A Voice of Calm

 

Battalion Chief Matthew Lancelot Ryan

FDNY Battalion 1 (Manhattan)

End of Watch:  September 11, 2001

Matthew Lancelot Ryan spent more than half of his life in the FDNY.   He joined in 1973 and rose through the ranks for the next twenty-eight years.  His final assignment was Battalion Chief for Battalion 1 in Manhattan.  On September 11, 2001, he was one of two members of his house killed while saving others at the World Trade Center.  Chief Ryan was fifty-four years old.  

He and his wife, Margaret, were married for thirty-two years at the time of his death.  They had raised three children together, their daughters Joyce (the oldest) and Meaghan (the youngest), and their son Matthew (their only son and the middle child).   He was also a doting grandfather, spending as much time as he could in the company of the couple's only grandchild, Matthew, Joyce's little boy.  Little Matthew was just twenty-two months old when his grandfather was taken from him.  According to his grandmother, the pair were joined at the hip.  They went for walks together.  They played ball together, and, they engaged in what she called the "gloriously messy business" of washing the car together.  

Battalion Chief Ryan's reputation, built on close to three decades of experience in the FDNY, was that of the calm voice in the maelstrom of a major fire.  He was known for quietly giving directions to his firefighters and reassuring the less-experienced ones that everything would be fine.   

He wore an Irish Claddagh ring, which was recovered from the ruins of the World Trade Center.  His son, Matthew, began to wear it.  Less than five years after his father's death in the line of duty, Matthew Ryan, himself, became a member of the FDNY.  

-AK