N.Y. Firefighters Find Faith, Fealty in Football

With game time approaching, Coach Sterling Alves asked the reporters in the locker room to leave.

About 80 large men, New York firefighters suited up this day for football, gathered in a semicircle around him. Alves, a 23-year fire department veteran, kept his remarks brief. He told them to play hard but to be proud whether they won or lost.

They were there, he said, because fans wanted to honor them as firefighters, not football players.

“It doesn’t take much courage to play a football game,” he said. “It takes courage to be on the 40th floor of tower one, when you know tower No. 2 just came down.”

As the players filed out, they reached up to touch a replica of the “Play Like a Champion Today” sign, from Notre Dame, which hung over the doorway. It once belonged to Durrell “Bronko” Pearsall of Rescue 4, a team captain last year. Now, it was decorated with 22 memorial cards and photos, including Pearsall’s.

Some players just slapped the bottom of the sign for luck; others picked out individual faces to touch more reverently.

It helped -- knowing they were playing for their lost brethren.

*

On Sept. 11, Engine 216 from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, rolled up to the World Trade Center soon after the second plane hit.

One of the firefighters who jumped off was Danny Suhr, a 5-11, 250-pound linebacker who manhandled blockers for 11 seasons on the team.

“I always looked up to him,” said Steve Orr, a childhood friend who was a team co-captain with Suhr.

But Suhr became the department’s first casualty. As he rushed toward the north tower lobby, he was struck by a falling body.

Orr couldn’t believe it. He went looking for Suhr’s younger brother, Chris, also a firefighter. He ran into Mike Stackpole of Squad 1, the team’s defensive coordinator. Orr had grown up on the same block as Mike Stackpole and his older brother, Timothy, a department captain who’d played football as well.

“I lost Timmy,” Mike Stackpole told him.

Orr was reeling. “The first two people I heard were killed [I’d known] my whole life,” he said later.

As the day progressed, FDNY players compiled mental lists of missing teammates.

Among them: Pearsall, an offensive lineman and the team jokester; Pat Lyons of Squad 252, a quarterback and the team’s fiercest competitor; Tarel Coleman, also in 252, a defensive back; Tommy Cullen of Squad 41, a quarterback; Tommy Foley of Rescue 3, a defensive back and once one of People Magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive”; Keith Glascoe of Ladder 21, a tight end who’d nearly made the Jets; and Billy Johnston of Engine 6, the team’s kicker.

*

Within the FDNY, there are firehouse softball and basketball teams. Rugby, lacrosse and boxing enthusiasts have clubs. Then there are the department-wide teams in baseball, hockey and football, which match up against police and fire teams across the country.

Of all the department’s teams, football suffered the most grievous losses on Sept. 11. Of the 343 firefighters lost, seven were active players and 15 were alumni.

Most of the lost players were members of the department’s elite rescue and emergency squads. Football players, agile, tough and aggressive, are perfect for such units.

Suhr’s funeral was the first. Pudgie Walsh, the team’s founder and coach for almost three decades, called him “a man’s man.”

Bronko Pearsall’s service was probably the largest. Pearsall had been the team’s biggest personality, leading his teammates after every game in singing “The Wild Rover,” a joyous Irish drinking song.

Hundreds of firefighters lined Fifth Avenue as his coffin was marched into St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Linebacker Mike Meyers told mourners that Bronko, a devoted Notre Dame fan, had played like a champion on Sept. 11.

In the weeks that followed players attended so many more services, often as a team. Football didn’t seem to matter.

At Tommy Foley’s funeral, a group of players found themselves together outside a packed church. Orr told his teammates that he didn’t want to play anymore. Coming from such a fiery competitor, it might have sounded strange. But they understood.

*

As the military campaign in Afghanistan geared up in October, a resolve began to form. Not playing would be like surrender, said Woody McHale, 39, a fire marshal and the senior man on the team with 13 seasons.

“Somebody shook our tradition,” said McHale, a muscular 270-pound tackle, one of the team’s most emotional players. “Somebody came in here and tried to change our way of life.... So playing football is like thumbing our noses at them.”

