Raymond Pfeifer
Firefighter who combed toxic ruins of World Trade Center
Raymond Joseph Pfeifer, firefighter. Born: 6 February 1958 in Queens. Died: 28 May 2017 in Port Washington, aged 59.
RaymondPfei fer, who spent eight months digging through the toxic debris of the collapsed World Trade Center for the remains of fellow firefighters and other victims and years lobbying, successfully, for health benefits for those who survived, died on Sunday in a hospice in Port Washington, New York. He was 59.
The cause was comp li cations of cancer she contracted while searching the Lower Manhattansite after the 2001 terrorist attack, his wife, Caryn, said .“I’m being poison ed, and I’ m dying, every single day, because of terrorism,” Pfeifer said in 2014. But unlike the 343 firefighters who died on 11 September ,2001, “I’m a very lucky man,” he said.
“My friends were murdered on 9/ 11,” he added. “From the 12th on, from that day on, I’m still here. I’m very lucky. I got to watch my kids grow up.”
In 2009, though, a mysterious pain in his left leg turned out to be a baseball- size tumor that had broken his hip and developed into Stage 4 kidney cancer. He had surgery 48 hours later.
A litany of critical medical procedures followed, including hip, femur and knee replacements and the removal of a kidney. He also had a heart attack after being weakened by chemotherapy. Even as his condition worsened, however, he was leading the fight to extend healthcare benefits f or emergency workers and survivors of the 9/ 11 attacks by buttonholing public officials in New York and Washington.
The goalof the campaign was to extend federal legislation, providing healthcare monitoring and other assistance, that had been approved by Congress in 2010.
Known as the James Zadroga 9/ 11 Health and Compensation Act, the legislation was named for a New York City detective whose death from respiratory causes at 34 was linked by supporters of the bill to the World Trade Center attack.
But those federal benefits would have expired in 2015 without the lobbying of a coalition that included the comedian Jon Stewart and a group of survivors. Congress then extended the act’s compensa- tion provisions to 2020 and its health care measures to 2090.
“I was just the poster boy,” Pfeifer said of his role in the lobbying effort.
Fire Commissioner Dani el Nigro said on Monday, “Ray Pfeifer was a true fighter who bravely battled fires as a New York City firefighter and fought tirelessly for all first responders who—like him — suffered from World Trade Center- related illness.”
Mayor Bill de B la sio, who presented Pfeifer with a key to the city last year, said Monday that because of Pfeifer’s leadership in the fight, other survivors“get to wake up in the morning and not have that horrible, pervasive worry about their future.”
“They don’ t have to wonder what’s going to happen next to them and their families because they did the right thing when it was their moment to stand up,” the mayor said.
Senator Chuck Sc hum er of New York said in a Twitter post on Sunday :“You meet very few truly great men in your life. Ray was one of them.”
Raymond Joseph Pfeifer was born in Queens on 6 February 1958, to Joseph Pfeifer and the former Helen Mcadam. His father was a sanitation worker and a member of the volunteer East Meadow Fire Department in nearby Nassau County. A graduate of Division Avenue High School in Levittown on Long Island, Raymond Pfeifer joined the New York City Fire Department in 1987.
He was playing golf with fellow off- duty firefighters on 11 September 2001, when they heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. They raced to their fire house, Engine 40, Ladder 35, near Lincoln Center in Manhattan, grabbed their gear and headed downtown .“I just remember pulling up and seeing hundreds of pairs of shoes ,” he said. Barely escaping the collapse of 7 World Trade Center that afternoon, he stayed at the site for months clearing debris and searching for remains, sleeping in his truck or at the firehouse. Face masks were useless, he said, because they were quickly clouded by the pulverised concrete and smoke filling the air. He was soon told that he had what was described as “9/ 11 cough.”
In addition to his wife, the former Caryn Baldassano, Pfeifer is survived by his daughter, Taylor, who has been accepted to be an officer with the Suffolk County Police Department on Long Island and is awaiting an appointment; his son, Terence, a Fire Department emergency medical technician; four sisters, Mary ellen McKee, Noreen Pfeifer, Patricia Schmith and Kathleen Aspenleiter; and two brothers, Joseph and Daniel.
Caryn Pfeifer said on Tuesday that her husband’ s condition had been deteriorating for weeks but that he had been hanging on just to hear one last bit of news.
Pfeif ergot the news afew days ago:his son, Terence, learned that he had scored a 97 on the latest New York City firefighter’s exam and would join the department a ca demy’s next class of recruits. ©New York Times 2017. Distributed by NY T Syndication Service
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO “They don’t have to wonder what’s going to happen next to them and their families because they did the right thing when it was their moment to stand up”