Story highlights Roseanne Kleppsattel lent a hand at a car accident

She wore her husband's firefighter turnout coat

(CNN) Roseanne Kleppsattel said she felt her late husband watching over her as she stood on a New York highway wearing his firefighter turnout coat over her clothes, lending a hand at a crash scene on the way home from his funeral.

Kleppsattel, a volunteer with the Kings Park Fire Department on Long Island, where her husband, Fred, spent 45 years, said she didn't hesitate to hop out of the back seat of the fire truck when she and members of the department stumbled upon the five-vehicle accident Tuesday.

Roseanne Kleppsattel in her late husband's coat.

She grabbed her husband's jacket from the front seat and stood with the hose, ready if needed, at the Long Island Expressway accident in Islandia, while other Kings Park firefighters helped remove a woman from one of the vehicles.

Four days earlier, Fred Kleppsattel, 77, had died in his sleep of cardiac arrest at a Long Island hospital.

The son of a retired New York City fireman, Kleppsattel served in the Air Force and was a member of the Air Force Fire Brigade in Plattsburgh, New York, in the 1960s. He was also a firefighter for the United Nations Fire Brigade and the Republic Airport Fire Brigade in Farmingdale, New York.

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