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of those who fell on September 11, 2001
Police Officer Gregg Froehner
Assignment on September 11, 2001:
Emergency Service Unit, PA Trans Hudson Railway
HQ, Jersey City, NJ
Officer Gregg Froehner, forty-six, had specialized
training in numerous rescue areas. He was on
hand in 1993 during the World Trade Center bombing
as well as once when an out-of-control elevator
with a dozen passengers slammed into a tower’s
ceiling. And he was at the World Trade Center
on September 11th.
Froehner started working for the Port Authority
in 1979. He completed a counterterrorism course
on toxic and biological agents in 1995. He was
also a handyman who fixed equipment in the field.
Port Authority Police Sergeant John Gilburn,
who knew Froehner for more than two decades,
said that he was one of the guys everyone wanted
to work with.
Froehner loved to play golf and spend time
with his family – his wife, Mary and their
children, Meghan, Heather, Matthew and Kathleen.
Modest Man of Action
Since he was a boy, Gregg Froehner yearned
for a job where he could serve others. When
he was a teenager, he became an Eagle Scout
and a volunteer firefighter. After college he
became a police officer with the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey.
Mr. Froehner, 46, was assigned to the PATH
system in Jersey City, and was a unit leader
for the Emergency Service Unit. Yet he never
bragged about the rescues he was involved in.
Many people who knew him in Chester, N.J.,
where he lived with his wife, Mary, and four
children, did not even know what he did for
a living. His wife usually only found out about
his daring episodes when she overheard his nightly
conversations with his boss, whom they sometimes
referred to as his “other wife.”
Mrs. Froehner used to work as a nurse in a
nursing home, and one of her patients was Mr.
Froehner’s grandfather. One day, he told
her, “You look like somebody my grandson
should meet.”
This information was passed on to Mr. Froehner’s
father, who urged Mr. Froehner to go visit his
grandfather soon at the nursing home. Mary and
Mr. Froehner clicked immediately.
When he was home, Mr. Froehner was a total
family man, his wife said. “He loved his
children more than anything in the world,”
she said in her eulogy. “This could be
seen in the way he always called Katie his little
smiley face, by coaching Matt’s team in
Little League, by laughing to himself all the
way across the room at one of Heather’s
jokes and by teasing Meghan that she couldn’t
date until she was 25.”