Lieutenant
Steven Bates
Engine 235
Memorial
Service was held
on October 6th, 2001
Family in Fire Department
Although
Stephen J. Bates liked the solitude of athletic competitions
like running, swimming and bicycling, he was a team player.
Period. That was why he worked for 18 years as a New York City
firefighter. The lieutenant liked the way firefighters relied
on one another while sticking to their vows to save lives and
put out fires.
Most
of all, Lieutenant Bates liked the automatic brotherhood of
the job. It gave him the family he always wanted. His mother
died when he was 15, and he was estranged from his father, said
his girlfriend, Joan Puwalski. He frequently took family- style
dinners with the firefighters at his stationhouse, Engine Company
235 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He liked cooking family
dinners for the gang; sauerbraten was his best dish.
The
other members of his family were two big dogs who lived in the
home that he shared with Ms. Puwalski in Glendale, Queens: Samantha,
8, a 105-pound yellow Laborador retriever, and Norton, 8, an
85- pound mutt.
"He
called them his babies," Ms. Puwalski said. "Sometimes
the four of us would sleep together in our queen-size bed."
That was a squeeze, considering that Lieutenant Bates, 42, was
a big man, standing exactly 6 feet and weighing 235 pounds.
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