ABFreedom: 2996 Tribute to Capt. Daniel Brethel

This post will remain at the top until after September 11. For recent posts, scroll down.

In doing research for this project, I found some very sincere tributes to Daniel. I've never met this person, but after reading, and getting some incite as to who exactly this person was, I would have been very proud and honored to have Daniel as a friend and coworker. He seems to have been a very caring person, and always watched your back. Who could ask for anything else. Below is a mixture of that information stitched together in honor of this very brave and courageous man, along with the links to both the articles, guest books, and related information.

There's a home video of Daniel Brethel at age 4, wearing a fire hat that he'd gotten for Christmas, and grinning from ear to ear.

Daniel would build fire stations out of cardboard boxes in his East Meadow living room and push his plastic trucks speedily to make-believe fires in the furniture.

Many little boys dream of becoming firemen. Daniel Brethel followed through.

On Sept. 11, the 43-year-old New York Fire Department captain rushed to the World Trade Center at an hour when he should have been driving home after his shift. As he and his colleagues rushed toward the burning buildings, Brethel shouted out a warning.

"Firemen will die here today," he said. "Don't let it be you."

Daniel Brethel, captain of Ladder 24 on West 31st Street in Manhattan, had had some close calls: His neck and ears had been burned when he was holding his helmet over an injured firefighter who was lying on the street; once he had required a skin graft. Arriving at the World Trade Center after both jets had hit, he shouted a warning to his men: "Guys, be very careful, because firemen are going to die today."

He had been off duty at 9 a.m. His wife, Carol, hearing about the attack at their home in Farmingdale, hoped he was already on the train and knew nothing about it. On Tuesday night, they came to the house and told her they had found his body. Captain Brethel, 43, had grabbed one of his men as a building started to collapse. They dived under a firetruck. Both were crushed.

Full honor guards met the firefighters' caskets outside each ceremony, as bagpipers played plaintive music.

In North Merrick, trucks' raised ladders formed a passage down Merrick Avenue for Brethel's funeral procession.

The service was held in the same church where Brethel had been baptized, where he had received his first Communion, where he had been married.

Rest in peace Capt. Daniel Brethel, your sacrifice will never be forgotten.
The Captain Daniel Brethel Trust Fund
c/o The Bank of New York, 1395 Route 25A, Setauket, NY 11733

Legacy.com Source and Guest Book
Newsday.com Source
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 VICTIMS