Here is the story from the ny times link mentioned above thanks to FDNY374.......
A veteran New York City fire captain, who for years worked to insure that firefighters got the support they needed when a colleague was killed in the line of duty, died himself yesterday after collapsing Thursday night in the burning basement of a Queens home.
Captain Vincent Fowler, 47, died at Jamaica Hospital in Queens at 9:45 A.M., almost 14 hours after he led firefighters into a burning home at 150-22 127th Street in South Ozone Park, Queens.[Page B4.]
At fire stations across the city yesterday, dozens of men whose lives he had touched during his 21 years with the department remembered Captain Fowler as a leader, a teacher, and a protector -- especially when death took one of their own.
After a close friend was killed in the line of duty, it was Vinnie Fowler who stepped forward in 1987 to arrange the services, said Firefighter Ted Cook, 40, at Ladder Company 123 in Crown Heights.
It was Lieutenant Fowler who, a few years ago, took it upon himself to revise the procedures for handling a firefighter's death, recommending that bereavement counseling be available for colleagues as well as family members, said Capt. Pete Gorman, a representative of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
Just last Saturday, Captain Fowler drove to the Long Island community of Baldwin for the funeral of a firefighter who died of a heart attack. He had known the man years ago at Ladder 7 in midtown Manhattan. ''It was one of his firefighters,'' Captain Gorman said. ''It was someone who was close to him.''
Yesterday, suddenly, it was Captain Fowler -- the son of a battalion chief, and the eldest of three brothers who all followed their father into the department -- who was gone.
In Holbrook, in Suffolk County, where Captain Fowler lived with his wife and three daughters, his family returned home from the hospital around 1 P.M. yesterday. Following the procedures he himself had helped to update, the family members were driven by his fellow firefighters.
A short time later, his parents, were driven off to make funeral arrangements. Captain Fowler's father, Vincent, held only his son's white dress uniform cap.
Throughout the afternoon, relatives and well-wishers, including 17 teen-age girls in identical yellow shirts, streamed into the Fowler home. Outside, neighbors on their dead-end street in the shadow of Long Island's MacArthur Airport described Captain Fowler as the funniest man on the block, the handiest home improver around, the anchor of his three daughters' lives.
''He was always hee-hawing about different things,'' said Thomas Purcaro, a salesman who moved into a house across the street from the Fowlers eight years ago. He was ''just a character,'' said another neighbor, Donna Hayden.
Not long ago, she said, he found that he had pulled his car into the path of a neighbor's lawn sprinkler, she said. He just turned on his windshield wipers as if it were raining outside, she said, with a business-as-usual look on his face.
Mr. Purcaro said Captain Fowler, on his days off, always seemed to be on his back under a car in the driveway, or trading tools with Ed Rodrigues, another neighbor, whose garage is packed with electric saws and lumber. A few years ago, Captain Fowler single-handedly built dormers on either side of the peaked roof of his one-story Cape Cod house, adding a full second story.
Marian Greller, 76, said she remembered catching her breath as Mr. Fowler shimmied up and down ladders while he was working on the roof. ''The way he went up there with the ladder, I almost got a heart attack,'' she said. ''But then I realized he was a fireman. He knew what he was doing.''
Inside the Fowler home yesterday, Captain Fowler's daughters -- Dina, 21, Amy, 18, and Stephanie, 15 -- recalled their father with humor, visitors said. They dwelt for a while on all the recessed lights he had installed in the house, said the Rev. Robert Scheckenback, associate pastor at the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd. ''They were making fun of how many switches there were,'' he said. ''They said they never knew how to turn the lights on and off.''
Father Scheckenback said Captain Fowler was a devoted father who could be seen in church with his daughters nearly every Sunday. Dina, the eldest daughter, wants to help others the way her father did and is studying to become a nurse, he said.
In Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan yesterday, firefighters who worked with Captain Fowler said he had always spoken of his wife, Ramona, and daughters with great pride.
''He was a great fireman, and moreover a great family man,'' said Firefighter John F. Taylor of Ladder 123 in Brooklyn. ''He loved his daughters and taught them everything about sports. He took them all over for tournaments -- Staten Island, out of state. He was also heavily involved in getting them into college.''
But Captain Fowler's colleagues remembered him yesterday more for what he had done for them, and for the countless fire victims he had helped over the years.
He received commendations three times during his career, most recently in January for his work at the scene of an arson, Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen said.
Firefighter Cook recalled that years ago, Captain Fowler became concerned that a reduction in the manpower assigned to engine companies would increase the strain on firefighters. His analysis came to the attention of supervisors, and the reduction was later reversed.
''The firemen always came first,'' Firefighter Cook said. ''That was even before he was a boss.''
Firefighter Cook said it was always clear that Captain Fowler would make a great leader one day. ''He loves the firemen,'' he said. ''He was a great teacher to the men. He was a boss even before he got promoted. He said you better know what you're doing because it's going to be your turn to take the bulls by the horn some day.
''He led,'' Firefighter Cook added, ''by example.''
