FDNY firefighter's service part of her dad's 9/11 legacy

FDNY firefighter Josephine Smith carries her father’s photo and funeral mass card in her helmet wherever she's on the job.

It's a 24-year-old reminder, said Smith, 45, a Mount Sinai resident, of what she lost when Kevin Smith, her father, and just two years older than she is now, was killed along with 342 other FDNY firefighters on Sept. 11, 2001.

Each time she goes out on a call, the 11-year department veteran fastens the card from her father's funeral mass to the front of her helmet, next to her engine company and his badge number, to signify a vow she made to honor his life of service by joining the FDNY.

Legacy of service

In fulfilling that vow and her lifelong dream, Josephine Smith also became the FDNY's first female legacy firefighter — someone on the job with a family member in the department.

"Watching him always made me want to do it, going into fighting fires, helping people and the bravery of it," Smith said in an interview with Newsday. "I used to tell him, that you'll see, I'll be working with you one day. He never said, ‘my daughter’s not going to be a firefighter.’ He would just look at me and smile."

Smith said she sees reminders of the terrorist attacks 24 years ago Thursday in her day-to-day work as a member of Hook and Ladder Engine 274 in Flushing, Queens, but also in lives of colleagues lost from illnesses contracted working at Ground Zero.

"It makes everyone aware of what happened that day and still to this day," Smith told Newsday at the firehouse. "It’s a wound that’s still open always ... I’m always reminded of it, because it’s the same job my dad did. I try to keep the positive thoughts, not what happened to him, but more of what he did for a living, giving his life up for the City of New York."

A final radio call

Hours after Kevin Smith ran into the north tower and sent his last radio call, she continued to call his cellphone, praying he was OK. That evening, the family learned that Brian Smith, Josephine's brother and an FDNY paramedic on 9/11, had been treated at a hospital and released.

He had been working outside the Twin Towers when they both collapsed and ran for cover inside a bathroom of a nearby FDNY firehouse.

"He thought he was dead because the noise was so loud, it went from the loudest noise you ever heard to the most silence you’ve ever heard. After a minute or two, he knew he was still alive," Josephine Smith said. "Thankfully my brother cheated death a few times that day but went back to doing what he was supposed to do. It’s how my father was and how I am. I wouldn’t have a thought in my head. I would go back even if it cost me my life."

Their father had switched shifts to work on his day off when he responded to the World Trade Center and was on the 11th floor of the north tower when the FDNY lost radio transmission.

Josephine, who was 21 at the time, rushed home from work to comfort family and await word on her father.

"I called my dad, I can’t even tell you how many times, and just kept calling back and said, ‘Dad, let us know you’re all right, everybody’s worried,’ and just keep leaving voice messages," she said. "It was not a good day. They never found my father, still to this day. It’s hard because there was this tragedy and there’s no closure. There’s hope one day they’ll find something. I still pray for that day."

The family has submitted cheek swabs in an effort to possibly confirm Kevin Smith's identity through DNA testing.

A firefighting family

She grew up in Mastic, in a family of firefighters, including another brother, Tommy, who on 9/11 was on the job in Michigan but was soon assisting with rescue efforts at Ground Zero.

He arrived at about 1 a.m. with a fellow firefighter from his Michigan department.

He began digging through the pile, near where the north tour collapsed, when he recognized a fire truck from his father’s company, Hazmat Co. 1, nearby.

"The man who came out was the guy my father was covering for," Tommy Smith said. "He dropped to his knees and said they’re all gone. We both cried in the middle of the road and started working on that pile. My father’s remains were never found."

The two brothers spent weeks on the pile looking.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Kevin Smith had been a decorated member of the FDNY, receiving nine citations for meritorious acts, including rescuing a woman trapped in a plane after it had gone off the runway at LaGuardia Airport in 1989 and ended up underwater. 

Since joining the department, Josephine Smith has connected with other legacy firefighters who joined after losing family to 9/11 or related illnesses. She said it’s a bond that’s shared but rarely discussed.

A special relationship

"It’s a different type of relationship. If I meet someone that’s a legacy, it’s different," Smith said. "It's the person that knows you inside and out without even knowing you. It’s a different feeling in life that you carry around with you, that this other person knows exactly what you're going through and feeling and you’ve gone through the same thing."

She's one of two female members in the FDNY's Hazmat department.

"Her father was the best of the best. She’s following in his footsteps, and her father would be so proud in the way she carries herself," said Joe Loftus, deputy chief of Hazmat operations for the department. "The most firefighters can strive for is to be respected by our peers. Kevin had that and Josephine has that. It’s about having respect and being good and reliable. I know she keeps her father close to her heart, and she has paved her own way."