Updated 25th Anniversary Local Hero Tribute: Chris Blackwell On this anniversary of September 11, I wanted to take a moment to remember a Greater Danbury hero who made the ultimate sacrifice that morning. Christopher J. Blackwell of FDNY Rescue 3 was a New Fairfield kid who never really left home, even after he became one of the most decorated firefighters in New York. He grew up here, graduated Immaculate High School in 1977, and joined New Fairfield Volunteer Fire Company A at 16. He stayed a member for 25 years. After a stretch in the Air Force as a firefighter-paramedic, he spent 20 years with the FDNY, the last 12 with Rescue 3 — “Big Blue” — the Bronx heavy-rescue company that handled building collapses across the city. He taught void search and collapse rescue to departments all over the country. He earned the Heroism and Community Service Medal in 1989, the Thomas Kennedy Medal in 1990, and the Medal of Valor in 1992. When he was off duty from the FDNY, Chris still worked as a paramedic across Greater Danbury. Danbury Ambulance. Ridgefield. Bethel. Brookfield. Redding. Newtown. New Fairfield. He brought the “big-city rescue knowledge” back to the same towns he called home. That part is personal for my family. Chris worked with my dad and my uncles at the Ridgefield Fire Department in the 1980s and 1990s. They still talk about him the same way. “He was one of the best medics I ever worked with.” “Now he was a real, old-school, paramedic and firefighter.” A week before September 11, he was back in Ridgefield trying to set up collapse and trench-rescue training. Ridgefield later said they considered him one on of their own. He was 42. He left behind his wife, Jane, and three children — Alexandra, Ryan, and Samantha. All three went into public service. Ryan followed his father into the FDNY. When I first posted about Chris in 2023, a comment stopped me cold. Jason Aurrichio wrote that he never met the man, and that Chris was still responsible for the life he has now: “Chris responded to a motor vehicle accident in the early hours of May 27, 1996. It involved Jason’s future wife — someone Jason had not even met yet. When Chris arrived, her pulse was gone or nearly gone. He got it back. She lived. Jason wrote that she would not be here without that selfless decision to answer the call. The same kind of call would take Chris’s life a little over five years later.” That is the measure of the man. He saved people who never knew his name. Then, on a clear Tuesday morning in 2001, he went up the stairs of the North Tower with Rescue 3 to try to save people he would never meet. RIP to Chris Blackwell and to every victim of that day — the ones we lost in the towers and the ones the years still take.