GERALD ATWOOD: To Florida With
Family
"Why
don't we drive down to Florida," Gerald Atwood suggested
on the spur of the moment last spring.
"You're crazy," said his wife, Barbara Swat- Atwood --
not with a 2-year-old boy and a baby daughter in tow. But
he talked her into it, and they were off.
For if Mr. Atwood, 38, a firefighter with Ladder
Company 21 in Manhattan, loved anything as much as fixing
up their house in Marine Park, Brooklyn, his wife said,
it was getting out and "seeing new things, meeting new
people." In Florida, those new people included a retired
New York firefighter working there as a bartender; Mr.
Atwood reveled in talking to him and "finding a common
bond."
Her husband had "an infectious laugh," she said, and
regularly dressed up as the firehouse Santa Claus. And
while a lot of firefighters had second jobs, "he was able
to work it out without that," because his time at home
was so precious.
"He always said that if money wasn't an object he'd
have 20 kids," she said. "His daughter was just becoming
Daddy's little girl." A third child, the couple learned
in July, is on the way.
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