^^^^^^^^^From the 1991 Medal Day Book:
Firefighter EDWARD X. COOPER
Ladder Company 105
DR. JOHN F. CONNELL MEDAL
February 13, 1990
2239 Hours
682 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn
Box 75-0978
At the Dean Street firehouse in Brooklyn's downtown section that calm winter evening, Firefighter Edward Cooper had prepared his work tools and stowed his turnout gear on the apparatus. The night tour had been relatively quiet during the early part of the evening, but that would soon change as, suddenly, alarm tones filled every corner of the firehouse, their mournful sound alerting the members that they had a run.
Arriving at a four-story occupied frame multiple dwelling in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, they found a fire so intense that the smoke belching from every window, door and opening made it impossible to see the building itself from the street. In a way that only a firefighter that has faced the situation could understand, Ed's thoughts were simple and sage, "This is gonna hurt."
Through the darkness and a momentary parting of the smoke, Ed, the outside ventman, could see two occupants on the top floor hanging out one of the windows. Then the breeze shifted and the smoke swallowed them up again. With his outside team partner, Firefighter Bill Stark, Ed set up the apparatus tormentors and jacks and jumped into the tower ladder basket. The apparatus groaned and shook as the tons of steel boom and basket lifted out of the carriage and rotated toward the building. The basket cut through the blinding smoke and zeroed in on the location where the people in the window were last seen. As the huge bucket inched toward the building, Ed realized that they would be unable to properly position next to the window because of the zero visibility, so he positioned the bucket next to the raised aerial ladder of Ladder 132, already in position with its ladder placed in a window. Ed and his partner climbed out of the tower bucket and onto the ladder, precariously perched forty feet above the ground.
Once at the window, the team entered a front bedroom, located the victim, Patricia Harris, 32, and dragged her to the window. However, removing her was extremely difficult because of her size, at least 300 pounds, and the various obstacles that had to be negotiated: the window sill, aerial ladder rails and rungs, and the tower ladder bucket side rails. Through a Herculean effort, the two of them pulled and tugged, inch-by-inch, until the victim was finally in the basket. As Ed administered rescue breathing to the victim, Stark reentered the room and emerged with another victim, Leroy Rivers, 45, and the dangerous process of getting him into the bucket while fire raged below was repeated.
Now the basket could be lowered to the street, in what Ed thought would be the final touch in a dramatic series of heroic efforts. Within seconds, the two victims were handed over to EMS to be transported to Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. But his work was not yet over as another victim, Carroll Eliot, 31, was found in the apartment and Ed had to ascend through the smoke and fire again to retrieve her, only to discover that she had already succumbed to the fire. Two lives were saved as a result of Firefighter Edward Cooper's cool, steady control under adverse conditions of zero visibility and an out-of-control fire below him. It is with great pride and satisfaction that the John F. Connell Medal is awarded to Firefighter
Edward X. Cooper of Ladder 105. Appointed to the FDNY on October 6, 1962. Cited on seven previous occasions. Father, FF. Edward X. Cooper, was with Ladder 104; grandfather, FF. Joseph T. Cooper, was with the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department; great-grandfather, FF John J. Cooper, was with Engine 18; great-grandfather FF. Henry Jones, was with the FDNY; uncle, FF. Benjamin Cooper, was with Engine 222; and cousin, Chief Joseph Cooper, was with Battalion 46.