A Fireman’s Prayer read
by
his boyhood
friend, Father Thomas Dicks, who presided at the Mass.
Lt. William McGinn, 43, devoted father and husband
Sunday, September 30, 2001
Lt.
William (Billy) Edward McGinn of Riverdale, a former Staten Islander, was a
devoted husband and father.
As
a member of Squad 18 based in Manhattan, he was among the first units to arrive
at the scene of the World Trade Center disaster.
As
part of the day crew, Lt. McGinn had expected to be fully engaged in a daylong
training drill on tanker explosions at the Fire Academy on Randall's Island.
Instead, Squad 18 was one of the first units from Lower Manhattan to arrive at
the scene of the plane crash.
At
8 a.m. on the fatal day, Lt. McGinn called his wife, Dr. Anne Golden McGinn,
formerly of Great Kills, to say good morning and tell her not to worry if he
was unable to call until late in the day. Dr. McGinn never again heard from her
husband.
Sept.
11 was to be memorable for another reason. Lt. McGinn was looking forward to
taking part in a charity event he had helped to organize for that evening.
Other FDNY officers were to join Lt. McGinn as celebrity bartenders, with
proceeds to benefit the New York-Cornell Burn Center. Three of the four
firefighters who were to take part in the charity event died or are still
missing.
"Billy
was totally supportive through the long years that I pursued my doctoral degree
and encouraged me in my career," said Dr. McGinn, who has a Ph.D. in
public health.
"He
was devoted, loving, thoughtful and eternally optimistic. He cherished his
family, was dedicated to the job he loved, and approached every day with
incredible energy."
As
the father of Liam, 8, and Cordelia, 6, Lt. McGinn was active in the Parents
Association and served on the School Leadership Team at PS 81 in Riverdale. He
coached Liam's team in the North Riverdale Baseball League and he was the den
leader of Cub Scout Pack 613.
Lt.
McGinn scheduled his work hours to spend the most time possible with his
children. Their well-being and their education were his greatest concerns, and
his deep love for them always was evident. He was a regular fixture in the
school yard, the neighborhood pool, and entertained groups of children and
adults alike with his firehouse stories and jokes, Dr. McGinn said.
From
his children's first nursery school classes on, each year he came in full
turn-out gear to teach their classmates about fire prevention and what to do in
case of a fire. Many parents report that their children still talk about
"Firefighter Bill," Dr. McGinn said.
Known
as the neighborhood "Mr. Mom," he was listed on many a school child's
emergency contact card. When a child was hurt, parents would call Billy, often
at the child's request, to diagnose or treat the problem, Dr. McGinn said.
He
also was able to paint, repair, build, or demolish just about anything, and could
always be depended upon to assist his family or his friends with their
projects, Dr. McGinn said.
Born
on Staten Island, Lt. McGinn lived in New Dorp and attended Our Lady Queen of
Peace R.C. School, Egbert Intermediate School, Midland Beach, and New Dorp High
School.
He
graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the City
College of New York of the City University of New York, Manhattan.
Inspired
by his uncle, the late Lt. Kevin McGinn of Richmond, his ambition and dream was
to serve as a New York City firefighter. He was appointed to the FDNY on March
5, 1984, and began has career at Ladder Company 11 on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan.
After
several years, he transferred to Brooklyn and became a member of Squad 1, part
of the elite Special Operations Command. He was working in Squad 1 on the day
they were called to respond to the WTC bombing in 1993.
He
was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on May 5, 1994, and became an officer in
Engine Company 56 in the Bronx. Lt. McGinn became an officer of Squad 18 when
it was re-established in 1998. As a member of Squad 18, he regularly
participated in specialized training in emergency response to extraordinary
events, including terrorist attacks.
In
addition to his wife and children, Lt. McGinn is survived by his mother, Joan
McGinn of New Dorp; his brother, Michael McGinn, and his sisters, Susan
Bradley, Maureen DeAngelo, Sheila McGinn and Ellen Albro.
The
family asks that contributions be sent in Lt. McGinn's name to the New York-Cornell
Burn Center or the Squad 18 Family Fund.
A
mass will be held Friday at 10:30 a.m. in Our Lady Queen of Peace Church.
Burial will follow in Resurrection Cemetery, Pleasant Plains.
Eulogy delivered by Michael McGinn, 10/5/01
My brother Bill was a mensch. He died doing a job
he loved, died trying to save others. My brother Bill is a hero. If we were to
consecrate his memory with only that, it would be more than enough. But Bill
was much more than just a hero. He was a man who lived his life with joy and
love. He was a presence.
