A frantic search for the missing wedding ring of hero firefighter Ed Walsh by his fellow firefighters in Boston has ended in success.
Lieutenant Walsh, 43, father of three kids and married to Kristin, was killed in the Back Bay fire last week alongside fellow firefighter Michael Kennedy. He will be laid to rest today.
As former colleagues rushed to comfort his widow Kristin, she said she had one request for Ed Kelly, President of the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts—to find the wedding ring her husband wore everywhere.
She wanted his wedding band back.
However, no ring had been discovered with the body.
“All the guys on 33 and 15 said they were sure Eddie had the ring on his finger when he went into that burning building with Mike Kennedy,” Union official Richie Paris told Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen.
“Eddie never took his wedding ring off.”
The firefighters knew there was only one explanation, the ring had somehow come off in the blazing inferno.
District Chief Richard Magee Jr., who lost his own firefighter father 42 years ago, led the search.
Magee’s team from the investigation unit, Lieutenant Kevin McCarthy and Firefighters Richard Taylor and Patricia Kenneally Donovan, searched through the ashes and rubble of the ferocious 9-alarm fire in what could so easily have been a fool’s errand.
And just before 6 p.m., Patty Kenneally Donovan, the first woman appointed to the Boston Fire Department, found the ring.
“I’ve got it!” she shouted and it was the first joyous moment for an entire department, an entire extended family, indeed a whole city, in a week.
Kristen Walsh was attending the wake when the firefighters approached her with her late husband’s ring.
Doubtless there was not a dry eye in the church when she placed it on her finger.
A small glimmer of goodness in a dreadful tragedy finally took place.
Hero fire lieutenant Edward Walsh will be buried today after services at St.Patrick’s Church in Watertown.. His wife will wear his wedding ring.
Irish Tenor Ronan Tynan will sing “Ave Maria,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Danny Boy” and “Irish Farewell.”
Tomorrow at Firefighter Kennedy’s funeral he will sing “Ave Maria,” “Eternal Father Strong to Save” and “Celtic Song of Farewell.”
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