By:Nick Buglione
Ed Moskowski, the East Meadow Fire Department-s longest-serving member, died Sept. 12 of complications stemming from pneumonia. He was 91.
Scores of firefighters and loved ones turned out for his funeral, paying their last respects to a man who logged 72 years with the department and was affectionately known as Smoky.
The fire department was his first love, said Eleanor Moskowski, one of Ed-s four children. It came before he met my mom.
Born in Uniondale in 1913, Moskowski and his family eventually settled in nearby East Meadow. They carved out a niche on East Meadow Avenue, then known as Newbridge Avenue, and eventually built the house that is now Kearns Funeral Home as well as the house at 14 Arnold Court where Ed would raise his children. Eleanor still lives in the Arnold Court home.
The fire department and the community surrounding it was much different when Moskowski was young, before World War II and the ensuing East Meadow population surge. The neighborhood consisted mostly of rolling potato farms.
A carpenter by trade, Moskowski volunteered for the department in 1930. His close friend Raymond Hoeffner, who grew up with Moskowski, said he joined mostly for social reasons. Those days in this town, what else was there to do? said Hoeffner, 80. Today kids have everything. What did we have? Nothing.
Moskowski became chief of the department in 1936, a position he held until 1941. It was during his tenure as chief that he earned the nickname Smoky. He and a couple of friends were enjoying a night out in the Bellmore area, his daughter Eleanor said the legend goes. On their way back home, coming up Newbridge Avenue, Moskowski stuck his nose in the air, took a few sniffs and informed his friends that a fire had broken out somewhere. Sure enough, he was right.
Fire followed Moskowski on another night out years later, in 1955, when he was celebrating his installation as commissioner. On that cold December evening, his party was cut short when the school on Front Street, where the East Meadow Public Library is now, burned down. The blaze destroyed the school and had a significant impact on the community.
Seven years later, in November 1962, Moskowski played a prominent role in the aftermath of another East Meadow tragedy, when a small plane crashed into a Prospect Avenue home, killing the pilot as well as the occupants of the house. Surrounded by white blinding smoke, East Meadow fireman Ed Moskowski looks over a piece of wreckage of the all-metal plane searching for remnants of people or clues as to the identity of the plane, read the Newsday photo caption that chronicled the incident.
After 1965, his last year as commissioner, Moskowski took a less active role in the fire department, but remained a fixture at its social events, meetings and installation dinners. He seldom missed a Memorial Day Parade.
An energetic and humorous man, Moskowski had a reputation for speaking candidly. He was very outgoing and could be funny, but there was also a lot of people that didn-t appreciate him, because he told it like it was, his daughter said.
Moskowski had suffered from a variety of health problems in recent years, and battled pneumonia for about two weeks before his death in a Uniondale nursing home, his daughter said.
Moskowski is survived by his children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Comments about this story? NBuglione@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 236.
