In memory of

Thomas H. Gavitt

1955 2024
The Years AfterNovember 27, 2024

Died of it afterward.

United States of America

Their life

Born on September 13, 1955, and raised in Brooklyn, Thomas was the first of five children born to Thomas and Vivian Gavitt. He attended Resurrection Grammar School and Saint Francis Prep High School. He excelled in academics and sports throughout his schooling, and it carried over into his adulthood. He loved playing softball and football for the FDNY Bravest, GB Huskies, Brooklyn Mariners, Pagans, and so many other teams, as well as golfing. Thomas comes from a long line of FDNY firefighters, he proudly served as a third-generation firefighter along with his brothers, following their father and grandfather on the job. He joined the FDNY in 1981, and his career spanned 24 years at Engine 253 and Ladder 147, “Da Pride of Flatbush,” until his retirement in 2005 due to lung damage sustained from 9/11 at the WTC.

Tom was a tough, strong giant in stature but will always be remembered as a “Gentle Giant.” He was the definition of a true friend, the first to come running to help anyone in need, and the man you wanted on your side in a fight. His strength was unparalleled. He made everything look easy as he poured his heart and soul into all that he did. He loved to challenge himself to always go above and beyond, mastering everything, a true craftsman. Tom was an incredibly hardworking man that provided for his family, friends, and community. With the help of his wife and friends, he rebuilt the GB Little League fields to honor of fallen firefighter Larry Veiling and created a beautiful memorial garden for other residents lost on 9/11.

Thomas was a devoted and loving husband, father, son, brother, uncle, grandpa, and friend. He perpetually encouraged others to be the best they could be, train, work hard, and practice. He and his wife and the love of his life, Kathryn, built a loving home, raising their two daughters, Katie and Mary, creating mountains of memories larger than him to cherish in their 52 plus years together. He adored spending time, playing, teaching, and cooking for his three grandchildren, Kali, Lola, and Logan. Tom was a prankster with an incredible sense of humor, an incredible storyteller, a hero and an absolutely amazing man. Most that have met him will remember his massive “baseball mitt” sized hands but the one thing that was larger about him was his heart.

He will be forever loved and missed by all.

How they died

Firefighter of the Fire Department of the City of New York, who died of an illness from the rescue and recovery at the World Trade Center. The department added the name to its World Trade Center Memorial Wall at the ceremony of 09 September 2025. He died on 27 November 2024, aged 69.

The Years After

September 11, 2001

For eight months after the towers came down, men and women worked the site. Firefighters, police, paramedics, iron workers, truck drivers, cleaners, volunteers. They breathed what was in that air, and many of them have died of it since - cancers, lung disease, illnesses that took ten years or twenty to arrive.

More people have now died of September 11th than were killed on September 11th. They are not a footnote to the day. They are the day, arriving late.

A man who walked down eighty flights and out into the street, and who died of a cancer in 2031, was killed by the same attack as the man who never got out. This gate holds them together, because the same morning took them both.

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September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001

On a clear Tuesday morning, four airliners were taken. Two were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one into the western face of the Pentagon, and one came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers and crew went forward at the cockpit door.

Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven people were killed. Three hundred and forty-three were firefighters of the New York City Fire Department. Seventy-one were law enforcement officers. Eight were paramedics and emergency medical technicians. One hundred and twenty-five died at the Pentagon, military and civilian together. The rest - some two thousand four hundred of them - had gone to work, or boarded a plane, and belonged to no service at all.

None of them began that morning as heroes. A great many of them ended it as heroes: men and women who carried strangers down stairwells, who stayed with people who could not walk, who held a door, who went back up. Four men on a flight over Pennsylvania, who had thirty minutes of telephone calls and knew what had already happened, decided where their aircraft would come down.

At Arlington, the nation set aside its own rules of eligibility and buried the Pentagon's civilian dead in national ground. It had decided that on this day the distinction did not apply.

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Media

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