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Terence McShane
Ladder 101 and Engine 202, Brooklyn, NY and Engine 308, Queens, NY.Survived by his wife, Cathy, and children, Aiden, Sean, and Colin.
Ed Lowe
October 5, 2001
JJohn McShane, 33, recently moved back from upstate to Long Island and is staying temporarily with his oldest brother, Kieran, 45, in West Islip.
Now a newly hired teacher's assistant in Massapequa, John was at work at an upstate software company when he heard the first horrific reports about the World Trade Center attack. He knew that Kieran worked in downtown Manhattan, for Moody's Investors Service, so first he called Kieran's wife, Anne. She said Kieran was on his way home; he was OK. "He was at the Downtown Athletic Club," John said. "His office is north of the World Trade Center, and he was going to go through the tunnels to get there.
Once he saw a jet engine in the street, he knew he had to get out."
John next called Cathy, his brother Terence's wife. Terence, 37, also of West Islip, is a former New York City police sergeant. He was with the department for 12 years, until 1999, when he switched and joined the fire department, thinking he would be able to spend more time with Cathy and their sons: Aidan, 7, and 4-year-old twins, Sean and Colin.
Terence started out in Engine 308 in Queens, but because of a relatively new system of rotating young firefighters through different assignments in different parts of the city, he most recently was working out of a firehouse in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, with Ladder 101, on the opposite end of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel from the World Trade Center.
Cathy began telephoning the firehouse at 9:15 a.m. Sept. 11. There were false reports, at first, that everyone was accounted for, but soon, Terence was listed among the missing. "Seven firefighters are missing from Ladder 101," Cathy said yesterday. "Six are married with children. Last Sunday, we all got together for lunch on Staten Island, because that's where four of them live. We all kind of felt that we were trying to be realistic, but we still were hoping for a miracle. The men were on their trucks at the mouth of the Battery when they saw the second plane hit, and they were inside the building when Tower Two collapsed."
Cathy and Terence first met at Babylon Town's Overlook Beach, where Terence was a lifeguard. Like all his siblings, a graduate of St. Anthony's High School in Huntington, Terence by then was a student at Siena College. "I worked at Macy's in the Sunrise Mall," Cathy said, "and one of my best friends at the Estée Lauder counter grew up at Overlook and knew all the lifeguards. She introduced us." Once a business major at Hofstra and later an employee of the accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick, Cathy later quit the business world, resumed her education and earned permanent certification to teach secondary school, though she and Terence decided to postpone her teaching career until they could avoid a full-time babysitter.
Terence and Cathy bought their West Islip house six years ago. It was a fixer-upper, according to John. The arrival of twins hastened by a year or two the scheduling of the actual fixing-up. In order to be better able to finance the work, the McShanes had hired a part-time home improvement contractor (also a New York City firefighter) to do the structural alterations and framing, figuring that Terence and his father-in-law, Bob Watt of Massapequa (a retired New York firefighter), could install the insulation and the sheetrock. They thus would add a bedroom upstairs, expand the smaller bedrooms and enlarge and renovate the kitchen. Eventually, probably a few years hence, Terence would tackle a re-do of the upstairs bathroom, too.
While the house was being dismantled, the Terence McShanes moved into the Deer Park house where all the McShanes had grown up: Kieran; another brother, Brian, 43, a physical education teacher who lives in upstate Stanfordville; Maribeth Eccleston, 39, of Islip, a nurse at Winthrop-University Hospital; and John. The house was readied for sale, but the siblings agreed to make it available to Cathy and Terence. A 1993 stroke had required that their mother, Jeanne, move to a nursing care facility in Northport. Their father, John McShane, died in 1978.
"So, in the midst of all this," said Anne McShane, "the horror of September 11 was further complicated by the fact that Cathy and the boys are not even in their own home."
