QUEENS — It was supposed to be a Thanksgiving in Philadelphia spent cooking with the family, sightseeing and taking relaxing walks through the park for Ernesto and Elizandro Ramos.
Instead, Ernesto is now planning a funeral for his kid brother, who was killed Tuesday when a 6,500-pound beam crashed down on him at a Briarwood construction site.
“He was going to come visit me in Philadelphia,” Ernesto, 47, said through tears Wednesday at his brother’s Jamaica home. “He always cooked. He asked me two days ago if I had bought the turkey and I said, ‘It’s 20 pounds!’ He said, ‘That’s too big!’"
Elizandro, 43, had been working as a welder at the construction site on 82nd Avenue and 135th Street for about two months.
He and crane operator George Smith, 47, were killed when the crane wire snapped about 12:10 p.m., officials and relatives said.
Investigators believe the accident was caused by a rigging-rope failure and not the wind.
Elizandro knew it was dangerous work, relatives said, but he did it to support his wife and three daughters, ages 18, 13 and 5.
“My brother was a great father,” Ernesto said. “His daughters were everything to him. He was making money and he wanted to send his oldest daughter to the university.”
Elizandro came here with his family from El Salvador about 15 years ago and would often send money back to his father.
“He loved New York,” Ernesto said. “He said, ‘Over here, you can live free.”
He found work in construction about 12 years ago and was highly skilled, relatives said.
Still, when he was on jobs, his wife said she feared for his safety.
"He said that he liked it, but it was really hard, and in the future he wanted to find another job," Sandra Ramos, 35, said through tears.
Before he left the house Tuesday morning, he delivered one last message to her.
“He said, ‘Bye, my love,” she said. “I told him, 'I’ll see you in this afternoon.' That was it.”
Smith will also be remembered by friends and neighbors as a loving man who worked hard and loved his wife.
"An amazing friend and amazing man taken from his family and his friends too soon," Smith's friend Julia Muriale wrote on Facebook. "I've known you since I can remember and I don't even want to think about a world without you."
"He was a gentle giant with a 14-karat gold heart," Ira Polansky, 55, Smith's neighbor of 15 years said of the six-foot-six tall crane operator. "The bigger the boy, the bigger his heart."
Polansky described Smith as devoted husband who loved bulldogs and Corvettes.
"He loved fast cars, but every time he'd buy a car, he'd trade it in," Polansky said. After he traded the car in, he told Polansky, "'Thank God my wife's the best model — I won't trade her in.'"
Polansky last spoke to Smith one day before the accident when Smith told his neighbor how excited he was to have the job that would later claim his life.
"You don't even want to celebrate Thanksgiving at this point, said Polansky. "We haven't been able to stop crying since."
The family has asked that donations be made in Smith's name be made to Toys for Tots or Long Island Bulldog Rescue in lieu of flowers, Polansky said.
