From Police Heroes, a book by author Chuck Whitlock:
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.
Portraits of Grief, The New York Times
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.”