Spear Jr., Robert

Robert Spear Jr. Eng.26 Firefighter Robert Spear Jr., 30, of Valley Cottage in Rockland County, worked at Engine Company 50, Ladder No. 19 in the Bronx, but was temporarily assigned to Engine No. 26 in Manhattan. Robert Spear had finished his shift the morning of Sept. 11, and was back in civilian clothes ready to leave for a haircut appointment when the fire alarm rang. He changed back so hastily he left his cellphone behind, said his mother, Irene Spear of Oceanside. Everyone but the driver of his truck perished, she said, though the firefighters from his permanent company never even made it to the towers. “We have a piece of film that shows my son going in, exactly four minutes before the south tower comes down,” his mother said. “Four lousy, crummy minutes.” Spear, who grew up in Oceanside, had joined the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division when he was 19. He left the Army after he met his wife, Lorraine, and joined the Fire Department. He was always drawn to male camaraderie, his mother said – perhaps because his father died when he was young. Even so, she said, “he wasn’t above sitting on the floor playing Pretty Pretty Princess” with his nieces. “He’d always lose on purpose, so the kids would laugh.” On Sept. 11, Spear’s sister, Amy Haviland, knew almost instantly that she had lost her husband, Timothy Haviland, 41, who worked on the 96th floor of the north tower for Marsh & McLennan. The family spent the rest of the day in an agonized vigil for news of Robert. “Amy just kept sitting there, begging and pleading and making deals with God: ‘You took my husband, don’t take my brother,’ ” Irene Spear said. Amy Haviland, a mother of two, died of a heart attack in 2006. “We haven’t had a very lucky life,” Irene Spear said. The firefighters from Robert Spear’s Bronx firehouse have been very supportive of his mother over the years. Once, she said, about 20 off-duty firefighters came to her house to install a new bathroom.. – Melanie Lefkowitz