NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The widow of a heroic firefighter, who recently died from a 9/11-related illness, on Wednesday accepted a medal of honor awarded to him posthumously.
The Emerald Society Medal is awarded to FDNY firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, fire marshals and officers for their life-saving work. It’s given out yearly but, the ceremony was postponed last year due to the pandemic.
In 2020, the FDNY announced the recipient of the award would be Danny Foley, a firefighter who risked his life crawling through a burning seventh floor apartment to rescue two little girls two years ago.
On Wednesday, the award was finally given to his widow, Carrie Foley, after Danny died last year due to pancreatic cancer that he developed from his work at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Today was bittersweet. A little bit overwhelming,” Carrie Foley said at the ceremony.
She said it was an honor to accept the award on her late husband’s behalf and hopes that their five children will be motivated by his heroic actions.
“I really hope the kids are inspired by their daddy’s bravery,” she said.
Foley notes that her husband was diagnosed with cancer in February 2019, the same month that he crawled into a burning Bronx building to rescue two children – an action that earned him the medal of honor.
“He was actually diagnosed four days after the rescue,” she said.
The 46-year-old died just one year after his diagnosis. He developed his cancer by breathing in the toxic air that swirled around Ground Zero in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks as he searched for his brother, Tommy, who was also a firefighter.
“It was his job to go down there and find his brother and find the other 343 firemen and civilians,” Foley said.
She says her husband “fought until the very last minute,” but left behind a life well lived.
“He definitely lived every minute,” she said of her husband. “I don't think he had any regrets.”
Firefighter John McCoy was also given the Chief of Department Peter J. Ganci Jr. Medal and NYS Honorary Fire Chiefs Association Medal on Wednesday for his rescue of a man from a Queens warehouse fire in 2019.
Paramedics Niall O’Shaughnessy and Joshua S. Rodriguez then received the Christopher J. Prescott Medal for “providing critical emergency medical care to multiple construction workers injured in a collapse on the 17th floor of a construction site in Manhattan in November 2019.”
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