Farewell to ‘Chief’: In Death as in Life, Firefighters Care for Friend

It was a final Christmas gift for the man they called “The Chief.”

Snowflakes fell on the two fire engines--a truck and a hook and ladder--parked across the street from the funeral home in Harlem on Friday.

Inside, filling a cramped room, firefighters wearing rubber boots and sturdy shoes that had climbed thousands of tenement stairs sat on folding chairs.

And in a plain, blue casket--wearing a dark suit with a white carnation in the lapel--lay Alex Davis.

No one really knew how old he was. The death certificate said 56, but everyone guessed he was in his late 70s. One thing was certain: It was the best Davis had been dressed in decades.

The homeless man with a vague past had shown up sometime during the 1960s--no one quite remembers when--near Engine Company 82 and Ladder 31 in the South Bronx.

Davis said he was from the Carolinas, had served in the merchant marine. He didn’t say much more.

He started sweeping the sidewalk outside the firehouse. When the engines roared out to answer alarms, Davis would keep the neighborhood kids from messing with the firefighters’ cars.

He became a fixture there.

Every day, he sat in front of the firehouse in his own special chair, which the firefighters took in at night.

“He had a kind of mayoral status on the corner,” said Neil Walsh, an 18-year veteran of the department. “Young kids did listen to him when he talked.”

At night, Davis retired to vacant buildings or, more recently, to an abandoned big-rig trailer.

For three decades, the more than 50 firefighters of Engine Company 82 cared for him. Davis even appeared in the firehouse’s official millennial group portrait.

“We kept him alive by feeding him. He ate numerous Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. We clothed him,” Walsh said. “He was here every day, sunup to sundown.”

“His nickname for everyone was ‘Chief,’ ” Walsh continued. “That’s how he got his nickname.”

“He was a happy, simple guy,” added firefighter Michael Lynch. “He hung out in front of the house all the time. Guys would come in for change of tours, he would greet everybody.”

About two weeks ago, the firefighters responded to a report of a man lying face down in a vacant lot. It was their friend. He had frozen to death during the night.

Over the years, Davis had spoken about a daughter and an aunt who lived in the Bronx. But nobody claimed the body.

It appeared he was destined to be buried in Potter’s Field on Harts Island, in Long Island Sound. Inmates from Rikers Island Prison perform burials there for the indigent. There are no gravestones, only numbered markers.

So, the firefighters took up a collection and bought a cemetery plot in New Jersey for Davis.

Lynch called a friend who owns a funeral home, who donated a coffin and a new suit. A limousine service in the Bronx provided a hearse at no cost.

On Friday, the firefighters gathered at the Louis G. Cava Funeral Home for their farewell.

“He was so much like you and me, same eyes that wear out, same feet that slow down with heavy trodding,” said the Rev. Herman H. Watts of Friendship Baptist Church. “The greatest test of a person’s character is what they will do for somebody who in turn can do nothing for them.”

When the service was finished, the firefighters stood at attention on the sidewalk, then lifted the coffin into the hearse.

And after beeping the horns and sounding the sirens, they drove off to the South Bronx.

“He was a friend to us all, just a nice guy” said firefighter Tom Margarina. “We took care of him throughout the year. It wasn’t just a one-day thing.”

Naturally, the firefighters plan to see to it that “The Chief” is chiseled on Davis’ gravestone.