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An
American Hero!
by
Michael Sweeney, Lawrence Planning Director
09/01/06
 We will soon mark the fifth year
since September 11th, 2001. The immediate events of that
day overwhelmed and still haunt many people. It was a day
layered with tragedy as thousands of innocent Americans
were murdered by fanatic and evil, Islamic
fundamentalists. We should all pause a moment this week
to think of those who lost their lives and about the loss
we all suffered when brave, American heroes like New York
Fire Marshall Ronald “Ronnie” Bucca were
murdered.
Ronnie Bucca was the American dream. Born to a poor but
proud family, he grew up in the Woodside Projects in
Queens. He served in Vietnam as a gunner on a helicopter
with the Green Berets and continued to serve as a
reservist in the U.S Army’s 242nd Military
Intelligence Battalion as a First Sergeant. Joining the
New York Fire Department in 1977, Ronnie Bucca approached
the job as he did everything in his life, with full
dedication.
In the FDNY he served in the elite Rescue One, Manhattan
Unit. Of the 11,000 firefighters in NYC, only twenty-five
positions where available in the Manhattan Rescue One
Unit, everyone wanted to be there, Bucca was. His
firefighting brothers called him “the flying
fireman” because in 1986, while trying to help a
brother firefighter who was trapped on the 5th floor of
an inferno in Harlem, Bucca slipped on broken glass and
fell over the edge of a fire escape five floors down,
landing on his back. He broke a knee and the first lumbar
vertera in his back. Doctors thought he would walk with a
cane for the rest of his life. He could have retired with
seventy-five percentage of his pension tax free. Not
Ronnie Bucca, a year later he re-qualified on a vigorous
training course to get back into Rescue One.
On his helmet Ronnie also carried pictures of his wife
Eve and his two children Jessica and Ronald. In 1989 and
1990 he was awarded medals for his bravery as a member of
Rescue One; rescuing a young girl from a severe fire in
1989 when she was moments from a horrible death. He
became a Fire Marshall in the FDNY’s Bureau of Fire
Investigation in 1991 and investigated the bombing of the
World Trade Centers in 1993.
On the morning of September 11th, 2001 he was on duty
when American Airlines Flight 11 rocketed into the North
Tower of the World Trade Center. Along with hundreds of
other FDNY firefighters he raced to the scene. About to
head into the North Tower, he stopped as United Airlines
Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower. He rushed into
the South Tower with his colleague Jimmy Devery. At the
50th floor Fire Marshall Devery, out of breath, came upon
a woman who was badly burnt and needed his assistance to
get out. He called up to Bucca who was a few stairwells
above him, urging Bucca to come down with him. Bucca
responded that he could hear people screaming for help
above and so he continued his rapid climb. Only two men
reached the seventy-eighth floor of the South Tower that
day. Fire Marshall Bucca and Battalion Chief Oriole
Palmer.
The scene on the 78th floor was a holocaust. Over a
hundred people laid dead and dozens of others were
horrifically injured and in their last moments. Bucca and
Palmer located a standpipe with sufficient pressure to
start fighting the fire and attempted to provide some
cover for those people, mothers and fathers, sons and
daughters, who were still clinging to life. Radio
transmissions indicate that Bucca took off his
flame-retardant turnout coat to cover some of the people
still alive.
At 10:05am, as Bucca and Palmer protected people from
fire on the 78th floor, the South Tower collapsed. It
would be over a month later, on October 23rd when Fire
Marshall Ronnie Bucca’s body was recovered inside
the wreckage of what was the South Tower. At his memorial
service, his children wrote, “He was a Fireman, a
Soldier, a Nurse, an Adventurer, but most of all he was
one our best friends and an incredible Dad. We love him
tremendously and our hearts are broken at the thought
that he is not here with us…but wherever we
go…he is part of us.”
And part of us all. Fire Marshall Ronald
‘Ronnie’ Bucca. American Hero.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The September, 2006
Edition of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 9,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
North Andover,
Methuen, Haverhill, Chelmsford, Georgetown, Groveland,
Boxford,
Lawrence, Dracut, Tewksbury, Hampton & Salisbury
Beach, and Lowell.
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