LI Firefighter’s Dream 'Fulfilled': 9/11 Widow On Legacy

HOLBROOK, NY — Gerry and Denise Schrang had about a year-and-a-half living out their dream of a retirement home on a mountain upstate before spending their last weekend together. They shared a playful exchange over how to secure the driveway, just before setting out on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

It was an “ugh” moment as husbands and wives can often have, but all was good with the soulmates.

“To have that moment again, I would give my life,” Denise recalled the last time she saw her husband of 25 years alive.

She followed Gerry, a firefighter with the Fire Department of New York, in a separate car because he had been called in for overtime and was due to report for duty on the morning shift at Rescue 3 in the Bronx.

They were communicating on walkie-talkies, and her last words to him were, “Call me.”

She was about three miles behind and was making her way back to Holbrook when she heard a news report about a small Cessna that hit the World Trade Center.

Later down the road, she saw the second plane hit. She knew her husband was there. If she could have popped a u-turn, she would have, but she knew she had to get home to their two children, a 22-year-old daughter, and a 19-year-old son.

“When I saw the plane, I immediately took my cell phone out and I called the firehouse,” Denise said, adding, “And, they were gone. There's nobody there to answer. Nope, just an answering machine with me screaming, ‘Pick up God damn it.’”

She put her emergency lights on and drove home as fast as she could, noticing everyone else on the opposite side of the road was traveling west to get into the disaster scene.

When she returned home, it was a “wait-and-see game,” but she and her family were not alone.

Gerry was a former chief with the Holbrook Fire Department, and “from that moment, we had Holbrook here,” she said. “My house was filled with firemen.”

The camaraderie continues to this day.

The Holbrook Fire Department dedicated a ladder truck in Gerry’s name and recently christened its replacement truck at a wetting down ceremony with 21 other local departments, honoring his legacy of firefighting.

Denise said the department has stood with her family from her husband’s death right up to the present day, 20 years later.

“I think he would be really proud,” she said.

Matthew Bacile, a former Holbrook captain and NYPD cop, was only in the 5th grade when the twin towers fell, but he remembers the time well, having lost family members. His father was also a volunteer fireman and he always wanted to be one as well, but he was not familiar with Schrang’s story until he joined up.

“They do a great job of keeping his memory alive,” he said.

Gerry had spent his whole career in the Bronx, and when one house was not busy enough for him, ranging about 500 fires per month, he wanted a change and sought out Rescue 3, but first asked Denise, who told him, “You are going to be the one who has to do this, not me.”

He told her, “I got to do it,” she said.

He ended up responding to fatal fires, including the one at Happy Land Disco that left 87 people dead.

“Every fireman that you know, especially the ones after 9/11, they carry a weight with them, that I don't know how to explain,” Denise said. “It's like … shadows, no matter whether they're in a good mood or a bad mood. Whenever they take a step, there could be 500 people behind them.”

“It could be only three people that they maybe lost…you know what I mean?” She said. “It doesn't go away.”

Gerry’s body was not recovered from the wreckage until 11 days after the terror attacks.

“My husband was a jokester. I guess the way he wanted them to find him, and identify him was not through anybody, but a chain that was around his neck that I bought him in 1986,” Denise said.

He was one of eight firefighters from Rescue 3 who died.

His childhood friend, Joe, a New York Police Department detective, was on duty the day his body was found and he was able to identify him for the family. He stayed with her husband’s body at the morgue until it was transferred to the funeral parlor.

After his death, Gerry’s friends and colleagues stepped in a big way, Denise said.

Another colleague even walked their daughter down the aisle at her wedding. If not for Gerry’s fire department family between the city and Long Island, the Schrangs “would not have survived,” Denise said.

Gerry joined the Holbrook Fire Department when he was about 14 years old, and the dream he chased lived on after his death.

In his high school yearbook, a classmate wrote: “You'll make a great fireman.”

“That was his dream, and he fulfilled it,” Denise said.