History Repeats for Another Family

This article appeared in the Boston Herald today. Ed (or Eddie, as I call him) is my uncle & godfather.

Service and sacrifice
Family of firefighters mourns lost brother
By Peter Gelzinis
Friday, September 7, 2007

Lt. Ed Gottwald was 11 years old when he first took part in the heartbreaking majesty of a fallen firefighter’s funeral. The hero being carried to his rest that day 27 years ago [this is actually incorrect...supposed to read '37 years ago'] was Ed’s father, Boston Fire Lt. George J. Gottwald.

Yesterday morning, Ed Gottwald walked behind Engine 30, a fire truck that had made the poetic transformation into a funeral bier. It cradled the flag-draped coffin of his friend, Firefighter Paul J. Cahill.

Pipers from departments all over the East Coast led Cahill’s casket past the sea of dress blue uniforms on Centre Street and through a West Roxbury rotary - Lt. George J. Gottwald Circle.

As Ed Gottwald slowly marched into the spot memorializing his father’s valor, his heart most certainly swelled with equal parts of pride and sadness. Yet, there was no one who could understand the symmetry of being the son of a fallen jake and helping to carry a brother firefighter’s casket into Holy Name Church better than him. His family’s sacrifice reaches back to the 1898 line-of-duty death of his great-grandfather, another George Gottwald, for whom his fallen father was named.

The thousands and thousands of ordinary heroes who stood at attention for more than a dozen blocks yesterday usually don’t waste much time pondering the more spiritual aspects of a job that is actually a calling, something deeply rooted in the blood. That kind of reflection is saved for scenes like the one that unfolded in West Roxbury yesterday . . . and will be duplicated today in Dorchester with services for Firefigher Warren Payne, the man who perished beside Paul Cahill last week.

It is within the panorama of these magnificent fanfares for common men that the basic notion of public service is redefined by sacrifice.
Paul Cahill was lovingly remembered as a good and kind man who adored his family, loved to fish and could do things with a steak that would make Wolfgang Puck jealous. But what separated this modest, self-effacing man from the rest of us is that he went to work at the firehouse each day knowing that it could cost him his life. That kind of unvarnished courage and devotion are not part of most job descriptions.
“When people are having the worst day of their lives,” said Ed Kelly, president of Boston Firefighters Local 718, “we show up and try to make things better. And sometimes, it costs us our lives.”

Capt. Steven Keough walked down Centre Street yesterday, out ahead of the engine company he commands. He held the helmet of a brother he lost a week ago when a routine kitchen fire went horribly bad. Keough was among those who were rushed to the hospital in the aftermath of a disaster that unfolded two blocks away from the firehouse.

What he chose to remember from the altar yesterday - and will carry with him for the rest of his life - was the echo of jokes, the sounds of laughter, the dinner table conversation, the proud accounts of his children’s exploits . . . and above all, the understanding that in Paul Cahill, Engine 30 had a guy who would be there with you, and for you, in the midst of whatever hell you happened to stumble upon.

Only a tiny handful of the men and women who flooded Centre Street yesterday knew Paul Cahill well enough to have tasted one of his gourmet beef dishes. But then again, they all knew him. What binds them to each other is a kind of pedestrian, blue-collar courage the outside world really doesn’t understand, until a city is humbled by the drone of the pipers and the sight of fire apparatus as it rolls slowly and silently through the neighborhood, carrying the remains of a public servant who gave us . . . his life.

Yes, we will take notice for a little while; we will be grateful and then get on with our lives. But the thousands who stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside Holy Name Church were linked to Paul Cahill by blood, much in the same way that Lt. Ed Gottwald is linked to the father and great-grandfather who willingly surrendered their lives answering the bell.