Street named in honor of East Meadow volunteer firefighter

As a volunteer firefighter with the East Meadow Fire Department, Walter Ernst would run into a burning building as mice and rats ran out of them, his daughter Vikki said. For 26 years, a fire radio would go off in the family's Salisbury kitchen at all hours day and night and Ernst stood ready to answer the call.

Those who knew him said Ernst dedicated countless hours to training, responded to more scenes than was required and took recruits under his wing to show them the ropes.

Ernst died after suffering a heart attack following a training exercise on May 28, 1998, according to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to remembering American firefighters who died in the line of duty. On what would have been his 50th anniversary with East Meadow on Sunday, Hempstead Town officials dedicated Lion Lane in Salisbury as Firefighter Walter A. Ernst Lane in his honor.

“The fire department gave my father a great sense of belonging,” Ernst’s son Craig recalled as he stood at the intersection at Legend Lane near the Ernst family home. “It gave him an additional purpose in life — not only a wonderful husband and a father, but he was also a first responder that helped his community.”

The street sign was unveiled during a ceremony Sunday morning as Ernst’s widow, Linda, his three children who also include a son, Keith, and the five grandchildren he never met looked on.

“We gather here today because as firefighters, as members of law enforcement, those who wear the uniform, when we raise our right hand and take our oath, there's also an oath that we take in our heart,” said Hempstead Councilman Anthony D’Esposito, a former chief with the Island Park Fire Department. “And that oath is that we promised to never, ever forget our brothers and sisters who have gone before us.”

Anthony Messina recalled being seven weeks into his tenure as chief of the East Meadow department when he got a radio call code that a department member or their family was in need. He arrived at Ernst’s home, but was devastated to see it was too late to start CPR as he had already died. But Messina had to gather himself to face Ernst’s family.

“When you must look someone's family in the eyes, especially a family so close as Walter’s, and tell them that their loved one has passed away, it is one of the toughest things we have to do as a first responder,” Messina said.

With Debbie Egan-Chin

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese covers Suffolk County government and politics. She joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.