Patrick J Dee

1850s–1870s

Born 16 September 1859 in Onondaga County, New York, to Patrick Dee and Johanna Ryan, and baptized at St. John the Baptist Church in Syracuse. Grew up on Free Street, one of at least nine children.

1880s

A boilermaker, laborer, and driver, then from 1887 ran Dee Brothers, an ice business, with his brother David. Took the city's garbage contract in 1889.

1890s

Joined the Syracuse Fire Department in January 1892 and married Julia A. Hogan that June. Survived a twenty-foot fall from a ladder in 1898 and a floor collapse at the Walton Street fire in 1899, and became tillerman of Truck No. 2. Children Ambrose (1893), Will, Gregory, and Kathryn were born, and in 1896 the family bought a house on Center Street.

1900s–1910s

Served with Hook and Ladder No. 2 on Division Street for twenty years. Lost his son Gregory in 1900; Bernard (1901) and Mary (1906) were born.

1920s

Retired on pension in 1920. Died at home on 4 May 1921.

The Dee Brothers

Patrick J. Dee was born on September 16, 1859, in Onondaga County, New York, and baptized three days later at St. John the Baptist Church in Syracuse. His parents were Patrick Dee and Johanna Ryan, and he grew up in Syracuse's First Ward with brothers David, Bernard, William, and Daniel and sisters Margaret, Mary, Annie, and Bridget, who became a nun, Mother Mary Rose. From 1877 the family lived at 102 Free Street. Patrick worked as a helper, a boilermaker, a laborer, and a driver before going into business with his brother David.

Dee Brothers, ice dealers, got their ice from Onondaga Lake and took orders at shops downtown; in 1886 they bid for the contract to supply the police department. In May 1889 they won the city's garbage contract and put eleven teams on the streets. It did not go smoothly. Within weeks the Board of Health was getting complaints that the brothers were leaving the garbage in unsightly, smelly heaps at the dumping grounds, and in 1890 a corner where they had been dumping the Third Ward's trash had to be condemned.

Twenty-Eight Years a Fireman

In December 1890 Patrick passed the municipal service examination, and on January 26, 1892, he joined the Syracuse Fire Department. That June 8 he married Julia A. Hogan at St. John the Baptist Church. His first years had some turbulence. In 1893 he was suspended for thirty days for staying away from the engine house too long on what he thought was an approved ten-day vacation; the suspension was withdrawn, and the department rewrote its rules to require leave to be granted in writing. In 1898 he was one of eleven firemen whose standing of over 95 percent made them eligible for promotion to captain.

The work was dangerous. On January 28, 1898, climbing a ladder at a house fire on South Crouse Avenue, he was struck by a falling piece of cornice and fell twenty feet to the ground; he got up uninjured and went straight back up the ladder. On March 14, 1899, at the eight-hour fire in the Eager Block on Walton Street, he was chopping a hole in the third floor to get water to the floor below when "we heard the roof and walls over us give way," he told the paper. "All of the men got out except Captain Shean and myself, and we were plunged through the floor with the brick and plaster to the floor below." He climbed out through a window to the ladder and shouted for help for the men he thought were buried, escaping himself with scratches and bruises.

Six days later he was appointed tillerman of Truck No. 2, steering the rear of the hook-and-ladder, on Division Street, and he held the job for eighteen years. In 1908 he found a woman dead in her kitchen on Townsend Street after her clothes caught fire as she lit a lamp, and in 1912, when a lieutenant fell from the top of a ladder at a garage fire, Patrick grabbed the roof and steadied the ladder before it toppled. That October he was reprimanded for being absent and intoxicated on duty, the first mark on his record in twenty years; he promised it would be at least another twenty before the next. In 1917 he and two other tillermen, the only men in the department left out of that year's raise, took their case to the city's lawyer. He retired on a pension in 1920.

Family and Last Years

Patrick and Julia's children were Ambrose (1893), Will (1895), Gregory, Kathryn (1899), Bernard (1901), and Mary (1906); Gregory died in 1900, at about three. In 1896 they bought the house at 404 East Center Street (today 110 Washington Square), which was home for the rest of Patrick's life; in 1900 two boarders, Anna and Rose Conroy, lived with them. Patrick was a communicant of St. John the Baptist Church and a member of its Holy Name Society.

On the morning of May 4, 1921, apart from a slight cold, Patrick seemed in good health. He woke with a violent fit of coughing that brought on heart failure and died at home, at sixty-one. He was buried at St. Agnes Cemetery in Syracuse.