DONALD FOREMAN: Kept 15 Captains
Happy
The
picnic was intended for Port Authority police officers
assigned to the PATH system. Technically, Officer Donald
Foreman was assigned to the Holland Tunnel, but he was
welcome anyway. Donald Foreman was always welcome.
He had spent 29 years with the Port Authority, working
for many of those years as a captain's clerk, which meant
he did a lot of the nuts-and-bolts administrative tasks
for a superior. According to a plaque on a wall at the
Holland Tunnel offices, he served 15 consecutive
captains, according to his last, Robert Sbarra. "If he
could work for 15 captains without anyone trying to
remove him, he must have done his job extremely
well."
But Mr. Foreman, 53, had a full life outside, with a
large extended family and volunteer duties that included
running the youth sports program for his Roman Catholic
parish, Immaculate Conception, on Staten Island. He was
also a strict vegetarian, but that hardly kept him from
that picnic, a hamburger-and-frankfurter feast on the
Jersey Shore.
"I do remember giving him French fries," recalled his
companion, Cheryl Cooper-Foreman. "He loved French
fries."
And Ms. Cooper-Foreman and Captain Sbarra both
remember this: Donald Foreman playing basketball with
kids young enough to be his grandchildren.
.
