TOT SLEEPS, CITY WEEPS
Sanitman is laid to rest
HE’LL NEVER really know his dad.
Seven-week-old Jesse Frosch slept in his weeping mother’s arm all through Friday’s funeral for his father, beloved city sanitation worker Steven Frosch.
Little Jesse slumbered as Mayor de Blasio praised his pop as “the very best of New York City.”
He did not stir when hundreds of his father’s co-workers rose to their feet and gave Frosch a standing ovation.
And when the service was over, the now fatherless child barely made a peep when his mom, Colombina Frosch, carried him out of the Franklin Square, L.I., church.
Trailing them was the casket bearing her husband, hefted by burly sanitation workers in dress uniforms to the strains of “Battle Hymn of fhe Republic.”
Frosch, 43, was killed last Saturday when he was crushed under a street sweeper at a Sanitation Department garage in Queens. Police said Frosch was making a fix to his own sweeper when he was struck by a driver who didn’t see him.
Hundreds of sanitation workers were waiting at St. Catherine of Sienna Roman Catholic Church in Franklin Square when the widow arrived with Jesse and her other kids — Steven, 11, Charlize, 8, and 4-year-old Fredrica.
Inside, the DSNY Pipes and Drums played “Amazing Grace.”
“This is a painful day for all the people who live in the city of New York,” de Blasio said. “A painful day for New York’s Strongest. Especially for the Frosch family.”
The emotional high point of Frosch’s farewell came when the Rev. Peter Colapietro, chaplain for the Sanitation Department, suddenly asked the mourners to stand.
“I believe that our buddy, our fellow san worker, your husband, your father, our friend, right now he deserves a standing ovation,” he said.
And as one, the grieving throng rose and started clapping.