KEVIN BRACKEN: Making the Most of
It
His
friends called it "the Bracken bounce." It was an
expression they coined the day on the golf course when he
hit a ball into the trees and it miraculously ricocheted
back onto the fairway.
But it was not just on the golf course that Kevin
Bracken, a firefighter with Engine Company 40 on
Amsterdam Avenue and 66th Street, was known as a lucky
guy. It was every time he looked for a parking spot on a
busy street; or the day, two years ago, his car flipped
over in a traffic accident and he escaped without a
scratch.
His wife, Jennifer Liang, would say Mr. Bracken, 37,
made his own luck. "He was the most optimistic person I
ever encountered," she said. "He was never unhappy. Never
without a smile on his face. Whatever situation he was
in, he made the best of it."
Ms. Liang, who met her husband 11 years ago on the
Long Island Rail Road, said that his credo was to live
life to the fullest, "to seize the moment and make
everything of that moment." He enjoyed being a
firefighter, Ms. Liang said. But it was not fighting
fires that appealed to him. It was the comradeship at the
firehouse.
"He was a real people person," she said. An avid
sports fan, who coached the softball team from his local
bar, Mr. Bracken never would say "goodbye" to his
friends. His parting words were always a kind of
shorthand for how he believed you should live your life:
"Drive fast. Take chances," he would say.
She added: "If somebody would have told him this would
happen, he would have been, `Me? Are you kidding?'"
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