However, about four days after the attack, people started showing up at the West Islip renovation site. "I just went there to get out of the house," said John, "and more and more people started showing up, all day, sometimes, too many." Watt and Terence's lifelong friend, Keith Higgins of Babylon, a New York City cop, wound up coordinating a steady stream of volunteer workers who currently are nearing the completion of the work that Terence didn't expect to finish until early winter. Terence was a rugby player for years, and former club members, both skilled and unskilled in the building trades, have volunteered regularly, as have former colleague lifeguards, police officers, firefighters, neighbors and total strangers.
"I know I bought a little sheetrock to do something," John said, "but I don't even know where the flooring material came from. I only know that the floor guy is a professional, and that he didn't even know my brother. The upstairs bathroom has been completely redone. People stop by and say, 'I don't know how to do anything, but can I clean something, or just take out the garbage?' I think it might be all done in a few weeks."
Cathy fluctuates between gratitude, distraction, grief and waning hope. "My oldest, Aidan, is not really asking a lot of questions, now," she said. "I think he's afraid. Colin wanted to know if there was going to be a war at the trade center, and Sean said, 'The people who drove those planes must be from hell.' It's amazing. They know more than you think they know."
Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc.
Just inside the door of Cafe Doppio sits a woman with a haggard, tear-swollen face, wearing a sandwich board bearing the photo of Terence McShane, missing from Ladder Co. 101 in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Excerpt taken from the New York Post.
The life of Terence McShane, so full and so brief, could be measured by his friendships. There were the buddies from Sts. Cyril and Methodius parish, St. Anthony's High School, lifeguarding, Siena College, rugby, his decade as a New York police officer, and the two years he spent as a city firefighter.
"Terence was still friendly with guys he went to nursery school with," said his older brother, Kieran. "He'd bump into someone and start talking, and I'd say, `Who was that?' "
"Some girl I went to third grade with," he would answer.
What drew people to him? Maybe it was the way he had mastered the art of drawing the best from small moments. Take one of his approaches to fatherhood: pushing a kids-packed stroller while in-line skating. Shirtless. Along Montauk Highway.
Mr. McShane, 37; his wife, Cathy; and their three children, the oldest of whom is 7, had been living at a relative's house while their home in West Islip, on Long Island, underwent a wholesale renovation. And when he disappeared in the firestorm of Sept. 11, the Buddies of McShane banded together to finish the job.
Cathy McShane was back at the house a couple of weeks ago, preparing it for her family's first night there in months, when four men in uniform appeared at the door with the awful but welcome news: they had found her beloved Terence's remains. "I told everyone all along that I didn't want to come back to the house without him," she said. "And in a way, I didn't."
New York Times
Sunday, November 11, 2001
A memorial service will be held Saturday for Firefighter Terence McShane of Engine Co. 308. It begins at 10:15 a.m. at Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church, Deer Park Ave. and Grand Ave., Deer Park, L.I.
November 12, 2001
McSHANE-Terence A. of West Islip, L.I. died heroically in the line of duty at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Devoted husband of Cathy. Adored father of Aidan, Sean and Colin. Cherished son of Jeanne and the late John P. McShane. Beloved brother of Kieran M. McShane, Brian McShane, John McShane and Maribeth Eccleston. Dear son-in-law of Robert and Pauline Watt. Special uncle of John, Daniel and Kieran A. McShane. Cherished friend to all that knew him. Beloved brother Firefighter at Ladder 101 and Engine 202, Brooklyn, N.Y. and Engine 308 Queens, N.Y. Visitation Friday, November 16, 2001 2PM5PM and 7PM-9PM at Overlook Beach, Ocean Parkway, Babylon, L.I. (4 miles west of Robert Moses Cswy. and 9 miles east of Wantagh Pkwy.). Celebration of the Liturgy of Christian Burial, Saturday, November 17, 2001 at 10:15 AM Sts. Cyril & Methodius R.C. Church, Deer Park, L.I. Cremation private. In lieu of flowers, donations would be appreciated by his family to the Terence A. McShane Memorial Fund, C/O Merrill Lynch & Company, 125 High Street Tower, 19th Floor, Boston, Mass. 02110, Attention: FA1260. Memorial arrangements entrusted to The Fredrick J. Chapey & Sons West Islip Funeral Home.
