Smooth, steady voice of FDNY dispatcher stilled
Monday, October 27th 2008, 3:15 PM
In all his years with the Fire Department, Dennis O'Connell never made a daring rescue, didn't go into burning buildings, or cut people out of mangled cars.
But as a cool, steady voice, and with encyclopedic knowledge of the city, he sent firefighters where they had to go, juggling ladder and engine companies to save minutes, seconds, blocks - and lives.
"He'd be calm; he'd get them there," said Robert Engel, who met O'Connell when they were kids in the Fire Explorer Scouts, and worked with him in the Bronx dispatch office near the Bronx Zoo.
A week ago Sunday, the "6-5-2" message came over fire radios across the city:
"The Department announces the death of supervising fire alarm dispatcher Dennis P. O'Connell of Bronx Operations, which occurred Oct. 19, 2008."
O'Connell himself had read out many a "6-5-2" in his 37 years as a dispatcher.
On 9/11, he read out quite a few "4-5" messages, line-of-duty deaths, in between directing fire companies to fires and other emergencies that were going on in the Bronx and Manhattan while the World Trade Center burned and collapsed.
Scores of men he had known for years were killed that day.
And in the months after that catastrophe, as a bagpiper with the Fire Department's band, he played at the funerals.
Some days, there were three, even four.
O'Connell, known as "Doc," died at 56, of complications from a stroke.
Engel and O'Connell were close friends right up until O'Connell died.
"I grew up in the South Bronx, and he lived in Fordham, and we met when we were 10 or 11," said Engel, 56.
"The firemen taught us how to tie knots, climb ladders, do first aid," Engel recalled last Thursday after O'Connell's funeral.
"They took us on trips to the wilderness," he said, speaking of the Catskills. "Going from a brick tenement building to a forest was a big thing. They'd tell us, 'Here's a snake,' things like that."
They both attended Chelsea High School in Manhattan, with dreams of becoming firefighters.
"There was a firehouse right behind the school, and we'd hear the bells. They'd announce a second alarm on 14th St., and he'd be like, 'Come on let's go,' and we'd cut out and go to the fire," said Engel. "The teachers kept telling us we better get into the books, learn our history, but the next day we'd hear the banging on the bells and we'd go. We'd take the train to fires."
Once there, they'd watch and try to learn. Sometimes, they even helped stretch out a hose line if a chief let them.
Engel said they couldn't become city firefighters in the 1970s because of the fiscal crisis and other reasons, so they became dispatchers.
On 9/11, O'Connell and Engel worked side by side as calls poured in from people trapped in the Twin Towers.
They set up command posts for all the fire companies from outside the city who rushed in to help, using them to backfill for Bronx companies that had been sent downtown.
"We had to make decisions fast," said Engel.
He said O'Connell was a "walking encyclopedia," who could tell you what companies would respond to any given location.
"We didn't need the computer," Engel said.
Retired FDNY Lt. John Halpin of Ladder 33 in Highbridge attended O'Connell's wake last Wednesday. He brought a picture from his wedding album, showing himself and his wife, Marilyn, with O'Connell, dressed in his kilt.
O'Connell played the bagpipes at Halpin's wedding, 27 years ago on Oct. 24.
"He was a kind soul and very helpful to know," said Halpin.
O'Connell suffered a stroke more than four months ago, and never recovered, Engel said.
The man whose voice provided a lifeline had trouble speaking, but Engel could understand him.
"He told me, 'How am I gonna do this? I'm not gonna play the pipes anymore,'" said Engel. "I told him he had done his job; he had played a lot of funerals."
Hundreds gathered at O'Connell's funeral last Thursday, at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church on City Island, where O'Connell lived with his wife, Patricia, and children Sean and Tara.
He had been active in the American Legion post there.
About 60 pipers and drummers from the FDNY band paid tribute, with fire rigs slowly rolling behind.
"He would have loved every minute of it," said Engel. "It was a celebration of his life."