For 17-year-old, hockey-loving Tabor Academy junior Jack DesRuisseaux, the night of Nov. 6, 2021, started as a typical Saturday night.
With fall hockey winding down and the return of prep school hockey on the horizon, he was on the ice with his split-season team, the GBL Bruins, playing the Boston Junior Eagles in an 18-U contest at Dorchester’s Devine Memorial Rink.
The game got underway and everything seemed par for the course. Until it wasn’t.
Between periods, his coach, Bret Tyler, pulled him aside; Jack’s mom, Colleen, had received a phone call that no family member of a firefighter ever hopes to get. His dad, Manchester (N.H.) fire captain Steve DesRuisseaux, had been severely injured while battling a fire trying to rescue residents trapped in a multi-family apartment building. He was being flown to Mass. General for surgery after suffering second- and third-degree burns to more than 40 percent of his body.
Capt. DesRuisseaux had just guided a third-floor resident to a ladder propped against a rear second-floor porch railing when a flashover started burning everything in sight, Manchester fire battalion chief Dave Fleury said.
As he attempted to slide down and bail out of the second-floor porch, his breathing apparatus got caught on the ladder. A fellow firefighter, Joshua Charpentier, kicked out the ladder to get him away from the flames and attempt to prevent further injuries. Another firefighter who tried to free DesRuisseaux, Lt. Scott Brassard, was on the ladder when it fell and suffered an ankle sprain.
When all was said and done, the injured captain and his crew rescued six people, including a baby, from the three-alarm blaze.
"The actions of the crews last night went above and beyond the call of duty, and Captain DesRuisseaux's were nothing short of heroic," Fleury said in a statement following the fire, which claimed the life of one victim.
With his dad en route to the hospital, Jack was hearing the news over the phone in the rink. Naturally, a lot was going through his mind.
“You never expect — for my mom, at least — to get that phone call, and then as his son, you never really expect it to happen until it happens,” Jack said. “And then hearing it during the game, your mind's kind of racing and whatnot. You want to play a good game, but you also want to get out of there and see him.”
In the hospital, DesRuisseaux underwent a number of surgeries and skin grafts, a procedure where thin layers of his healthy skin were removed and placed over the burned skin, doubling the amount of wounds on his body, wrote the organizers of the GoFundMe campaign launched for DesRuisseaux.
"The pain this guy is in and literally doesn't complain is mind-boggling. He doesn't make a peep as they do things to him," his wife, Colleen, wrote in an update on Nov. 14.
After making the trip to Boston to visit his dad following the game, Jack returned to Dorchester the next day — per his dad’s wishes — to play another one.
“He made me go play my game. He didn’t want me to stop,” Jack said.
Riddled with thoughts of his dad’s well-being, the game got underway. Midway through the second half, “a herd of firefighters walked in,” said Jack, who watched as the fire personnel surrounded “basically the whole rink” to support him and his GBL Bruins team in place of his dad.
“That was really cool,” he said. “To see the brotherhood come together to support me and my family when my dad couldn’t be there, it just gave me another layer of support. If I needed to talk to someone, I know they were there if I didn't want to go to anyone else. The support was unbelievable.”
That first showing, in the very early stages of his recovery, was organized by the Boston Burn Foundation, the elder DesRuisseaux said.
“They're really involved with the community, and a lot of those guys are hockey players themselves,” said Steve, who returned home on Nov. 29 after a 23-day hospital stay. “It was literally just a few phone calls to the Dorchester guys, the Quincy guys, the Boston guys, and they just showed up at the rink. It was unbelievable. Just to show that gesture of support for him since I couldn't be there was unreal.”
They didn't stop there, however.
Five days later, the firefighters returned, this time at New England Sports Center (Marlboro, Mass.) for the Mass. Hockey State Championships. Then, with DesRuisseaux on his way out of the hospital, the support moved closer to home up north.
The brotherhood came through yet again at the St. Paul’s Jamboree (a preseason prep hockey showcase from Nov. 28-29 at Gordon Rink in Concord, N.H.) to support the Seawolves and No. 17 in their new winter threads.
