The New York City Fire Department, a municipal agency that for almost all of its 150-year history has been the city’s least diverse in race and gender, is retiring its top honor, the James Gordon Bennett award that each year is awarded for an act of outstanding heroism.
The medal — endowed by and named for a 19th-century publishing giant who supported slavery and wrote virulently racist editorials in his tabloid newspaper — will be replaced by a new award named after FDNY Chief of Department Peter Ganci, a beloved figure who perished on 9/11, the Daily News learned Tuesday.
“I am elated,” retired FDNY firefighter and Bennett recipient James Tempro told The News on Tuesday, not long after Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called him to share the new development.
Tempro, 91, was the first black Bravest to win a Bennett for a daring rescue he made in 1968 that saved a young boy’s life but left the firefighter hospitalized for weeks afterward.
Tempro first raised the ugly history of Bennett, the publisher and founder of the now-defunct New York Herald, in a story that ran three years ago in The News. At the time, Tempro said, he was considering returning the medal to the FDNY after learning of Bennett’s vicious anti-Semitic and anti-black views.
“When Commissioner Nigro called me today he said it was thanks to my speaking to The News that he learned of Bennett’s history. He said he had no idea who James Gordon Bennett was until he read about it in the paper and after doing some research, the decision was made,” Tempro told The News. “He said he couldn’t have a person like that as the representative of the top medal awarded by the Fire Department, or any medal, for that matter.”
Tempro said the phone call, just a few days before the 19th anniversary of 9/11, came at the right time for him.
“It’s been on my heart to turn that medal in, especially with all that’s happening now and the police killings of unarmed black people and the systemic racism, so I was going to write to the commissioner and express my displeasure that no action had been taken [since The News article],” Tempro said. “But then he called, and it was great news.”
The FDNY first handed out the James Gordon Bennett award in 1869 when its namesake was among the nation’s richest and most powerful men.
Bennett and his son set up the FDNY medal with a $1,500 endowment. According to the endowment letter sent at the time, the award was to thank firefighters for extinguishing a fire in Bennett’s country house.
For several years, the Bennett medal was the sole citation for valor awarded by the FDNY.
Given Bennett’s immense stature, it carried tremendous prestige — even though his connection to the Fire Department was slight.
A self-made millionaire and titan of journalism, Bennett founded the New York Herald and was famous as a publisher of forceful, influential editorials that clearly expressed his views on the issues of the day. In the run-up to the Civil War, Bennett let loose with numerous tirades against Abraham Lincoln and what he dubbed the President’s “n—-r” war. He’d pepper those editorials with ugly slurs about African-Americans — and often expressed anti-Semitic feelings as well.
Although many of Bennett’s views were not considered out of step for the mainstream at the time, his history does not belong in the FDNY of today, Tempro said.
“I couldn’t be happier that it’s changing,” he said. “But now I’ll have to figure out what to do with my old medal.”
The FDNY, which was sued in mid-2000 by the Vulcan Society, the fraternal order of black firefighters to which Tempro once belonged, has long faced diversity challenges to its predominantly white and male ranks.
Regina Wilson, one of the department’s few women firefighters and former Vulcan President, said renaming the medal after Ganci was a great move.
“I worked to bring Bennett’s history to light during my presidency and I’m glad this change is finally happening in 2020. The fight began in 2017, and while we wish it happened sooner, we’re glad it’s happening now,” Wilson told The News.
Since the Vulcans landmark win of their discrimination case, the FDNY has improved its diversity and imposed new measures meant to bring more women, Blacks, Latinos and Asians into the 11,000-strong department.
Paul Washington, an FDNY chief and former Vulcan president who was one of the main architects of the discrimination lawsuit, said Tuesday the change was overdue by about 150 years.
“It’s too bad it took so long for the FDNY to recognize what a vile, racist man Bennett was,” Washington told The News. “Hopefully the FDNY will give Mr. Tempro a new medal to replace the original.”