WEST WARWICK -- As the priest gave his blessing at the benefit, John A. Baccaire, Sr. reached for his wife. She lifted his hand and kissed it, tears in her eyes.
Jacqueline Baccaire was thinking, she said later, of how her husband had changed since he and his heavy equipment were called to sift through the debris of the The Station nightclub.
John Baccaire was thinking about all the people who had come to the Friday night benefit, which was his idea. He had wanted to raise money for the volunteer trauma counselors who had rushed in after the fire, to talk to the firefighters and other rescuers. The counselors had made sure to include Baccaire, who ran the excavator, and for that, he was grateful.
Baccaire was also thinking, as he looked around the banquet room at all the firefighters, that he was not just the demolition guy anymore.
He was one of them.
By the end of the night, he would learn that they thought so, too.
MORE THAN 150 people showed up at the benefit at the West Valley Inn, a family-style restaurant with a road sign that promises soup and sauce to go.
Baccaire wore a tan shirt, dark slacks, and shoes made of ostrich leather -- everyone, he said, needs to splurge on something.
He is 61, with gray hair that is carefully combed back. He has a thick mustache, a gravely voice, and a deep tan from working outdoors all year, doing "strictly demolition."
He hopped on a crane for the first time at age 10, working alongside his father, also a demolition man. Baccaire's own business, Coventry Building & Wrecking Co., is a "tradition we're carrying on."
And part of that tradition is that Baccaire and his crew of nine men, show up at fires to knock down buildings, so firefighters don't have to enter a crumbling structure and get hurt. Baccaire does this for free. You're going to charge to save a life? he asks.
For years, he had been called to West Warwick fires, even once on Christmas Day. It was 2 a.m. on Feb. 21 when the fire department called him over to Cowesset Avenue, where The Station nightclub had burned down, with scores of concert goers inside, many of them the ages of Baccaire's three daughters.
Baccaire called his "right hand man," Ed Harrison, to help.
On Friday at the benefit, the two remembered that night, calling each other "Big Eddie," and "Johnny" and saying they were "like brothers."
Harrison, a former Coventry firefighter turned demolition man, wore jeans and a blue plaid shirt, with a box of Marlboro Lights in the chest pocket.
"He was with me at The Station," Baccaire said. "He wouldn't leave me, he stood right there with me."
They barely talked for 10 hours, as they sifted and dug and lifted the collapsed roof the first day after the fire, and then into the weekend, until all of the victims, nearly 100, had been found.
Baccaire drove the excavator, a huge yellow machine with 12-foot-wide caterpillar tracks and a claw at the end of a movable arm. Harrison directed from the ground, motioning to Baccaire which way to turn, or when to stop -- when remains had been found. Quiet and professional, that was their way. Like doctors who become whirs of purposeful energy during emergencies, so do the best demolition crews. Baccaire calls the best a dying breed.
"Expertise in the demolition business," he said, "is fading out. I can't explain it."
"My boys, they know what to do. They go on a job, nobody tells anybody . . . I can't explain it Ed," he said, looking at his friend for help. "We're like a wheel."
Baccaire held up his hands to form a circle with his fingertips. "We are in sync."
"We all take a job," Harrison said, "The job gets done."
WHEN BACCAIRE took his place at a round table in West Valley Inn's banquet room, he was a celebrity. People kept coming over to him to slap his shoulder, and it made Jacqueline, his wife of 37 years, proud. She wore her blond hair up in a twist, and, in her ears, dressy hoops. Tears filled her eyes, as they would all night.
"No one knows what he was like after this," she said, of her husband's work at The Station.
Baccaire's demolition job had turned into a month, off and on, of hauling away debris, and backfilling the lot, so it didn't look like a war zone. When his job was done, Baccaire left a candle on the ground he had cleared.
It was when he went about his regular demolition work, doing such jobs as taking down an abandoned restaurant on Warwick's Post Road, and copper runs -- hauling scraps to junkyards -- that his friends noticed he had lost weight, and his intense expression had softened.
"He's changed so drastically in every aspect of his life," Jacqueline Baccaire said. "No one could ever imagine what he saw. I'm his wife, and I have no vision of what he saw."
She looked around the room at the firefighters from Providence, West Warwick, Coventry, Hope Valley, and elsewhere. A few were on duty and had stopped in during their break.
"Why do you think all these people are here?" she said. "Because they all know."
Mike DiMascolo, the chief deputy state fire marshal, came over and put his hand on John Baccaire's shoulder. "You want to talk about a friend?" said Baccaire.
"I saw what he truly did that night," DiMascolo said.
Such moments said what Baccaire was struggling to describe -- how his life has changed since he was the demolition man at the fire. He felt respect, camaraderie, and a bond.
