Michael Carroll: Always Ready to
Help
Over
at the Ladder 3 firehouse, none of the coffee cups have
handles. It's one of the many legacies of Michael
Carroll, 39, who spent 16 years there. The other
firefighters are not sure why he started snapping off the
handles, but just like his other habits, it could not be
stopped. He also cut a hole in the wall between the
ladder company's dormitory and a room reserved for the
aide who drives the local battalion chief around. Late at
night, if the ladder company answered an alarm and the
aide stayed in bed, Firefighter Carroll would reach
through the hole, open a dresser drawer and slam it, just
to let the aide know they had returned.
"He was an incredible teacher for the younger
firemen," said Pat Murphy, whose idea of torture was
speaking to school groups touring the firehouse &emdash;
until Firefighter Carroll helped him.
Michael Carroll drove the truck to the fires, coached
his son, Brendan, in baseball and doted on his wife,
Nancy, and daughter, Olivia. He was "great, great and
great," said his friend Gerard Brenkert.
During the blizzard of 1996, he was heading uptown
from New York Hospital after his father had surgery
there. "On every other corner, there was a poor soul
looking for a cab," said Nancy Amigron, his sister. One
by one, Firefighter Carroll picked up the snow-covered
New Yorkers and drove them home. "We were so relieved
about my father that we would have driven anybody to
California," said Mrs. Amigron, who is planning to send
some new coffee cups &emdash; without handles &emdash; to
Ladder 3.
.