Heart and Soul

 

FF James Nicholas Pappageorge

Engine 23 - FDNY

End of Watch:  September 11, 2001

James Pappageorge was born to serve.  In 1993, at age nineteen, he became an EMT, working at various volunteer and private ambulance companies.  Thereafter, in 1995, he joined the EMS Division of the FDNY, attended LaGuardia Community College, and graduated as a paramedic in 1999.  

He had dreamed of becoming a FDNY firefighter and on July 23, 2001, he graduated from the FDNY Academy.  He was assigned to Engine 23 in midtown Manhattan.  Less than two months later, he was one of four firefighters from Engine 23 killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center.  

His sister, Helen Pappageorge, an NYPD Detective, wrote of her brother, "Your heart and soul were pure and beautiful."  At the time of his death, he and his fiancee Gina Pinos were planning their September 2002 wedding.  Although he was not the little boy's biological father, James Pappageorge considered Gina's then-five year-old son, Justin, to be his child, raising him and treating him as such.  

He and Gina intended to give Justin a little brother or sister and, as fate would have it, on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Gina had telephoned him at the firehouse to tell him she was pregnant.  However, as the two of them spoke, alarms were blaring in the background.  He told her that he loved her but that he had to go - otherwise the men of Engine 23 would head downtown without him.  He hung up and he was gone.  At that moment, she hoped that she would have another chance to tell him.  She did not.  

-AK