A cold north wind blew down New Hyde Park Road on Saturday morning as an honor guard of Garden City Park Firemen stood in a long blue line opposite Notre Dame Church as a funeral procession with a hearse carrying the coffin of one of their fallen comrades, Tom Regan, made its way slowly up the street.
Timothy Regan, Tom Regan’s son, marched slowly ahead of the hearse in alongside Capt. John Janus of Garden City Park’s Hillside Heights Engine Company 3 who carried a white chief’s helmet in tribute to the firefighter being memorialized. Regan was elected chief posthumously in ceremonies at the Garden City Park fire house on Friday night.
A band of bagpipers and drummers provided a somber musical accompaniment in the line of march, which included several Garden City Park fire trucks.
Tom Regan had slipped and fallen on the ice in the driveway of his Garden City Park home on the night of Jan. 26 while responding to a carbon monoxide call. The 82-year-old veteran had sustained a spinal injury and succumbed to his injury on Feb. 17 at St. John’s Hospital in Roslyn.
Regan had retired from service as a deputy chief with the 12th Division of the New York City Fire Department directing elite rescue units in 1992, after 38 years of service with the city fire service.
He had also served for 34 years with the Garden City Park volunteer firefighters, in charge of safety training and tactics at the Hillside Heights Engine Company 3.
“As a fireman, he was the guy you wanted there,” said Garden City Park Fire Chief William Rudnick. “He was one of the old-time guys. He was the real deal.”
Rudnick added that at the fire house “he was a jokester, the guy who made everybody laugh.”
But Regan took his responsibilities seriously, and stayed in top physical condition to discharge them. He typically ran six to eight miles daily and worked out for two hours each day at the fire house, according to Rudnick.
One of Rudnick’s enduring memories of Regan occurred during a basement fire the two men were fighting several years ago. Rudnick was using a breathing apparatus and was down on his hands and knees because of the heat and smoke.
“I looked up and saw Tom standing there, smoking a cigar. He looked and asked me what I was doing on the floor,” Rudnick recalled.
Recalling his own memories of his father during the Mass of Christian Burial at Notre Dame, Timothy Regan described a man who was always ready to respond to an emergency. He recalled occasions when he and his brother and sister would be riding in a car with their father as he would spot an accident or some other kind of trouble.
“‘Stay in the car’, he would say, ‘I’ll be right back’, and he would spring into action,” Regan recounted.
He described his father as a man who “led a simple life, enjoyed an occasional cigar, a game of racquetball, a can of Foster’s, and some cheese and crackers while he watched ‘Friday Night Fights’.”
Regan recalled the proudest day of his life as the one in the fall of 1984 when he wore his father’s fireman badge as he was commissioned as a probationary firefighter in Queens as his father, then a deputy chief, stood beside him. “He was not just my father, he was my best friend,” Regan said.
“His greatest gifts were his sense of courage, his great sense of humor and his ability to tell great stories,” Timothy Regan said.
One of the late Regan’s 11 grandchildren, Nicole, gave the first scriptural reading of the service from the book of Isaiah and another granddaughter, Carolyn, read from the book of Revelation.
Reading from the chapter in which St. John describes “a new city of Jerusalem coming down from heaven,” she read, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will be no mourning, for the old order will have passed away.”
In his own eulogy, Father William Slater, pastor of Notre Dame, spoke about the quality of courage that Regan shared with that “different breed” of men who are firefighters.
“His life’s passion was to go and help others,” Slater said, adding that Regan possessed “a generous, caring heart that put the needs of others above his own life.”
As the service concluded, the blue line of Garden City Park’s bravest reassembled outside the church. A group of firefighters accompanied the flag-draped casket down the middle aisle of the church, carried it down the front steps and raised it up atop one of their department’s fire trucks for their comrade’s final ride.
One of the officers presented the white chief’s helmet to Regan’s widow, Elsie, and the crowd of mourners who had gathered outside slowly dispersed.
Along with his wife, Elsie, Regan is survived by his sons Thomas and Timothy, who is also retired from the New York City Fire Department, and his daughter, Christine. He is also survived by his grandchildren Timothy, Carolyn, Ryan, Nicole, Thomas, Robert, Brian, Matthew, Laura, Brooke and Kristen.
