An event Wednesday in Islip honored an FDNY hero who died earlier this year.

The town held a street renaming ceremony on what would have been FDNY firefighter Jesse Gerhard's 34th birthday.

Gerhard, who worked with Ladder 134, grew up on South Bay Avenue, right across the street from Islip Town Hall. Now the street is named in his honor.

“I am in awe,” his mom Lynn Gerhard said. “I am amazed at how many lives he touched. How important he was to so many people.”
Gerhard joined the Islip firehouse as a volunteer when he was 20 years old and then became a member of the FDNY, stationed at the “Big House" in Far Rockaway.

He died on Feb. 16, one day after battling a fire in Queens. He was just 33 years old.

“They go places where no one else would go willingly, without thought, without question,” his dad Bruce Gerhard said. “When the fire alarm goes off, they are gone. And we just hope this never, ever happens again. But we know that’s not possible.”

Gerhard was with the FDNY for seven years and really made an impact.

“He had a saying, it was, ‘Leave it better than you found it.’ Everything Jesse did, he left better than he found it,” said Mike Ormiston, of FDNY Ladder 134. “And that included people, guys in the firehouse. I was a senior guy, and I was supposed to be teaching him. He was teaching me.”

“He was very quiet but he had the biggest heart,” his mom said. “If he found two pennies, he’d find somebody to give one to.”

Now his legacy lives on with this new street sign, and his family says this tribute will help keep his memory alive, even among people who never met him.