Newsday
by Carolyn James
December 20, 2001
The sun and solace of the beach was always an attraction to Terence McShane. He worked as a lifeguard at Overlook Beach in Babylon and it was there that he met Cathy Watt, the woman who was to become his wife. He also spent many sun and fun-filled days by the sand and water with his three children.
So it was a natural choice for Cathy to decide to hold her husband's memorial service there. Terence McShane, 37, was killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center September 11. He was a member of Ladder Company 101 of Redhook, Brooklyn and was among 7 firefighters from that station house lost that day.
Despite the November date, the day was warm and sunny, a fact that Cathy said she had confidence in even when others wondered whether it was a good idea to gather so many people at the beach in November.
"I knew it would be good weather," she said. "A lot of things have just seemed to fall into place with timing."
The McShane family was living in Deer Park on September 11 as their West Islip home was undergoing major reconstruction. The day before, Terence had completed a lot of work on the home, preparing it for the contractors.
"It was some detailed work that only he knew how to do, and he felt good about being able to get it done that day," said Cathy.
Friends and fellow firefighters have completed the job for their fallen brother and Cathy and her three children are now back home, but without the husband and father they loved so much.
Speaking again about the timing of things, Cathy said she was carrying the last box into the house the day they moved back when she received word that they had found her husband's body. And, the news came in time for the memorial service. "At least we had him with us," she said.
While the news was painful because it forced her to face the brutal reality of her loss, she says now that she was fortunate to have some closure.
"There are many wives who don't have this and it just makes it harder," said Cathy. "They just never know and that has to be very difficult, especially if they hold a memorial service and then have to have a wake and go through it all over again."
Terence McShane was raised in Deer Park. He attended Sts. Cyril and Methodius Elementary School in Deer Park and St. Anthony's High School. He also graduated from Sienna College in Albany, New York.
He took both the New York City Police and Fire department exams, hoping to be called by the Fire Department. But the first call he got was from the Police Department, a job he took and worked at for 12 years.
He rose to the rank of Sergeant and was working in the 100th Precinct in Rockaway, responsible for the security of the public schools there when he got the call for the Fire Department.
By then, Terence McShane had assumed the responsibilities of life with a wife, children and a mortgage. The couple were outgrowing their home in West Islip and were just beginning to talk about expanding, and he had settled into his job with the Police Department.
"It was not an easy decision because he had a somewhat regular schedule and it meant a lot of changes for us, including a pay cut," said Cathy. "But it was something he always wanted to do."
And so, in February, 2000, Terence McShane became a New York City firefighter, a profession he said that he was proud to be a part of.
McShane's unit was one of the first to respond to the World Trade Center. His wife knew that, and when she heard about the two planes that crashed into the buildings, she waited for his phone call with a friend, the wife of another firefighter. At 4:30 that day, there was a false report that the entire crew from the Ladder Company 101 was okay and she went home to wait for his call again. It never came.
The couple were married nine years. They have a son Aiden, 8 and twin boys, Colin and Sean, four and a half years old.
Cathy said she was drawn to Terence's rugged good looks, his warmth and his humor and that he was a person she could always depend on. "He wasn't perfect, but he was close to it," she said.
Terence coached a local soccer team and played Rugby with the Long Island Rugby Club. He also spent a lot of time enjoying his three boys.
"He wasn't afraid to change a diaper when they were young and he took them wherever he went," she said.
Sitting in her new kitchen, Cathy said she takes things one day at a time. She can't bring herself to think about the future yet, but she's extremely grateful for the support of friends and community she's received. "It has helped me to get through this," she said.
Despite a continued struggle with her grief, and her loss, Cathy's going put up a Christmas tree this week. A firefighter from Engine 308 in Queens, which would have been Terence's McShane's permanent assignment after his rotation, delivered the tree to Cathy and her children and she's committed, she said to making the holiday happy for her children.
"I have to do it for them," said Cathy. "He would have wanted that."
Babylon Beacon
View/sign Terence McShane's Guest Book provided by the New York Times.
