A ‘good run’ for firefighter honoree

They didn’t set the world on fire — in fact, just the opposite — but the honorees at the Nassau Firefighter Museum and Education Center were, nevertheless, hot stuff Friday night.

One was former Baldwin Fire Chief John P. Brown, who said he was “humbled” by the museum’s Francis X. Pendl Firefighter Award given to him at the Badge of Courage gala.

“It’s nice to be recognized for your efforts,” he said. “I certainly didn’t do it for recognition, but it is nice.”

The second honoree was Butch Yamali, president of hospitality and catering enterprises at The Dover Group. Dover’s businesses include the Coral House in Baldwin. Yamali, a Merrick resident, was presented with the Firefighters Leadership Award.

A third honoree was posthumously given the Firefighters Humanitarian Award. He was John Sanford Jr., former chief of the Inwood Fire Department.

Of course, Brown is an old hand at this business of winning awards. In 1983 and 1986 he won Nassau County’s Silver Medal of Honor, both times for pulling women out of burning houses. He’s also taken home the Baldwin Second Battalion’s Arthur Kuss Jr. Award for rescuing people.

Brown comes by his interest in fighting fires naturally. His father was with the Baldwin Fire Department for 49 years, and his brother Jerry is district supervisor of the Second Battalion.

Now, Brown, who spent 45 years with the Baldwin department and who just turned 65, is retiring, both from the department and from the Nassau Fire Service Academy, where he spent 20 years teaching and developing curriculum.

Brown joined the Baldwin Fire Department in 1971. As a member of Truck Co. 1, he served as a captain twice and rose through the ranks from deputy chief to chief of department in 1987.

In 2004, he was named chief instructor at the academy, where he was involved with building five new burn buildings.

Perhaps his most memorable time as a member of the department, however, came, unsurprisingly, on Sept. 11, 2001.

“We were at the fire academy, which closed immediately,” when news of the attack on the World Trade Center broke, he recalled.