Pfeiffer Hailed as Hero, Husband, Father, Friend

The sirens were heard for miles as truck 20-084 wound through Westfield on its way to Springfield. But the crew from Fire House No. 2 wasn't responding to a call.

It was delivering the body of James Pfeiffer Jr. to his home parish, St. James the Apostle Church.

The yellow truck, and cars of family and friends, pulled up as about 100 firefighters, police officers, and EMTs in their dress blues saluted while the Union County Police and Fire Pipes and Drum band shepherded in the caravan and the flag-draped casket it carried.

The life of Pfeiffer, 30, a third-generation Westfield firefighter, was celebrated in a Memorial Mass of Christian Burial. He died following a freak accident in the Mountainside yard of the home he and his wife, Christine, had just bought.

During Mass, Christine sat in the front pew, surrounded by family. She wore one of her husband's crisp white uniform shirts — and the hospital ID bracelets she needed to see her husband Sunday when he was transported to University Hospital in Newark. She held Carly, their 1-year-old daughter, dressed in a blue "My Dad Saves Lives" t-shirt, while James Pfeiffer Sr., a former Westfield Fire Department Captain and his wife, June, eulogized their son.

"His mom said, 'Here's a future fireman' when he was born," Pfeiffer Sr. said. "The minute he got his first bike, he'd follow every siren. He knew about them before me — because he had my pager in his pocket," he said as the mourners in a church ringed by firefighters from local companies, burst into laughter.

"And when he was too young to be a firefighter, I'd break the rules and sneak him into the house with us. I'd like to thank my crew for keeping it secret all these years...

"But his next big step came when he met Christine," Pfeiffer Sr. said. "She was like a major fire for him, but he was enveloped not by flames that could harm him ,but by her family and her five nephews — 'my five boys,' Christine would say. Jim loved them, because he had instant playmates."

Monsignor William C. Hatcher, Pastor at St. James, who was assisted by Father Edward Daly of St. Vincent's in New York City, said of Pfeiffer, "We can't understand fully why Jimmy was taken so quickly, but we know that he had a fullness in life already lived in his short years.

"He just knew how to welcome people into his life and they all became part of this circle in which the story of his life will continue," the Monsignor said. "We must all live the virtues Jimmy taught us. He wants us to go on living fully until it's our time to be with him."

Westfield Mayor Andy Skibitsky led a delegation of local officials at the funeral for the decorated hero, a 1998 graduate of Cranford High School and Union County College with a degree in fire science, who gained national media attention after he used his slender 6' 1", 160 pound frame to rescue a 16-month-old child who had fallen nine feet into a 10-inch wide gap at Tamaques Park. 

"He had an insatiable desire to help people," said his father, who retired in 2004 as Captain of the Westfield Fire Department. "He was my hero and I admit to you right now, he was a better firefighter than I."

 James Pfeiffer Jr.'s final act as a firefighter came last Friday, when he performed CPR on an ailing town resident. But he continued his heroic works in death, when as an organ donor, Pfeiffer saved a 50-year-old man in Pittsburgh who needed a liver transplant and two local residents, a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old man who needed healthy kidneys.

He proved his dad right.