Updated: Tuesday, December 7, 1999 - 5 AM
Remembering the Victims
Joseph T. McGuirk
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Jackson |
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McGuirk |
Brotherton |
Lucey
A firefighter like his dad,
that's what he wanted to be
CAROL McDONALD
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Republished with permission
He had a name as rugged and proud as his profession.
Joseph T. McGuirk had firefighting in his blood.
The youngest in a family of 10 children, he grew up the son of a Worcester firefighter, and the brother, nephew and cousin of Worcester firefighters.
Firefighter McGuirk, who died in Friday night's warehouse catastrophe, was sworn in as a member of the department two years ago yesterday, on Dec. 5, 1997.
“I knew when I was a little kid,” he told a Telegram & Gazette reporter a few days afterward, after battling his first heart-racing fire on William Street.
His tearful widow, Linda, had been aware of how he felt.
“He always wanted to be a firefighter,” she said. “He lasted two years, but he did it.”
Firefighter McGuirk, 38, of Leicester, who served with Engine Company 3, was one of the four men who died attempting to help two firefighters who had entered the inferno before them. The deaths of the six have left a hollowness that can't be filled.
“It's going to feel empty without him,” said his brother, William T. McGuirk Jr., 60, who retired in 1984 as a lieutenant with the Worcester Fire Department.
He added: “Our father died as a result of an injury he received on the job.” William T. McGuirk Sr. suffered the injury while battling a Worcester fire a few years before his death in 1987, he said; his widow, Irene, died last year.
Linda McGuirk and her husband had been a couple for 20 years. Recently, she said, they noted that “we had passed that mark where we'd been together more than half our lives.” Their two children are Everett, 10, and Emily, 7.
“He was the best husband,” Mrs. McGuirk said, her voice wrenched with pain. “I can't imagine life without him.”
Ever since their first child was born -- Everett was sickly his first couple of years -- Firefighter McGuirk was always thinking about how best to care for his children, his wife said.
He loved taking them to IceCats games, among other places, and had season tickets.
“My son thought he was the world,” Mrs. McGuirk said.
The McGuirks looked forward to having more time together as they got older.
She is an aerobics instructor, and he was often working at the carpentry business he ran when not on duty as a firefighter. It had been that business that occupied him before he got around to pursuing his lifelong ambition.
In early November, the family had a rare chance to get away -- they took an 8-day trip to Disney World. “The kids wanted these big stuffed animals, Minnie and Mickey Mouse. He bought them, and then he was teasing the kids that we'd have to buy separate airplane tickets for them,” Mrs. McGuirk recalled.
Just a week ago, Mrs. McGuirk -- a South High Community School graduate -- and her husband attended his 20-year reunion at Burncoat High School.
He was pleased to learn, she said, that no one in his graduating class had died. “He said, 'Wow. We're all still here,' ” Mrs. McGuirk said.
“He loved life,” said the firefighter's niece, Pam McGuirk of Auburn. “He was happy all the time.”
Others offered similarly warm thoughts.
“He was just a great kid and a good family man,” John F. “Jack” McGuirk, 57, of Holden said of his brother. “He was never happier than when he became a firefighter.”
He had a great laugh, said Jack's wife, Arlene, a deep heh-heh-heh kind of laugh one could never forget. Family members milling across the street from the broken, smoking building where their loved one had died burst into brief laughter at her true-sounding imitation. Then they nodded quietly, remembering.
Relatives said Firefighter McGuirk was always willing to lend a hand ... and that his were hands that could really help.
They said he was close to his fellow firefighters, and that he often mentioned how much he appreciated all the support and brotherhood he got from them.
William McGuirk Jr.'s wife, Eleanor, was more than Joe's sister-in-law. Engaged to William when Joe -- or Joey, as some in the family call him -- was born, she was named his godmother.
“He was an adorable little boy, blond-haired and adorable,” she said. “I can't think of anything else to say about him right now except that he was just adorable.”
The oldest of the young firefighter's siblings -- six brothers, including two who died in 1988 and 1994, and three sisters -- is Joan P. McGuirk, 61.
“I can't put into words what he was like. If he was standing here today I'd say the same,” she said.
She smiled as she remembered Joe as a 7-year-old.
“I had a home in Hampton Beach. Every Friday afternoon he'd call and ask when he could come up and visit. We'd take him out to eat, and he always said, 'I'll have a steak.' No chicken nuggets for that boy. ...
“You bet your life I bought him the steaks, and I was thrilled to do it,” she said. “He was a wonderful brother. I'm going to miss him terribly. We love him. He wanted to be a firefighter, and he was successful.”
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