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Posted: Tuesday, 26 June 2007 3:37PM
Firefighter Remembered
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NEW YORK (AP) -- At 23, Firefighter Daniel Pujdak was already a hero, eulogized by his city's mayor.
CLICK HERE and listen to Reporter Rich Lamb at the funeral.
Thousands of firefighters saluted one of their own as Pujdak's casket arrived on a fire truck at St. Cecilia's Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood for the funeral Mass on Tuesday.
Pujdak died last Thursday after falling from a roof in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, less than a mile from the Greenpoint home where days earlier, his tight-knit family gathered to celebrate his younger brother's college graduation.
It was a routine run: a small apartment fire, apparently caused by a careless smoker. But for Pujdak, with less than two years on the job at Ladder 146, it was the last call of his career.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg told mourners that firefighting ``gave Daniel the deep satisfaction that comes from serving and protecting others and it meant a great deal to him when he was assigned to Captain (Jerry) Horton's command at Ladder 146 here in the community that he loved so well.''
Pudjak, the department's first fatality since 2006, died working at a job he had wanted since he was a child.
``He always talked about helping people,'' his younger brother Matthew told the Daily News. ``He wanted to make people's lives a little better.''
``I never worried about him,'' said Matthew Pujdak. ``I was confident that he could handle himself.''
Daniel Pujdak had inspired his brother to apply for the Fire Academy in the fall, and gave him a spare oxygen mask to use in training.
Horton said before the service that the department has had family members join after losing a loved one, but he didn't think the FDNY had one join so quickly after a tragedy.
The young firefighter had been a baseball star at the St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, where his father taught religion.
Pujdak graduated from SUNY-Cortlandt two years ago with a degree in kinesiology. He was a hardworking student with an irrepressible laugh, family members and friends said. And he believed in service to others, volunteering at nursing homes and soup kitchens.
When off-duty, he trained for a triathlon, worked as a personal trainer at the Greenpoint YMCA and spent extra hours helping a partially paralyzed Long Island woman to regain her ability to walk.
``I wish I had 25 guys like him in my company,'' Horton said. ``He was here for only two years but he left his mark on the company by his aggressiveness and eagerness.''
Ryan Quinter, Pujdak's college roommate, said outside the church that ``every time he did something for the first time, he would call me up and say, 'I did that,' or 'I used the jaws of life for the first time.' ... He was just excited about every aspect of fighting fires.''
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