“It was really touching for me, personally,” said Tabor Academy (Marion, Mass.) head coach Gerry Dineen. “To see this whole group of people supporting Jack and his family … I came home after and I tried to explain it to my wife, what it was like to see all of that support for Jack and his family. It was so emotional for me just to watch it.
“You try to compartmentalize everything, you know, but it was pretty powerful to see that kind of support.”
Ian Gill, a Concord firefighter and Proctor Academy alum who played three years of Division 3 college hockey at Plymouth State, helped spearhead the local efforts.
“It was off my shift but our truck went and covered for that fire,” said Gill, a native of Sutton, N.H. “So, we were pretty aware of it when we heard about DesRuisseaux bailing out and getting burned.
"You know, it’s part of the job. You hope you never have to deal with it but having it hit so close to home kind of wakes you up a little bit.”
After hearing the news, it wasn’t a question of if the fire community would do something for the DesRuisseaux family, it was what.
“It’s not the first time something like this has been done — we really try to cover for each other when we can and help out when we can, even if it’s just something as small as going to catch a hockey game,” said Gill, who played alongside DesRuisseaux for several years in the CHaD (Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock) Battle of the Badges Hockey Championship, an annual fundraising showdown between Granite State fire and police.
“To see his injuries occur, it was basically, you know, what can do to help out? Even if it’s just, like I said, something small,” Gill said. “Those things can go a long way.”
After weeks of treatments, Capt. DesRuisseaux returned home from the hospital on the second day of the jamboree.
Manchester firefighters lined up alongside Boston Fire and Mass. State Police as he left. Mass. State Police escorted him to the New Hampshire State line, where members of N.H. State Police, Manchester Police and Londonderry Police completed the escort to Manchester.
“For me, it was a pretty humbling experience, to say the least. I’ve been in the fire service for 23 years now and I know the brotherhood is always there, but when you're on the other side of it, to see it come together and have all these communities support your family … they don't even know who you are, but you're associated with the fire service and that's all they need to know,” Capt. DesRuisseaux said.
“That’s something I can never thank them enough and repay them for. Obviously, being stuck in the hospital for that length of time, knowing my family had those support systems in place was huge for me, and for them to show up at the rinks to support my boy was really amazing. I was at a loss for words to be honest.”
After holding down fort down in his absence, it wasn’t long before Steve was back in the rink himself. He attended Tabor’s home opener on Dec. 4 — less than a month after the fire— and made it to another game the team played six days later at Boston University’s Walter Brown Arena. And while months of recovery still await, the worst is seemingly behind him.
“It's going to be a long journey, but considering the amount of surgery I had, they're pretty happy with how it's going,” he said. “Just doing a lot of therapy and trying to get my strength and mobility back at this point, so it will be a while but all things considered I'm in pretty decent shape.”
As for Jack, after a slew of cancellations to close out the first half ahead of winter break, the season at Tabor continues with the stretch run looming and playoffs scheduled for March.
No. 17 has been a key performer for the Seawolves thus far, scoring at close to a point-per-game clip through the first month of games.
“He’s a great kid and he's a really talented hockey player, too,” Dineen said. “He’s the kind of guy who does whatever we ask. He’s a top power-play kid, he’s a penalty killer; he’s on the ice at every critical situation. Part of the reason that we are having success before we went on break was Jack and his hard work and his willingness to do the little things and play the way that we're asking all of our guys to play.
“We're lucky to have him at Tabor, and just like everybody in the past (year-plus) he’s had to deal with quite a bit of adversity, but he’s handled it really well.”
Now, with his dad on the road to recovery, he can put his full, uninhibited attention back on the ice.
“We’ve got a good group of guys this year,” Jack said. “We brought in a decent amount of kids and we have more of a younger team, but all the guys are clicking in the locker room. We all have good chemistry; it’s not toxic at all. Everyone loves each other and you're living with most of the guys on the team, eating with them and going to class, so that always helps.
“If everything stays the same and we don't have any cancellations, I think we could do really well.”
