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"I touched three of the men who were burning and I was burning too. I'll never forget it and I say a prayer every night to the four guys who died."

Published April 19. 2021 2:45PM  Bill Stanley, Special to The Times Nearly six decades later, the memories still haunt him. And so, each year for the past 58 years on the April 3 anniversary of the 1962 Van Tassel Warehouse explosion that killed four of his Norwich Fire Department colleagues, Thomas LaFreniere reports back to City Fire Headquarters. There, at a plaque honoring those and others who died in the line of duty, he prays alone and in silence for the four men who, only feet away from him, died on that fateful spring afternoon. In some years, one or more city firefighters have joine...