By Anthony M. Destefano
Newsday
NEW YORK — While it can take decades — nearly 150 years in one case — the NYPD will make the effort to recognize those who died in the line of duty.
On Wednesday, the department honored 18 former members who died in decades past while on the job. The names of the officers were unveiled on a special memorial tablet in the Hall of Heroes during a ceremony at police headquarters attended by Mayor Bill de Blasio, Commissioner James O’Neill and scores of relatives of the deceased officers.
“They gave their lives for us, it is simple as that, they gave their lives so everyone else could be safe,” de Blasio told the crowd. “It does not matter what year it was, whenever they gave their sacrifice, it was timeless.”
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The oldest case involved that of patrolman John Branagan, who died on August 10, 1869, after he was crushed by a truck while directing traffic at a Bronx ferry house. The most recent death was that of William T. Martin on April 9, 2011, from the trauma of an assault he suffered in 1981.
Thom O’Grady Donahue, 80, of Lindenhurst — one of five grandchildren of Sgt. Thomas F.J. O’Grady — trooped into Manhattan for the ceremony. O’Grady died on August 24, 1916 from a fractured skull, after he was thrown from his horse while responding to reports of a stabbing in Queens.
None of O’Grady’s grandchildren actually knew him because he died before they were born, said Donahue, a retired museum administrator. Another grandson, Robert Watkinson, 77, of New Hampshire, got the ball rolling when he discovered old newspaper articles citing his grandfather’s life and death as a cop in the Bronx.
Watkinson sent the clippings to the NYPD, which moved the newly discovered information up the chain of command. It took about four years for his grandfather finally to be recognized as a line of duty death, Watkinson said.
Donahue said he and his other relatives didn’t really know much about his grandfather, because of what he called the “O’Grady silence” about what police officers in the family did for work.
“They turned in their gun to their wife, who opened the bureau, put the gun in there and locked it up, so us kids wouldn’t get it,” said Donahue with a chuckle.
As evidenced by O’Grady’s cause of death, officers often suffered from accidents related to the peculiar occupational risks of the time. Several of the honored officers were thrown from horses at a time when mounted cops didn’t wear helmets. One was electrocuted, while another was run over by a horse-drawn fire engine. Others died in vehicle accidents while one suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning. Three were killed by gunfire.
Line of duty deaths ascribed to September 11 illnesses are honored in May during a different ceremony.
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