By:Angela Marshall
Say possibility of death part of the job
Even most firefighters don't know what it is that sets them apart, makes them willing to put their lives on the line for others. It's not money; most are volunteers. It's not fame; most individual heroics go unpublished.
But for more than 300 villagers, it is a way of life. They work their "day" job, some as New York City firefighters or police officers, and then report to one of the seven Rockville Centre companies, ready to answer a neighbor's call for help.
For some, like those first companies responding to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, that dedication to community service will cost them their lives.
As children, many waited anxiously for their 18th birthday, not because it would earn them the right to vote, but because that is the age they could join the fire department.
Jim Jaeger can't remember a time he didn't want to be part of the department. And not just because it is a family tradition - although it is. But because it is a whole other family entirely.
Jaeger, ex-captain of Alert Engine Company 2, grew up watching his father and grandfather with their second family, a band of brothers who were always there for one another. At 18, he eagerly signed up to join them.
Now 23 years later, Jaeger has no regrets. "It's a lot of work," he said. "But, when you help people, it's worthwhile."
Jaeger said the thought of dying on duty doesn't keep him up at night. "That's part of the job," he said, echoing thousands of firefighters before him.
"If it happened again tomorrow, we'd go back in," he said of the attack on the towers. That's what they do, Jaeger continued, they rush in while telling others to get out.
Glenn Fordsman agreed. "We're there to do a job," he said. "It's a job that's got to be done."
But they don't take many chances either, Fordsman said. Training is key to coming out alive. He called the Nassau County training academy "second to none."
There hasn't been a duty-related death in the Rockville Centre Fire Department since the 1950s.
Besides, Fordsman said, if anything happened to him, there would be 300 men and women working to save his life or help take care of his family if necessary.
Fordsman, also an ex-captain of Alert Engine Company 2, is married and has two daughters. He works as an electrician and has been on the force almost 20 years.
He, too, remembers the radio going off and his father jumping up from the dinner table to go fight a fire.
As for what made Fordsman sign up when he turned 18, he said, "The camaraderie of the guys and the excitement of riding on the fire truck."
Peter Matarazzo, 29, didn't have a family history of firefighters to inspire him. But he did have a friend in the department who kept talking about the fun he had working with the members of the department.
"It was intriguing," said Matarazzo, who saw it as an opportunity to learn something new.
The men and women in the department went from being total strangers, he said, to being a second family.
Matarazzo said the loss of any firefighter, let alone the hundreds lost on the 11th, is painful. "It effects you in your heart," he said. But it doesn't deter him from wanting to keep doing his job. "I don't think I know anybody it does."
