Valley Independent Sentinel

A Derby Legend Passes

by Eugene Driscoll | Jan 21, 2012 4:03 pm

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Posted to: Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, Seymour, Shelton

Edward J. Cotter Jr., a Storm Ambulance founding father and a legendary photographer for the former Evening Sentinel, died Saturday while surrounded by his loving family.

He was 91.

Click here for Cotter’s obituary.

Cotter was born in Derby on Nov. 11, 1920, the son of a retired motor-vehicles inspector and Mrs. Edward J. Cotter.

At age 19, he started working for the Evening Sentinel as a sports writer. His father told him to join the fire department, because the fire house was next to the Sentinel’s Derby bureau. The department needed people nearby who could drive equipment to emergency calls.

Cotter enlisted in the Navy during World War II, where he was first involved in the fire services. Later he served aboard the U.S.S. New Hanover, which participated in the assault on Okinawa.

He returned to Derby to start a family with his wife, Eleanor, who died in 1988.

Cotter founded Derby’s Storm Ambulance, a non-profit ambulance service, in 1948 with Richard Kiley, after seeing a need to improve local emergency response.

The organization began with a handshake approval at a Derby Aldermen meeting. The city had no money to give the fledgling volunteers, so they paid for the first ambulance by reaching out to the community.

On Dec. 12, 1948, the rig — a $7,000 Buick Superior Ambulance — hit the road for the first time. Cotter was an active member until he turned 85 — an incredible 66 years of service. He had been president of the organization until 1985.

When Cotter was inducted into the Connecticut Firefighters Hall of Fame in 2010, James Cohen, a Derby native and president of the Valley Community Foundation, relayed a story that showed the Storms was an organization like no other.

The ambulance, under men like Cotter, Kiley and Joe Riordan, would transport Derby residents who needed medical care anywhere — as in anywhere in the United States.

In the late 1960s, Cohen’s grandfather, Meyer, was in failing health and needed to be taken to a nursing home in Shelton. Meyer Cohen had recently sold the family’s house in Derby, where they had lived for some 60 years, and moved to Orange.

Cotter found out. An ambulance showed up in Orange, ready for transport.

“And who came out of the ambulance? Joe Riordan and Ed Cotter. Eddie said they weren’t about to let my grandfather go in anyone else’s ambulance other than Derby’s own,” Cohen said.

It was a story personal to Cohen’s family — but hundreds, perhaps thousands of other Derby families have similar stories about Cotter, Cohen said.

Cotter held just about every position one could hold within the Derby emergency services — fire commissioner, assistant chief, fire chief, even civil defense director in the 1957.

He was there when the Storm Ambulance expanded to become the Derby Storm Ambulance and Rescue Corps. A “rescue” truck was added to the organization, carrying cutting-edge equipment, such as the state’s first “jaws of life” to help people trapped in car wrecks.

He helped to establish the Valley Fire Chiefs Regional Training School, which used to be on O’Sullivan’s Island in Derby. He helped to establish working relationships with the New Haven Fire Department — a relationship that exists between Derby and New Haven to this day.

Cotter received the four most honored humanitarian awards given out in the Naugatuck Valley, including the United Way’s Charles H. Flynn Humanitarian Award in 1974.

Cotter and Derby volunteers were in a newly-purchased Storm rescue boat — an aluminum row boat — plucking people out of the water during the Flood of ’55.

“The rage of the river took all of us by surprise,” Cotter told New Haven Register reporter Patricia Villers in 2006. “Nobody had any idea how to work in that kind of raging water. All of our rescues were in the Housatonic River, and the water was never that high,” Cotter said while recalling August 1955.

“The water was so high it covered the bridge in East Derby. We were all worried about our safety; the water current was so fast you couldn’t operate in the water. We stayed on duty for a week or more, and we didn’t get much sleep.”

Gov. M. Jodi Rell declared Dec. 18, 2005 “Ed Cotter Day,” after Cotter decided not to renew his certification as an emergency medical technician. He received proclamations from Rell and Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri.

Despite his decommissioned status, Cotter couldn’t walk away from the emergency services. In 2006, he came upon a car accident in Oxford — and not only helped a volunteer firefighter pull a person from the car, but also began CPR on the victim.

In the Connecticut journalism world, Cotter was a legend.

This publication was named in honor of the old Evening Sentinel, which was shuttered in the 1990s. When a reporter from the Valley Indy shows up at fires and the flames are out, he or she is often told “Eddie Cotter would have been here already!”

When the paper was put out of business, Cotter freelanced for the New Haven Register.

Former New Haven Register editor Michael Foley said when Cotter walked into the newsroom late in the day with a photo, it meant one thing — tear up whatever the editors had planned for the front page.

“Eddie was a dying breed,” Foley said. “They just don’t make reporters or photojournalists like that anymore.”

Cotter’s photos were up close and dramatic. On more than one occasion the editors at the Register had to meet to discuss whether to publish Cotter’s photos.

“It could be raw stuff,” said Foley, who is now the director of communications at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport. “Eddie was on top of things.”

John Ferraro is the state editor at The Hartford Courant, which published a story on Cotter’s death Saturday.

In the early 1990s Ferraro worked at the New Haven Register’s Valley bureau, which used to be on Main Street in Ansonia.

Ferraro said he and Cotter would often run out to cover crashes and fires. At times Cotter would take photos, hand Ferraro the camera to take back to the office, then either step in to fight a fire or drive an ambulance.

“He was a fun guy to be around,” Ferraro said.

Cotter viewed photojournalism as an important public service.

“He thought that people had the right to see what was going on in their communities. Part of that was showing what the rescue people did,” Ferraro said.

Ferraro said Cotter was also opinionated and outspoken. He gave 100 percent effort in everything he did.

“You always knew where you stood with Eddie. Everybody liked the guy. Everybody admired the guy. It was because of his honesty. It was because of his dedication,” Ferraro said.

Cotter was dedicated to the fire-rescue services, journalism — and the community.

Cotter was active in Derby outside journalism and the emergency services.

He was an umpire with Derby Little League, according to a 1974 article in the Evening Sentinel. He was chairman of the Valley Firemen’s Blood Bank — an organization that predated the Valley Red Cross.

But, first and foremost, Cotter was dedicated to his family, Ferraro said.

“He was a Valley guy, very dedicated to his family,” Ferraro said. “He always talked about his family.”

Thomas Lenart, Sr., Cotter’s son-in-law, said Cotter deeply loved his wife, Eleanor.

Cotter had boundless energy.

“The only one that could put the brakes on him was her,” Lenart said.

Cotter had two children and seven grandchildren. His immediate family knew him as “Pa.”

Over the years, firefighters and emergency service workers used the nickname as well.

“To everyone, he was Pa,” Lenart said.

Valley residents are also sharing memories of Cotter on the Valley Indy Facebook page.

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