"See what I'm talking about," he said, when DiMascolo walked away. "That stuff you can't buy."
AS THE BENEFIT went on, Baccaire spent time in the lobby, pacing on the maroon carpet, smoking, and watching who arrived, like the young West Warwick firefighter who asked Baccaire how he was doing. How was he really doing?
"Hanging in there," Baccaire said.
Baccaire said he always knew them, the firefighters. He would show up to tear down buildings, and afterward, they would all "have a coffee, a beer, a soda."
Now, he said, it's different. It's as though they are "one big family." He didn't save any lives, he wants to make that clear, but still, "I'm part of it."
It took a toll on him, he said, , but some good has come of it. He's closer to his family, and takes nothing for granted. You leave in the morning and say, "I'll see you tonight," he said, "but you don't know if you'll see them tonight."
He always took pride in his work, he said, but more so now. In fact, he had spent Friday digging with his excavator at the remains of the mill fire in Woonsocket. His crew planned to go back yesterday.
"As long as God gives me strength to keep going," he said, "I"ll be there helping them."
When Baccaire walked away for a moment, his daughter, Kim Baccaire, said her father is a different man since The Station fire. He's not the same "workaholic" he was, she said. And while he was always loving, now "he tells us he loves us every day and it's the best thing ever."
"I'll be on a job, and I'll say, 'I love you Dad.' He says 'I love you too.' Always, always."
She had never seen her father cry until The Station job.
He cried when he told Kim about the young women he found in what was left of the ladies' room. There were two women, their arms around each other, their cell phones to their ears, presumably because they were calling for help. One woman was hardly burned.
"That's the one he sees," Kimsaid. "When he cries, he says, 'that girl.' "
As she spoke, she saw her father, standing nearby, listening to her.
She pointed to him, her voice shaking. "My father and me," she said, "he's my life. I'm 37, I'm daddy's girl, and I'm not afraid to say it. He's my hero."
"I'm no hero, Kim,' he said.
"To me you are, definitely," she said.
A few minutes later, Baccaire stood at the door to the banquet room, listening to the chatter and the clink of china.
"People do care, kiddo, people do care," he said to a reporter. "My friends from the scrap yard are here. Truck drivers I know. People that remove asbestos, they're all here."
"God's been good to me. He has."
ONE OF BACCAIRE'S daughters, Jeanne Baccaire, had helped organize the benefit, collecting contributions for the raffle -- even the state's crime lab had donated T-shirts. Between taking pictures, Jeanne, who is 34, and works for the family's demolition business, took a break, and leaned against the wall.
She recalled how she had returned to the site of the fire with her father, after his job was done.
His machine was still there, and he had stood next to it.
It's what happened next that she remembers with pride. "Every fireman came up to shake his hand," she said. It was as if, she said, "he's not just a demolition guy anymore."
"I always respected and loved my father," she said, "but it went way up."
Now, said Jeanne, the local fire departments will call her father. We're having a ham dinner, they will say, come down, you're one of us.
AS FAR AS Anne Balboni, coordinator of the Rhode Island Critical Incident Stress Management Team, was concerned, Baccaire was no different than a firefighter.
When her team was dispatching counselors to talk to the emergency workers, they decided that Baccaire should be "considered one of them and not become a victim of that fire."
When they sent counselors to the fire stations on the day after the fire, they sent one to Baccaire's house in Coventry. She was stunned when she heard that Baccaire was so appreciative that he was holding a fundraiser for the volunteer counselors.
"I think it's something that's just never happened to the team before," she said. "I think it's a tribute to him."
As the benefit was coming to a close, the Baccaire family made their presentations from the dance floor. They offered a bouquet of roses, a plaque, and a check for $4,731 to Balboni. Jacqueline Baccaire noted that Coventry Building & Wrecking Co. is a small company, but they wanted to do something.
But there was a surprise ending.
State Fire Marshal Irving J. Owens walked up, took the microphone, and said he had "known John for over 30 years," and he knows Baccaire "shows up and doesn't get paid for it."
Owens opened a blue folder. Tissue paper covered a certificate embossed with a gold seal. Under the power vested to him as state fire marshal, Owens was hereby commissioning John A. Baccaire Sr. as honorary deputy state fire marshall.
Owens also presented him with a medal for community service, "the first that our office has delivered to anyone." The room erupted into a standing ovation, one that overpowered Baccaire's words -- thank you, God Bless you, thank you.
DIGITAL EXTRA: Look back at a photo tribute to those who helped fire victims, visit an online memorial to those who died and catch up with news coverage at:
http://projo.com/extra/2003/stationfire/
