Teen Thanks Firefighters Who Assisted in His Birth

Saturday, December 06 2008 @ 04:51 pm EST

Contributed by: CBrining

From the Atlantic City Press Published: Saturday, December 06, 2008

BRIGANTINE - Lots of boys like to go to the firehouse - any firehouse - because that's where they can find firetrucks.

At 17, Omri Jebrell Dempsey is probably a bit beyond thinking that a big red truck is as close as we get to heaven on Earth, but he still wanted to go to a specific firehouse for a specific reason.

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The firehouse was Brigantine's. And the reason was that Dempsey and his father wanted to thank the firefighters who brought the boy into the world Oct. 28, 1991.

Steve Frei, now retired from the Brigantine Fire Department, was a veteran firefighter and emergency medical technician back then. Alan Weidner, now a captain, had just joined the department in 1990.

But on that early morning 17 years ago, Frei recognized that Patricia Hayes-Dempsey was about to deliver a baby. So when Dempsey's father, Teddy Dempsey Sr., came rushing home from his casino job and wanted the guys with the ambulance to rush his wife to the hospital, Frei told him it was too late. The baby was on his way out. Let's fast-forward 17 years to when that baby - now a junior at Millville High School because the family has since moved to Cumberland County - needed a copy of his birth certificate. Frei's name was on the certificate, Brigantine fire Lt. Joe Maguire says, and Dempsey's father apparently decided it was time to thank the firefighters who helped his family out when they needed it.

"Steve (Frei) is a big part of my son's life, and I've always wanted them to meet," Dempsey Sr. told Maguire, a fire department spokesman.

The reunion was Thursday at the firehouse. Weidner couldn't be there, but Frei was, and said it was an "honor" that the Dempseys came to introduce themselves and thank the firefighters.

This apparently won't be their last meeting: It turns out that Frei's son, Matthew, is just three months older than Omri. So now the two Dempseys and the two Freis are hoping to get together for a fishing trip in the spring.

E-mail Martin DeAngelis:MDeangelis@pressofac.com