My brother Bill was
a husband and father. He has loved and cherished his wife Anne for about a
quarter century, and been married to his love for seventeen years. He loved,
nurtured and cherished his two children Liam and Cordelia, and they in turn
adored him. He spent a great deal of time with them and was a caring and
patient father. I was always amazed at how much patience he could have. He
would let a houseful of sugared up kids go way past my big voice threshold. He
would even keep giving them chocolate and cake, not to mention as much soda as
they could drink. Best of all they didn’t have to worry about burping; he would
let a few loud ones out just to get the foghorn chorus started. Obviously, when
the kids went to a party at his place, there was no need to worry about
offending the host. I don’t think I ever heard him use the “daddy voice”; he
was a man of nearly infinite patience. He was a man who had a rare gift for
fatherhood. He worked hard fixing up his home for his family; he was one of
those guys who had to get all the woodwork just right. I would find myself
sitting in his living room coveting his miter cuts.
My brother Bill was an uncle. He was not just any
uncle: he occupied that much vaunted spot of favorite uncle. He was the wild,
slightly out of control one who showed up with his car trunk full of water guns
for all the kids at summer barbecues. He was the uncle who would give your
child something nice and noisy for Christmas; he was the uncle who would
wrestle on the floor with the kids, pick them up and carry them around over his
shoulder while they squealed with delight. He was the uncle my son Abraham
would tell his wide-eyed friends about. Abe always looked forward to seeing
him, as did his niece and all his nephews. He was the fireman uncle who let his
nephew Sean hang out at some of his
tours of
duty at the firehouse.
Billy was much loved by his cousins, and being the
youngest and the smallest of a group of three often meant taking the bulk of
the abuse. Even when this involved for example getting thrown over a rail from
a porch head first into thick shrubbery, he bore no grudge. We can only look
back on this and wish that the older generation had taken these hijinx as well
as he did.
Bill was my younger
brother. When we were growing up it often seemed he was
genetically programmed to always make noise. He had
a repertoire of hoots and whistles that he made constantly when he was running around
outside. It could be annoying, but it did make him easy to find. Bill could
always make as laugh, both as a child an as an adult. He had a gift for telling
stories about stuff that happened on the job, whether he was out on a run or in
the firehouse where all sorts of shenanigans where going on. Bill made the fire
department sound like a bunch of out of control high school kids with trucks
that can shoot water, and mannequins in the beds, and sometimes breakfast
cereal in unexpected spots. But he could
take a joke too; I was looking forward to many years of teasing him about his
thinning hair.
Bill was the one
who was always there when you needed him. He would paint your
house, help you move, or travel to Albany to visit
you in the hospital. Bill was the one who would always ask you if you needed
anything, and never made you feel like you were putting him to any trouble if
you took him up on it. He had a gift of
what I would call subtle generosity, where he would help you out, no matter how
much without making it seem like a big deal. He could help you move and almost
make you feel like you were doing him a favor.
He was like a rock; you could rely on him if you needed any kind of a
hand. Bill would never betray your confidences, and not
just for me, his brother. You could talk stuff out with him on the phone or
over a beer. He gave advice sparingly, but when he did it was good advice. He
was a man who kept his word, whose handshake was his bond.
Bill was a man you
could trust.
If I had to sum up my brother with one word I would
choose love. The love he had for his wife and children, the love he had for our
mother, the love he had for my sisters and myself, the love he had for his
cousins, the love he had for his niece and nephews, the love he had for his
friends and neighbors and finally the love he had for his brother firefighters.
But let us not forget about the other love, the love that is shared by all
firefighters. The love Jesus spoke of when he said, “Greater love no man has
than when he lays down his life for a friend.”
We cannot know his
thoughts when he walked into the World Trade Center on that awful day. But I
can assume he had no expectation that it would come down around him, He had
responded to the truck bombing there and crawled through the bowels of those
buildings. He told me of some of the horrible things he saw, but he also often
spoke at length about how good the engineering was, of how well the building
was built, how half the supports could be taken out and the building would
still stand. He knew what he was talking about too; he held a civil engineering
degree. But I know my brother, and I
know he would have gone in no matter what. There were just too many people in
there and he had to get as many out
as he could. It was
not a big deal with him: it was just his job.
That anyone could be so evil as to deliberately fly
a jetliner full of people and fuel into each tower was beyond imagination. We
have all looked at that sacred place, now consecrated with the blood of thousands
and discovered a hole where our heart used to be. I mourn my brother, and my
voice joins countless others in mourning. But remember this about my brother
and all the other firefighters we lost that day: they chose to put their own
lives in jeopardy; they chose to give
their lives
that others might live.
Thousands
of others who died that day made no such choice. Ponder this as you mourn: we
will all go on with our lives, Bill believed in that. We will not cower in
fear, we will not let our sorrow take over our lives. For if we cower all those
brave men died for nothing and the evil people who did this have won.
A Fireman's Prayer
When I am called to duty, God,
wherever flame may rage,
Give me strength to save some life, whatever be its age.
Help me embrace a little child, before it is too late,
Or save an older person from, the horror of that fate.
Enable me to be alert and hear the weakest shout,
And quickly and efficiently, to put the fire out.
I want to fill my calling, and to give the best in me,
To guard my every neighbor, and protect his property.
And if according to my fate, I am to lose my life,
Please Bless with your protecting hand, my children
and my wife
-Author Unknown