The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York), February 16, 2006 Thursday

Copyright 2006 Post-Standard
All Rights Reserved.
The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York)

February 16, 2006 Thursday
Correction Appended
FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEIGHBORS SYRACUSE; Guest columnist; Pg. 5

HEADLINE: HAS CITY FORGOTTEN A FIRE CHIEF WHO SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED?

BYLINE: E.W. "Ted" Furze

BODY:
City resident E.W. "Ted" Furze wrote the following about the Feb. 3, 1939, fire that destroyed the Collins Block and killed nine Syracuse firefighters and the annual firefighters ceremony on that date that honors all city firefighters killed in the line of duty. Neighbors had stories about both of these events on Feb. 2 and 9.

I was born Jan. 7, 1938.
So when the first alarm came in a little after 1 a.m. Feb. 3, 1939, I was only 1 and asleep in my crib. However, growing up, as the grandson of the Syracuse fire chief, Edward W. Gieselman, the tragedy was always there. It took an awful toll on my grandfather and our whole family.
I knew some of the names - Jimmy Diamond - and of course, Charlie Boynton, my grandfather's assistant chief and his best friend on the department for 42 years.
At Bellevue Jr. High School, one of the teachers was Rosemary Dugan, who lost her father. She is faithful in her attendance at every wreath-laying ceremony.
My sister Joan, nine years older than I, always remembers the look of grief on grandpa's face; "the first time she ever saw a man cry," (she recalled).
My grandparents always spoke so fondly of Charlie and Libby Boynton, and I know they missed him terribly. On a few occasions, I remember grandma mentioning, perhaps with regret, that Ada Keep's restaurant was in the (destroyed) building.
In the 1970s, I was talking with my uncle, Walter T. Gieselman. He had been a young lawyer in Jacob Smith's office Suite 411 in the SA&K Building overlooking the State Tower Building and the site of the Collins Block behind it. Walter said that "dad" (grandpa to me) had fought the fire all night. It was a bitter cold night, and a lot of water had been poured on the conflagration and it froze on the wooden beams. In the morning the fire was extinguished.
Then, Walter claimed that he talked grandpa into going around the corner to his fire chief's office in room 212 of City Hall, leaving his good friend and assistant, Charlie Boynton, in charge.
Eight men were in the basement when the building collapsed under the weight of the ice on the burned out wooden structure.
Grandpa visited each of the eight homes and families of the fallen fireman.
Three days later, on Feb. 6, Charlie Boynton had a heart attack at home and died. He was buried from St. Anthony's Church on Feb. 9, 1939. This is documented in a letter from Edward W. Gieselman, fire chief, to Roland B. Marvin, mayor, and dated Feb. 11, 1939. The letter praises his friend and 42-year colleague. I don't know the purpose of the letter, but I do know that my grandfather had a falling out with Mayor Marvin and Public Safety Commissioner Bill Rapp (also police chief at one point). I believe (it was) over the "Widows and Orphans Fund."
It was well known that grandpa stood up for his men. Before he retired in 1941, or within two years, he had the monument to Valor erected in Fayette Park (now known as Firemen's Park).
I gave a photo of my grandfather in his chief's uniform at the dedication of the memorial monument. I noticed that with characteristic humility the monument had a small inscription "Edward W. Gieselman, Fire Chief" in the lower right corner on the front of the monument.
Recently, the fire department added the names of the other firemen who have been killed in the line of duty over the whole history of the department. In so doing they added two stone plaques with the names on both ends of the monument, thus covering up my grandfather's name, as if to rewrite history and eliminate his 42 years of dedicated service.
When grandpa joined the SFD in 1897, they spent all day and night at the fire station, only coming home for the noon meal, and one night a month off. He was responsible for motorizing the department from old "Tommy" and the other horses that pulled the apparatus to trucks.
When I was a boy, he would take me downtown, and everyone stopped him, and called him "chief" even during the decade of his retirement. Every time he drove past a firehouse, he would give his familiar beep-beep on the horn, and all the fireman sitting out front would wave at him.
When we would drive out by State Fair and Hiawatha Boulevard, he would proudly point out the red brick tower he had erected for the firemen's training. The Syracuse Fire Department Web page credits Chief Hanlon with establishing the training center. He resurrected it after it had fallen into disuse, and it was used to store trucks.
When he died in September 1952, a large number of uniformed firemen marched through my Uncle Walter's house to pay their final respects, and then stood at attention on the front lawn as we were leaving for the cemetery.
Over the past several years I have turned over boxes of his papers and memorabilia to the SFD, including a hand-written thank-you note to him from Libby Boynton.
The Syracuse Fire Department even built the fire station on Fabius and West streets, right where he and my mother and the family lived until 1925.
I respectfully request that the Syracuse Fire Department and the city of Syracuse consider some appropriate recognition of a half-century of devotion and his public service to this community.
E.W. "Ted" Furze, of Westcott Street, holds a history degree from LeMoyne College and a certificate in labor-management relations from Cornell University. He works as a private consultant, and has worked has a director of development and public relations at LeMoyne College and executive director of the CNY Community Foundation.

CORRECTION:
February 16, 2006
A guest column today in some editions of Neighbors refers to Edward W. Gieselman, chief of the Syracuse Fire Department at the time of the Collins Block tragedy in 1939. The column suggests that Gieselman's name was covered by stone plaques bearing the names of the area's fallen firefighters; the plaques were added to the monument in Fireman's Park recently. In fact, Gieselman's name still is visible at the bottom of the monument. For an explanation, see Ted Furze's letter to the editor today on A-13, the Reader's Page.