‘Such a Wonderful Gift’: New Canaan Fire Commissioner’s First Grandchild Enters World with Assist from FDNY

Dedication to the fire service runs deep in Katie Turkington’s family.

Her father, Jack Horner, has served on the New Canaan Fire Commission for a dozen years, including as chairman. Two men on her mother’s side—great-great-grandfather, William Bockage, and great-great-uncle, Fred Bunker—had served in the Cincinnati Fire Department, the latter as chief. Both died fighting fires in the late-1800s. Her husband Eric’s grandfather, William Turkington, served as a firefighter in British Columbia.

None of those men was with Turkington at about 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 14 when the very pregnant Burberry executive started to feel major cramps in her Queens, N.Y. home.

Turkington, 33, who went to West School and Saxe Middle School in New Canaan before attending the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, phoned Uber with every intention of having her first-born at Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as planned.

Yet as the driver pulled Turkington and her ready-packed baby bag onto the Long Island Expressway, the car hit a wall of traffic.

“Honestly I was thought I was going to give birth in an Uber,” Turkington recalled on a recent afternoon.

In stepped the fire service—this time in the form of Fire Department of New York Engine 305 in Forest Hills (“Pride of the Hills,” as they’re known)—which would rather heroically, touch the life of a Horner-Turkington.

Keeping the expectant mom herself calm and safe, the fire company saw to it that Turkington got quickly to nearby Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Forest Hills so that little Lucy Evelyn Turkington was born healthy and happy.

“I think there is something to be said for the fire department in general,” Turkington told NewCanaanite.com. “I think they are pretty trustworthy people and they are always very friendly—even when we would walk by the [fire] house, they are very friendly and that connection is very nice.”

Here’s what happened, as relayed by Horner, a thrilled first-time grandpa who witnessed parts of the Forest Hills drama play out on his wife’s text-messaging app.

Feeling the start of what could be labor pains, Turkington Uber-ed home to Queens from her Manhattan office to pick up the baby bag, having been told by people at work that she had “plenty of time.”

As luck would have it, the LIE had plenty of accidents.

“I quickly hit Google Maps on my iPhone and I see, oh geez, there are three or four accidents in front of where she is and they are not going anywhere, and I said, ‘Dial 9-1-1,’ ” Horner recalled.

The Uber driver spotted a police cruiser parked on the shoulder of the expressway, pulled over, parked, got out and explained the situation.

“One of the officers says, ‘My wife just had baby last week, I know the drill,’ ” Horner said. “He said, ‘Stay in the car, stay calm and we will call for an ambulance.’ When you call for an ambulance in New York the first thing that shows up is a fire engine. And sure enough, engine company 305 shows up on the other side of the service road.”

The firefighters went to the Uber car with a board they had on the truck, carefully laid Turkington down, strapped her on and then transported her over the guardrail so that she could accessing the arriving ambulance.

“Katie said to take an iPhone picture of all of this and one of the firefighters told her, ‘Sorry, ma’am, we don’t have time for that,’ ” Horner said.

Turkington said of the firefighters that “everybody was so nice.”

“They were all coming up to me and telling me everything was going to be OK,” she recalled. “I think every single person came up to me, and one had a baby and everyone was like, ‘Don’t worry, the first baby takes a while,’ but I knew it was coming soon because of how close contractions were. But they were just really helpful and friendly.”

The ambulance arrived at about 5:30 p.m., according to Horner, and little Lucy was born not five hours later—with the help of a midwife, which had not been part of the original Lenox Hill plan—at 10:41 p.m.

“Poppy,” as Horner is to be known to Lucy, said he was “over the moon.”

“Babs and I are so excited we don’t know what to do,” he said. “We are beside ourselves, we are so happy. It was so wonderful that everyone came to the aid of Katie in helping bring little Lucy into this world. It’s just all—I don’t know how to describe it to you.”

He also, at first, didn’t know just which New York fire company had played such a critical role in bringing his first grandchild into the world (Katie has a younger sister, Susie, who graduated from New Canaan High School in 2006).

“So I did some homework and based on the location of the firehouses around there, got a phone number and called and as I started talking, we figured out in about a minute that we had the right one,” Horner said. “The firefighter on the other end of the line said, ‘Oh, I was there. Oh that was your daughter?’ And then when I told him everyone was healthy, it was, ‘Oh we are so happy to hear it worked out so well.’ I said if it wasn’t for you guys, my poor daughter woud have had her baby in an Uber car on the side of the LIE.”

The firefighter to whom Horner spoke is named Silvers—he doesn’t yet know the man’s first name—and the commanding officer during the ordeal was Lt. McComiskey.

“What we are going to do is visit their firehouse and personally say ‘Thank you’ as a family, and we are going to bring some gifts and Babs is making dinner,” Horner said.

“I am just so excited, I cant wait to see them [the firefighters] on Saturday,” Horner said. “It’s such a wonderful gift and to see this little munchkin’s big smiley face and everything is absolutely hilarious.”