On Oct. 28, at a Knights of Columbus Hall in Queens, players and alumni assembled. It had been almost 30 years since Pudgie Walsh, a firefighter and semipro coach, first got a call from a police officer friend, asking if he’d like to organize a game between departments. Now they were deciding whether the team would continue.

No vote was really necessary.

“It’s not an option,” said Alves later. “It’s almost like a responsibility.”

The football team had always raised money for the department’s widows’ and children’s fund. There were many more to support now.

*

February brought the first workout. More than 110 firefighters filled the brightly lit gymnasium, stunning the team’s 25 returning veterans. In years past, sometimes they’d struggled to scrape together 40. Orr, a captain last year, ambled about, reading the new players’ minds: “They’re thinking, who’s this gray-haired short guy?”

As the offensive line assembled for drills, McHale felt a surge of territoriality as he glanced around at the unfamiliar faces. “Don’t think you can replace a Bronko Pearsall or a Brian Bilcher,” he thought to himself.

On a foggy evening in late March, the team opened against a semipro team in Brooklyn. As players lined up for the national anthem, the twin beams of light from ground zero glowed faintly in the distance.

On the team’s second drive, Joe Harris, a former college quarterback who rejoined the squad after an eight-year layoff, threw a fade to a wide-open receiver in the end zone. It was the game’s only score.

It was a promising start.

McHale was upset at his own performance. He might have been distracted, he said later, not hearing Lyons’ familiar cadence at the line, Bronko’s barking on the sidelines.

*

From the beginning, Alves felt a responsibility to be a healer as well as a coach.

He had lost six men in his house, Squad 252. He sought counseling and urged his players to do the same. He also encouraged them to speak up about their feelings. Healing emotional wounds doesn’t come by just playing, he said later. It comes in talking things through with teammates who become as close as brothers.

“Football is just an extended family,” he said. “It’s like a big firehouse.”

Road trips were when players bonded. After playing mostly locally, the team joined the National Public Safety Football League in 1996.

This year, the team traveled first to San Diego. Mike Meyers brought a picture of Bronko and stuck it up in his hotel room.

The FDNY team trounced the South Bay Blue Knights, law enforcement officers from Los Angeles County, 26-0.

The New York team lost the following week against the Orlando, Fla., police department, turning the ball over seven times. Even so, the score was close, 14-12.

Next came a narrow win over the Orange County (Calif.) Lawmen. On the sidelines, players talked about last year, when Lyons came off the bench and delivered a comeback victory.

The rebuilt team was holding its own, but they sorely missed Billy Johnston, last year’s kicker. Coaches sent a message out to the firehouses, asking for help.

In years past, side jobs had kept Jerry O’Riordan, a former Division III All-American place kicker, from playing. This time, he called his wife.

“I gotta go,” he said.

Against the New York City Corrections team, O’Riordan was the center of attention, chipping in a 22-yard field goal and booming a 40-yarder into the wind to end the game, 20-0.

The team had a won-lost record of 4-1, with one game left, against the NYPD.

*

The police-fire football game--the Finest versus the Bravest--was always a grudge match.

This year, the usual competitiveness had an added edge. Animosity lingered from clashes in the fall between police officers and firefighters at ground zero.

On a bright May afternoon a few weeks ago, the teams met in Giants Stadium before 15,000 fans. Before the game, the FDNY team presented framed jerseys of each fallen player to his family.

The game turned out to be disappointing for the FDNY. Their offense never really got on track. Final score: NYPD 10, FDNY 0.

Afterward, the mood was subdued. Several veterans, including Orr, who was named most valuable player, addressed the team. They had no regrets. By resurrecting the devastated team, they said, they’d made new friends and honored the memory of their old ones.

Then it was Alves’ turn to talk. It doesn’t have to end here, the coach said. “We can become a better team, a better family,” next year.

He was proud of how they’d pulled together, he said later, proud of how they’d “learned to move on together.”

The players gathered in the center of the locker room, arms around each other. Tattooed on many biceps was “343,” the number of men the FDNY lost on Sept. 11. One player held up the “Play Like a Champion” sign.

Once again, they sang “The Wild Rover,” Bronko’s song. They’d sung it all season after games, and it had taken on new meaning. Part therapy. Part tribute.

“For Bronko, boys,” one player said, and they belted out the words.