Lescoe spent lifetime in emergency services
If there was one way to describe Ed Lescoe, his family and friends recalled, it would be that he always had a good idea about how to make everything just a bit better.
Lescoe, who spent a lifetime in emergency services and who even in his retirement slept with a police radio under his pillow, died Monday at the age of 74.
“If he felt it was important, he was going to make sure you knew about it,” MaryEllen Harper, one of Lescoe’s daughters said. “He was just passionate and he really did combine all his loves into one thing — family, fire service, the press and the news. That was all to him, that’s what life was about.”
Lescoe, who was in declining health, had heart problems and diabetes. He lived with his family in Bloomfield for years before moving to Farmington.
A Connecticut native from West Hartford, Lescoe was the son of two dentists, Edmund and Jean Lescoe, and the oldest of five.
His career in emergency service nearly spanned 50 years, whether it was as fire chief and deputy fire marshall at the Blue Hills Fire Department, working for CROG Emergency Services or serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Saratoga.
A lifelong firefighter and a veteran, Lescoe also worked as a photographer for the Hartford Times. He was a well known source for Courant reporters for years, supplying news tips about fires, crashes and other emergency events.
In an interview in 2006, he recalled the intense competition between the Times and the Courant.
“I remember driving back from Southington one night developing film in the front seat of a car so we could get the photo into Sunday’s paper,” Lescoe said.
It all began when he was 14-yearsold and got his first camera.
Lescoe, who grew up off Farmington Avenue near a fire station, began chasing fires on his bike, trying to get the perfect action shot for the local papers. Fire photography was a passion for Lescoe and it was how he met his wife.
“There was a huge fire that totaled a house,” Kathy Lescoe, who met Ed at 21-years-old and had been married to him over 48 years, said. “Ed came to take a picture of it and needed a telephone and he knocked on my parents door. … My mother let him and she was thrilled the press had come. It turned out, four months later a girlfriend mentioned she had met a guy and wanted me to meet him. … And when he went to pick me up, he said ‘I have a sense of déjà vu here.’ ”
Decades later, he remained passionate about photos, news and fire services, to the point it even trickled down to Harper, who would get her first taste of fire services as a volunteer at 16, then years later became the Farmington Director of Fire and Rescue Services.
Lescoe retired in 2016, but regularly assisted Courant reporters with news tips that came across his scanner, giving him one last taste of combining all his loves together.
“If Ed could get you news or tips, he had a purpose,” Kathy Lescoe said. “He was just a happy camper.”
Lescoe is survived by three of his younger siblings, his wife, two daughters and grandchildren.