He's in a Better Place, Too

Dennis Duggan

September 13, 2001

They found Fire Chaplain Mychal Judge's body under a crushed firetruck outside the World Trade Center Tuesday evening and carried it to St. Peter's Church, the oldest Roman Catholic church in the city.

There they laid the body on the altar.

Judge was a man for all seasons and all tastes. He had friends in the White House and the poorhouse. He was 68 and Cardinal Edward Egan will do the honors Saturday at a 10:30 a.m. Mass inside St. Francis of Assisi Church on West 31st Street.

Judge was chaplain for the now devastated Fire Department's men and women. But he was the house chaplain for Ladder 24, Engine 10.

Yesterday a ladder truck, covered with concrete dust and debris, was parked in front of the firehouse, a flag flying from a ladder that pointed to the sky.

"He died with his boots on," said firefighter Steve Wojciechowski, on the sidewalk outside the old firehouse. He was mourning the loss of three other firefighters from the company and his eyes were red-rimmed from tears mingled with the dust that has turned the Twin Towers neighborhood into something like a nuclear winter.

"He was always the first guy on the scene," said, Wojciechowski. "When he heard the alarms go off Tuesday morning over his dispatcher's radio he came right over. Capt. Danny Brethel and firefighter Mike Weinberg, who were both off duty, drove downtown with him to help firefighters."

It was at St. Peters that Jimmy Boyle - whose 37-year-old firefighter son, Michael, was listed as missing late yesterday - found Judge on the altar.

"They had him lying under a sheet," said Boyle, a one-time fire union leader. "I lifted up a corner and held his hand and said a prayer. He was an old friend of the family. He helped my son get into the Fire Department."

Judge was a big, handsome guy who walked around town looking like one of those 17th-century friars. He wore sandals, a long, brown cassock, tied with a belt made of rope.

He was a man who surrounded himself with drama. He was the son of Irish immigrants who owned a Butler's grocery store in Brooklyn. He was too offbeat for the hierarchy most of the time but he played for the princes of the city as well as the groundlings, so they left him alone.

He was a huge fan of the Knicks and I once sat with him in a box there enjoying his repartee, his tales of a life that left him fatherless at three and then of shining shoes in Penn Station to help the family that included his two sisters, Dympha and Erin, both of whom will attend the funeral Mass Saturday.

One of his closest friends was fellow Franciscan Christopher Keenan, who broke into tears when I asked him about Judge.

"He was the man who talked me into joining the Franciscans," said Keenan. "My father sold groceries to his father. He was the kind of man who exemplified what the Franciscans are all about. He never turned his back to anyone who needed help."

I wrote about him a decade ago when two masked gunmen showed up at the church with a gun demanding $80,000. The money was to have been used to serve the 500 homeless people who showed up each morning for food or for AIDS counseling.

But Judge was able to run a bad day at the church into a quip. "That money was given to us by people who came to celebrate the feast of St. Anthony. I guess St. Anthony was so tired from partying that day he wasn't able to guard the money."

With the help of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, a fan of Judge, the money was raised from friends all over the city to make sure the homeless wouldn't go without food.

Judge was one of 47 Franciscans who lived in a parish house alongside the church. "They called me Father Chris and him Father Mike," said Keenan, 59, who in a parlor off the main floor told me story after story about Judge.

But the most poignant was of Keenan's late-night visit to the firehouse across the street, where a big handwritten sign announcing Judge's funeral Mass, and his wake starting today, hung alongside the entrance.

"They brought his body from St. Peter's to the firehouse," Keenan said. "It was in a body bag when I got there. I stayed with him for close to an hour. Then he was taken to the coroner's office."

Someone had written on the dusty firetruck a tribute to the firefighters and one to Father Judge, who never flinched when the Red Devil got out of hand.

He went to most of the funerals of the firefighters and often spoke on those occasions. He spoke eloquently at the funeral of Capt. John Drennan, who died along with two fellow firefighters in SoHo years ago after lying in a burn unit for over a month.

"The Lord," said Judge, "walked into Captain Drennan's room and said, 'Come with me John, I have a better place to take you to.'"

The same evil fire that took his life took the lives of Brethel and Weinberg, the two men who drove him downtown Tuesday morning for a rendezvous with death.

That fire also took the life of Lt. Andy Desperito. Still missing is Steve Belson, who was called Mr. Ladder 24.

"He wanted one thing in his life," Wojciechowski said. "To work for 24 years in Ladder 24. He was just one year away."

Father Judge was a good man and the friendless in this town will miss him. One of those is Brendan Fay who heads the Lavender and Green Alliance. "We are dedicating our St. Patrick's Day in Astoria next March to him," Fay said at the church yesterday.