‘The Rocking Firefighter’: Family, FDNY remember Brooklyn firefighter 25 years after 9/11
Pickford was 32 years old and a probationary firefighter assigned on a rotation to Engine Company 201 in Sunset Park when the towers were attacked.
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A quarter century after the Sept. 11 attacks, the family, friends and fellow firefighters of Christopher Pickford continue to gather to remember the Brooklyn/Queens firefighter who died trying to save lives.
Pickford was 32 years old and a probationary firefighter assigned on a rotation to Engine Company 201 in Sunset Park when the towers were attacked.
His company was among the first to arrive at the South Tower. The tower collapsed shortly afterward, trapping Pickford and members of his team.
Pickford’s remains were not recovered for months. His family finally learned he had been found on New Year’s Day 2002.
“It’s like when you have a toddler and you can’t find them,” Pickford’s mother, Linda Pickford, said, describing the agonizing wait to learn what happened to her son.
For Linda, the anniversary is more than a date on the calendar. She continues to relive the last phone call she had with Chris before he entered the towers.
“I said, ‘You just tell them when they ask you, you can’t go,’" she told him.
"Mom, I'm a firefighter," he fearlessly told her.
"Chris was doing his job that day and he would have done it no matter what it was,” she said.
Each year, loved ones gather at Maple Grove Cemetery in Queens, where Pickford is buried. They lay roses, say prayers and share stories about the firefighter his friends and colleagues affectionately called the “Rocking Firefighter.”
“Chris fell in like one of the brothers,” said John Kelly, an Engine Company 201 firefighter.
Battalion Chief James Duff remembered Pickford as someone who was “always positive.”
His longtime friend Jeroy Kelly described him as “a quality friend who is deeply missed.”
Pickford was also a musician, a part of his life that remains vivid for those who knew him.
“He would just sit there and strum his guitar and sing away!” said Alfred Odea, an Engine Company 201 firefighter.
“I heard about that guitar every day at lunch and homeroom,” Kelly said.
For Linda, though, Chris was more than the firefighter his colleagues remember or the musician his friends describe.
“Chris was my rock and I really miss him,” she said.
The firefighters who knew Pickford continue to consider themselves family.
“We’re family. We’re brothers. And we’ll never stop forgetting,” Odea said.
