FDNY WIVES GET BURNED --Interesting read

I do not know what to make of this. . .its very interesting.

FDNY WIVES GET BURNED
By JEANE MacINTOSH

December 1, 2003 -- EXCLUSIVE
It's the FDNY's "dirty little secret."

At least a dozen of New York's Bravest - some of them assigned to look after Sept. 11 widows - have left their wives for the spouses of their comrades killed in the terror attacks, sources told The Post.

"It's disgusting, heartbreaking what they've done," said Mary Koenig, whose husband, Gerry Koenig of Staten Island's Rescue 5 squad, ditched her and their two kids for Madeline Bergin, the widow of his friend and firehouse mate, John Bergin, after the World Trade Center attacks.

An insider who has worked with firefighter families and a counselor who worked for one of the FDNY services told The Post there are about a dozen cases similar to the Koenigs.
-snip-

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/12256.htm

"I didn't leave my family; I left my wife." Yeah, whatever.

Go get 'em Mary Koenig!

To think, these same FDNY firefighters had the nerve to boo Hillary when she attended a fundraising event for them. Nothing like the "good ole boys."

or was this a mismatched couple? Hard to believe that she was the one who got dumped.

She's an attractive woman for sure. Him, well, guys aren't my thing, but he's not the most attractive man I've ever seen. But, love is blind, eh? :shrug:

*still scratching my head over that one from a purely appearance point of view*

He looks like an ape.

And apparently has the personal morals of one too.

after all the trauma and the high emotional rollercoasters people were on - and these guys and women they were watching over probably connected emotionally in ways they never had with people before (the women surely shared deeply from their hearts, and perhaps the men as well).

It's unfortunate, but it's standard and typical for people who go through major traumas and/or highly emotional experiences as a group.

Think of the hookups of a week of summer camp; or the bonding that happens between people during war, or intense moments like earthquakes or tornadoes, etc.

There are many interesting aspects to it:

1. When does a commander get the authority to order a subordinate back to his wife? How can that be "legal"?

2. How does a man abandon his own kids in favor of someone else's?

3. If a marriage is strong, no amount of "mentoring" should be able to break it up. OTOH,

4. People are human beings and the amount of raw emotions generated by something the scale of 9/11 should have been recognized and reckoned with. Throwing the bereaved widows and brother firefighters together in such an atmosphere was probably not a good idea, in hindsight.

5. How do the widows justify taking someone else's husband and father? How do they live with that knowledge?

It's very sad in many ways. The aftereffects of 9/11 continue to destroy people and this will probably go on for many years to come.

Even if the commander could order the husband to return to his family, he can't order him to love a wife he no longer loves. What is the point of having a man only because he is ordered to be there? Unless you just want him around as a financial unit.


Would the wife have been happier if the firefighters had done what people usually do to widows -- forget about them and leave them alone and shuffled off to the edge of society? I doubt it. She would have just had to find someone else to blame when her marriage ended. She doesn't sound like a sane or reasonable person. You cannot "order" a man to love you, and no amount of counseling (and it sounds like they got counseling to the point where I would have found it intrusive) can stop adults with shared experiences from feeling natural sympathy toward each other. I don't see what the fire dept. could have done to keep her marriage together. I suppose she is planning the lawsuit or something.

As far as the "how" can the man do this -- men walk out on their families and file for divorce every day. As far as "how" can the widow live with herself -- what on earth does she have to feel guilty about? If the man was not emotionally available, she wouldn't have been able to "take" him. A man is not a box of cereal on a shelf. He has free will, and he made a choice to change his life. It happens. There is certainly nothing for the widow to feel bad about.

and extrapolated out to "dozens" making a non-story into a story.

. . .its still an interesting story.

. . .I wonder if some of these hook-ups predate 9/11. Was there some type of flirtation or other interaction that happened prior to 9/11 that may have set the table.

after 9/11. Could this be part of a larger trend?

I could see it happening with others.

It seems to me marriage is pretty much a joke these days anyway.

and experiences I will never be able to share with my husband. This isn't because he doesn't talk to me about his experiences, he does, but it isn't the same as a shared experience. That's one of the reason there is such a strong bond among firefighters it's an amazing thing.

So, the widows can share an experience with these firefighters on a level that their wives will never be able to. Sometimes I wonder if there is almost an obsession, although that's not the best word to describe it.

It probably was inevitable that there would be some occurences of firefighters leaving their families.

I'm not excusing this, just saying that I think I understand it.

I mean, I do see the certain amount of "human nature," in all of this. I really hate to think that many are going for the money, but I suppose that is possible...

judgment without evidence.

I don't think one firefighter assigned to one family is a good idea, the responsiblity should be shared by the entire unit, some type of rotating schedule.

"It's disgusting, heartbreaking what they've done," said Mary Koenig, whose husband, Gerry Koenig of Staten Island's Rescue 5 squad, ditched her and their two kids for Madeline Bergin, the widow of his friend and firehouse mate, John Bergin, after the World Trade Center attacks.
...Koenig had been the Bergin family's "liaison" - a surrogate-parent role traditionally taken on by Bravest when a fellow firefighter is killed."

This does say something about the way people feel about other people's spouses in general - the grass is always greener...

when I saw the storied of the firefighters going over to do home repairs, pick up the kids, give advice, and emotional support. The men seemed so focused on meeting the needs of the bereaved family, that I wondered how they met the emotional needs of their own family. I do blame the department for this. I think assigning one man to help out is foolish. Instead, it should be teams and their families should be encouraged to help.

might have been a better way to go about it.

This is just heaping tragedy upon tragedy. So terribly sad the attacks are still doing harm to people.

...how long will these "rebounds" last?

The track record for so many of these types of linkups isn't that great.

More heartbreak down the road?

Kanary

quite a bit - husband is killed or wife and someone makes the move. Is usually because of money sad to say. Civilians around military bases are noted for this - see who turns up dead and make a move on the widow/widower

that the 911 widows are millionaires now, i say that the $$$ probably has more than a little to do with it, but that's just my 2 cents;-)