On a somber day of leaden skies and bittersweet remembrance, the widow of Capt. John J. Drennan stood in the portals of her husband's firehouse in SoHo yesterday and spoke quietly of the life and death of a firefighter, of courage and the limits of endurance in his 40-day ordeal with overwhelming burns.
"It's a good ending to a good life," Vina Drennan said of her husband's intense struggle for survival, which began March 28 with burns over 65 percent of his body in a blaze that killed two other firefighters and ended with his death on Saturday at the burn unit of New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.
Meantime, the surgeon who attended the 49-year-old Captain Drennan told in an interview of his patient's valiant fight for life through 10 skin graft operations, repeated infections, liver and kidney failures and other crises that he came close to outlasting, despite heavy odds against him.
And a fire captain who had been at the family's side virtually around the clock for nearly six weeks recounted an "emotional war" comparable to his own tour of military duty in Vietnam years ago: the honor of service, the daggers of frustration and the ultimate tragedy of defeat.
'He Loved Going to Work'
Solemn but tearless, her children beside her outside the firehouse at West Houston and the Avenue of the Americas, Mrs. Drennan's face was etched with the strain of the weeks at a hospital bedside as her husband endured his final days in interminable but dulled pain, motionless on his back and unable to speak.
"John Drennan had a wonderful life," said the widow, 48, a school teacher on Staten Island, where the family lives and where Captain Drennan had been a teacher and coach before joining the Fire Department. "He loved going to work every day -- 25 years he's enjoyed serving the people of the City of New York."
A funeral Mass for Captain Drennan, scheduled for St. Patrick's Cathedral at 10 A.M. on Wednesday, was expected to be attended by many of the city's 11,000 firefighters and top public officials, as well as thousands of firefighters from across the nation. The captain was the 756th New York City firefighter to die in the line of duty in the department's 129-year history.
Amid fire engines and ladders, floral bouquets left by neighborhood people and a yellow ribbon someone had tied to a tree, Mrs. Drennan and her children -- Jessica, 25, Adrian, 24, Justine, 19, and John, 14 -- also paid tribute to the firefighters who had helped care for and comfort the captain and his family through the weeks of agonizing pain and emotional hardship.
"Many people have wondered how the Drennan family could be so strong," Mrs. Drennan said, "and this is the reason: these wonderful people have enveloped us with a lot of love and care and it's helped my children and myself get through a very big tragedy."
In the firehouse, the headquarters of Engine 24 and Ladder 5, the pictures of Captain Drennan and Firefighters James Young, 31, of Queens, and Christopher Siedenburg, 25, of Staten Island, who also were killed in the explosive fire at 62 Watts Street in SoHo, had been posted in a window, and the mood was down.
A visibly shaken firefighter, Bob Callahan, said many young colleagues had looked upon Captain Drennan as a father figure. "A piece of each of us died with him," he said. "I'll never forget him."
Capt. Pat Brown, 41, who had known Captain Drennan for 15 years and had been assigned on the night of the fatal fire to aid Mrs. Drennan and her family during his hospitalization, told in another interview of a long vigil in hospital waiting rooms, in the patient's room and with family members at nearby accommodations supplied by the Fire Department.
"It was like an emotional war every day," said Captain Brown, who recalled a patient who breathed through a tube, was fed through a tube, could not talk, would lapse in and out of consciousness and, occasionally shed a tear as he endured crisis after crisis. "We planned his funeral three times," he added. "His heart couldn't take it any more. It's a miracle he survived this long."
Captain Brown said that, to spare him further agonies, Captain Drennan had never been told that two of his colleagues had also died as a result of burns in the Watts Street fire. "I just said to him, don't worry. Your wife and kids are doing fine and all the guys at the fire station are O.K. too."
Shaking his head at the memories, the captain added: "It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I was in Vietnam. I've spent 18 years as a firefighter. I've been in scores of tragedies. But this is by far the worst."
Dr. Michael Madden, clinical director of the burn unit at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center since 1981 and the surgeon who attended Captain Drennan, said yesterday that his patient had been up against terrible odds with third- and fourth-degree burns over 65 percent of his body, many of them not just through the skin but down into the muscle tissue and the bone.
Despite 10 operations ranging from 3 to 12 hours each to apply grafts of skin from Captain Drennan's chest, abdomen and scalp to the burned areas of his body -- his back and both sides from head to toe and his upper extremities as well -- the grafts were unable to establish much healthy new tissue, he said.
Captain Drennan endured many episodes of infection, the doctor said, in addition to liver and kidney failures.
"The amazing thing about it was that he began to recover, which is extremely unusual in burn patients who have multiple organ failure," Dr. Madden said. "Most people die. But his liver and kidneys were recovering. We were making progress covering his wounds and controlling the infections."
But around 4 A.M. on Saturday, there were signs of a new series of infections in his pancreas and in small areas throughout Captain Drennan's body, Dr. Madden said. The delicate balance between the invasion of bacteria and his body's defense mechanisms began to tip in favor of the bacteria, and he died at 4:47 P.M.
"His body had been running at full tilt for 40 days and 40 nights," he said referring to a metabolic rate of twice the normal levels. "At a certain point, you just can't keep it up. The infection outruns the defense mechanism, and that's what happened. The fact that he lasted for 40 days is a testament to his will to live and the fact that he was, without question, a fighter."
