Better Angels

Tag: Thomas Kelly

  • Firefighter Thomas R. Kelly

    169 Kelly fb

    Thomas R. Kelly’s father and brother were also members of the FDNY. Kelly himself was an EMT before joining up.

    With a public moniker of the “Dean Street Heroes,” Ladder 105 in Park Slope is known within the department as “West Point” because of how many of its members rise up through the ranks. Thomas Kelly was to be one of them. He was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant that December.

    He had taken up bicycle riding with a passion in recent years. In 2000 he completed a 375-mile ride from New York to Boston for AIDS research. He had been planning a bicycle tour in France.
 Kelly and other members of Ladder 105 were last seen entering the South Tower shortly before it collapsed. Their remains have not yet been found.

  • Firefighter Thomas Kelly

    170 Kelly fb

    Firefighter Thomas W. Kelly, 50, “bled Dodgers blue so truly that he paid $1,420 for an original seat from Ebbets Field.” Nicknamed “Mr. Dependable” at the firehouse, he was a mentor to the probies.

    Thirty years earlier, in September of 1971, when he was still a steamfitter, Kelly took the woman he would marry on their very first date to his construction site: Two World Trade Center. A $20 bill got them past the security guard and he took her to the 40th floor to see his work. His job had been to spray the asbestos insulation. The WTC had been grandfathered in when the rules about asbestos insulation were changed nationally and it was the last major building built that way.

    He joined the FDNY in 1984 because, as his wife said, “he had a love of saving people.” Kelly left behind two sons and four cats.