Rescue Men

This is an unvarnished family memoir of three generations of Boston firemen. The men in Charles Kenney's family have been drawn to fire-fighting since his grandfather Charles "Pops" Kenney joined the Boston Fire Department in 1932. In his working class, Irish-Catholic neighbourhood, there were other jobs that offered a decent wage, but none had the sense of belonging that comes with being a fireman, or the purity of purpose that comes with saving lives. Pops was on the scene of the notorious Cocoanut Grove fire in 1942; the author's father, "Sonny", served with distinction until an explosion blew him from a third-storey window; and two of the author's brothers were "sparks" as children, amateur fire-fighters whose career goals were thwarted by a court order integrating the Boston fire department and changing the rules for employment forever. One became a cop, the other a paramedic and rescue man with an elite squad sent to Ground Zero in the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center. Spanning sixty years of fire-fighting history, "Rescue Men" captures what it's really like to be a fireman.