Firefighter Receives Medal For Bravery
29 Years After His Father On FDNY Medal Day
NY Daily News 6/4/09
|
Jim Ellson is a retired FDNY firefighter received the Capt. Denis W. Lane Memorial medal for heroism in 1980. His son James will receive a honor medal on Wednesday. |
James Ellson was only 11 that day more
than a quarter-century ago when he stood
outside City Hall and watched his
firefighter father receive a medal for
bravery.
"Proud," the son said Wednesday when
asked how he had felt.
Now Ellson is a firefighter and
Wednesday he received a medal for
bravery while his father looked on.
"Proud," the elder Ellson, also James,
said when asked how he felt.
The son was honored at Wednesday's FDNY
Medal Day for the daring rescue of a
young man from a building burning in the
Bronx, just as the father was honored at
the 1980 FDNY Medal Day for the daring
rescue of an elderly woman from a
burning building in Queens.
The citation read aloud at the father's
award ceremony would have been just as
fitting for the son's:
"Lt. James Ellson, acting in the highest
traditions of the Fire Department,
willingly placed his own life on the
line to save that of another person."
The son had known even before that
long-ago ceremony exactly where he
wanted the future to take him. He had
started out as a tyke by following
sanitation trucks, these being the
closest thing to a fire truck to
regularly pass his home in Whitestone.
"They used to bring him back and say, 'This kid followed us five blocks watching us pick up garbage,'" the father recalled.
The son was still in grammar school when
the father began taking him to visit the
firehouse and ride along on a run.
"You should have seen the fires that he
saw," the father said. "People jumping
out windows. It was unbelievable."
Each visit left the son only more
convinced he wanted to follow his father
into the FDNY.
"I knew what I wanted to do," the
younger Ellson recalled.
Not "be," but "do," the same way a true
baseball lover would not so much want to
be a Yankee as to play for the Yankees.
No Yankee, other than Yogi Berra's son
Dale, ever had the chance to follow his
father onto the team the way the younger
Ellson did when he joined the FDNY in
1990.
Even as he arrived at Wednesday's
ceremony in his dress uniform and white
gloves to be honored for a particular
act of bravery, the first thing the
younger Ellson said was that
firefighting is all about teamwork.
"This isn't an individual job," he said,
now the 40-year-old captain of Rescue 3.
"It's a team sport. Nobody's doing
anything without everybody at a fire.
Fires do not go out with one person."
The father had also been a special
operations captain, having stayed on the
FDNY until age 62, when he was injured
on duty and forced out. He is now 70 and
had on his dress uniform as if he had
never left as he strode up to his son in
the gathering Medal Day crowd. His smile
made any talk about pride redundant.
|
|
|
FDNY Major l FDNY Rescues l FDNY Brotherhood l FDNY Events l FDNY Profiles l FDNY Events |
