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December 11, 1998
Gone, but not forgotten
A Smithfield police officer
is remembered 30 years after he perished while trying to save a
5-year-old boy who had fallen through the ice on the Spragueville
Reservoir.
By THOMAS J. MORGAN
Journal Staff Writer
SMITHFIELD -- As a
tape-recorded bagpipe played a soft lament yesterday, Smithfield police
officers stood to attention in memory of one of their own, one of an
earlier generation, one who died bravely in the line of duty 30 years
before.
Not a man or woman serving
today wore the uniform when Norman G. Vezina plunged without hesitation
into the deadly chill of the lower Spragueville Reservoir, where
5-year-old Kenneth Firby struggled to stay afloat after breaking through
thin ice. It was Dec. 10, 1968. Neither would live to see the end of the
day.
Long shadows cast by a weak
winter sun reached toward a bronze plaque in honor of Vezina at the YMCA
on Deerfield Avenue* as ``Amazing Grace'' drifted through the chill air
yesterday.
``One of our brothers
departed on a cold December day,'' said Acting Police Chief Robert E.
Coyne Jr., reciting a poem by an anonymous author. Ribbons on a wreath
swayed gently in a breeze.
Alan Firby, 7, told their
mother later that he saw his brother half-run and half-slip on a slope
near their home on Deer Run Trail. Kenneth was unable to halt his
headlong plunge. He slid onto the ice, about three-quarters of an inch
thick, and it broke under his weight.
A neighbor, George Simmons,
17, alerted by the splashing, fetched a rope, waded waist deep into the
water and tried to toss it to Kenneth. But the boy was
``incoherent,'' and Simmons ran to a nearby house to summon help.
Vezina had just finished
directing traffic on Route 44 when the call came in from police
headquarters that a rescue was needed. Vezina and George H. Kelley, a
special patrolman, arrived before firefighters.
Without pausing, Vezina
tore off his jacket and hat, tossed his wallet and jacket liner onto the
shore, and dived in.
When firefighters arrived,
Vezina was trying to hold Kenneth out of the water, but before they
could reach the pair with a rope, they had disappeared. A boat later
recovered their bodies.
One of those who gathered
to salute and to remember yesterday was James McVey, retired deputy
chief, who was the desk sergeant that day.
``I dispatched him to that
call,'' said McVey. ``It was a cold, really brutally cold, windy day.
When he got out of that cruiser he was dropping off parts of his uniform
-- jacket, gun belt. He had the boy up out of the water, but we have
always assumed it was the cold that paralyzed both of them.''
He recalled asking Vezina
earlier in the shift whether the patrolman had enough gas in his
cruiser. There was three-quarters of a tank, Vezina replied.
``I said that was fine,
that there was enough for the night shift too,'' McVey said. ``If a
sergeant had said to me on a cold day, `Don't bother gassing the car,' I
would have said `Fine.' But he said, `Something might happen.'
``It was the last thing he
ever said to me.''
It fell upon McVey to
notify Vezina's relatives.
``I had to tell his sister.
When I opened my mouth, nothing would come out. I couldn't get the words
out.''
The bronze plaque, set in
granite, reads in part, ``He shall continue to live on forever in the
hearts of the people of Smithfield.''
Norman Vezina was promoted
posthumously to sergeant. He was 38 when he died, the newest member of
the department, having taken the
oath only
eight months before.
*
Today, the plaque for Sgt. Vezina resides at the
Smithfield Veterans
Memorial in Deerfield Park.
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