Frank Greenwood, J.R. Renten, Bill Gorga honored for heroism with Liberty Awards

On a gray January morning, Frank Greenwood and J.R. Renten were repairing a sidewalk on Pulaski Street when a woman bolted out of a nearby office screaming.

The men, both Town of Riverhead Highway Department employees, looked up and saw flames erupting from a two-story building down the street.

With firetrucks en route to the scene, the volunteer firefighters sprang into action, rushing into the smoke-filled building without gear to help lead two elderly women to safety from a second-floor apartment.

“You don’t really think. You just act,” said Greenwood, 34, who has been a volunteer with the Riverhead Fire Department for 10 years. “We wanted to make sure everybody was safe and everybody was out of the building.”

Greenwood and Renten, 61, an assistant chief with more than three decades of service with the department, were among three East End residents bestowed a Liberty Award medal during a ceremony at Riverhead Free Library on Thursday.

The medal represents the highest civilian honor awarded by the New York State Senate for heroic, life-saving acts.

A medal was also awarded to Bill Gorga, an East Marion man whose quick thinking helped save a 14-month-old from a carjacking in Greenport in February.

Gorga, 68, was shopping on Greenport’s Front Street on Feb. 14 when a carjacker took off with a woman’s Mercedes-Benz SUV that had been left running with her young grandchild sleeping inside.

“I said ‘Get in my truck.’ I started the car up and we took off after him,” Gorga recalled Thursday.

Gorga and the woman, who has not been publicly identified, gave chase westbound on Main Road, eventually forcing the Mercedes onto a shoulder.

The grandmother then got out of the pickup and into her vehicle in an attempt to free her grandchild when the thief, Paul Ludeman, drove off with them both inside. Gorga continued a pursuit until the vehicle stopped again, released the grandmother and the child and continued west, eventually crashing in Southold near Town Harbor Lane, approximately four miles west of where the vehicle was stolen.

Ludeman pleaded guilty to third-degree grand larceny, endangering the welfare of a child and driving while ability impaired and was sentenced to two to four years in prison.

Four Southold police officers who responded to the carjacking and ultimately apprehended the driver — Officers Ryan Springer and Patrick Robbins, Sgt. Robert Haase and Det. Kenneth Richert — were presented with special commendations by State Sen. Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) at Thursday’s ceremony.

Lauding their efforts as “everyday heroes,” Palumbo expressed gratitude for their selfless acts.

“These are some of the important, amazing things that make New York a great place to live,” he said. “These folks put their own individual safety at risk in order to do the right thing for someone else.”

Both recipients in attendance, Greenwood and Gorga, said they were honored to receive the medals.

“I think any man or woman in the Riverhead Fire Department would have probably did the same thing that I did,” Greenwood said. “It’s just what we do.”