The families of Chicago firefighters and paramedics who have died in the line of duty came together Sunday for a bittersweet holiday tradition, reconnecting with others who have shared their loss and grief while celebrating the season.
The gathering of the Gold Badge Society has taken place each year since it was formed in 1991 as a support network for spouses, parents, children and other family members to help them cope with the sudden loss of a loved one. About 75 people attended the party at a downtown hotel Sunday, with each family taking home a Christmas tree ornament fashioned from a firefighter’s badge and a candy cane.
Three generations of O’Connors came to the occasion, as they do every year. “We all needed support,” said Shirley O’Connor, 68, “when you feel as though your husband was the first one, and the only one.”
Her husband, Capt. Richard O’Connor, 55, died of a heart attack in 1987 after walking up 10 flights of stairs at a Chicago Housing Authority project building in response to an emergency call that turned out to be false.
“No one understands better than someone who’s been there,” said Eileen Caglianese, 55, the group’s president, who lost her husband on Jan. 26, 1986, while he was fighting a fire at the Mark Twain Hotel, 111 W. Division St.
Lt. Edmond Coglianese, 42, was trapped by flames moments after he had rescued two elderly residents stranded on the third floor of the hotel. He had gone back into the fire looking for more victims and died of smoke inhalation.
The 88 families in the society have grown extremely close over the years, said Fr. Thomas Mulcrone, the fire department’s chaplain and founder of the society. All firefighters have something in common, he said: “They’re the ones who’ll run up the stairs when everyone else is running out.”
A total of 573 firefighters have died in the line of duty in Chicago, he said, but no deaths have occurred since two days before Christmas in 2000, when Lt. Scott Gillen was hit by a car as he prepared to leave the scene of a minor early-morning accident on the Bishop Ford Freeway.
“I guess we’d like to think that each year we learn more about what we do, and we work a little safer,” said Fire Department Commissioner James Joyce. “I guess maybe there’s somebody up there watching over us. We certainly can’t take credit for all that, but we celebrate that and we’re pleased.”
