Christopher Tracy(I)

Born in Manchester Memorial Hospital outside of Hartford, Connecticut in February of 1960, Tracy grew up the youngest of five in Storrs where his father was a Professor of Fine Art; his introduction to the performing arts came at a UConn performance of "The Music Man" in which his brother Michael (who went on to become a founding member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre at Dartmouth) played Winthrop.

While moving to upstate New York in the summer of '65 for his father's new job as Art Director of Xerox, Tracy was introduced to Walt Disney's latest work at the New York World's Fair, later remembered clearly in visits to the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT in Walt Disney World. That fall he was enrolled in Eastman School of Music's 'Project Super' where he learned to play violin from Shinizi Suzuki.

In the early '70s a friend introduced Tracy to his father Robert Forster who was filming "Banyon" at the time. That introduction let him to pursue an acting career, first locally in school and community theatre productions, then at Penn State where his double major in Pre-Law and Theater led to a role in David H. Bell's "Indian Summer" with Ron Harper and Tudi Wiggins filmed by Chris McIntyre.

Wiggins' agent Ricki Olshan of Don Buchwald & Associates offered to sign Tracy when he moved to NY, which he did shortly after "Indian Summer" closed; auditions for all the NY daytime dramas followed, resulting in the recurring role of Dick Franzman on "All My Children" under producer Jackie Babbin with whom he'd read for Tad Martin, a show on which he appeared from 1982 through 2009.

Regional, Off-Broadway and Broadway theatre roles and auditions followed, at one of which Tracy met his future wife, California actress Gina Russell, with whom he would later be cast on "Ryan's Hope" and work on his first film role in "Turk 182" as a fellow news reporter interviewing Robert Culp before spotting Timothy Hutton hanging from the 59th Street Bridge in the film's climax.

Music remained an important element in Tracy's life, winning him Equity membership as Jake in the Cincinatti Playhouse in the Park's "I'm Getting My Act Together" as well as "Many Thousand Gone" in Manhattan and Massachussets which went on to play the Ford's Theatre in Washington as "On Shiloh Hill"; after closing the latter in Nantucket in late '83 the Tracys married at St. Paul's Church.

Film and television roles followed, but the Tracys' focus was in developing theatre in their new home state of Connecticut: first the Equity Small Professional WPI Theatre in Greenwich, followed by the Westport Acting Company, another SPT. They went on to start Stratford Summer Shakespeare in Stratford following a proposal to the State for reopening the American Shakespeare Theatre as an URTA.

Although Tracy continued to work on "All My Children", "One Life To Live", "As The World Turns", "Another World", "Guiding Light", and "Loving" as well as several nighttime television pilots, by the late '80s he had found another passion and soon became a career fire fighter for the town of Fairfield. Other than the occasional industrial film for GE or Danbury Hospital, his focus was on FFD.

Tracy currently serves as Chief of Training for the Fairfield Fire Department, Training Director of the Fairfield Regional Fire School, Public Information Officer for the Fairfield Regional Hazardous Incident Response Team and Chairman of Region 1's Fire Emergency Support Function for the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, though he still performs occasionally.

His wife Gina Russell Tracy has become a playwright and Artistic Director of the Connecticut Playwrights Theatre, while his son Michael has performed since infancy, playing a victim's son in the police storyline of the same NBC "Third Watch" episode for which his father played a firefighter, and most recently completing the circle by working with former "All My Children" producer Michael Laibson at the NY Film Institute.