FAMILY PRIDE LIFTS 3 WHO LOST FIREFIGHTER DADS

"Growing up without a father, you do feel left out, playing baseball, football, father-son breakfasts. There's quite a bit of stuff that dads and sons do together that I couldn't do anymore.

"I remember trying different uncles, but it just wasn't the same. I ended up not wanting to mess with anything like that, 'cause it wasn't him, and it just wasn't right doing it without him."

Mike Moore was 7 when his father died. He recently joined Tammy Cougan and Michael Kriech for a discussion about firefighters who have died in the line of duty. All three lost their fathers.

Moore's father, Raymond, died in 1973 when his truck collided with a car. Moore remembered that the night before, he got out of bed like he often did when his father was home. He wanted to watch TV; the rule was, he could stay up until the next commercial.

"It was late at night for me -- 10, 11 o'clock. But about 30 seconds later, the next commercial comes on and I'm like, 'Ohhhh!' and he's like, 'Time to go to bed.' So I went to bed kind of mad, 'cause I wanted to stay up and watch TV. . . . And then when I woke up the next morning, I started playing, and during that day, he was killed. So I never really got to say goodbye," Moore said.

"For me, it wasn't as sudden as that," said Kriech, whose father, Mike Sr., died a week after a train hit his firetruck in 1979. Kriech was 9 at the time. "He was in a coma, so I had time to prepare. . . . I spent a week at the hospital with him, and I guess I did in a way get to say goodbye."

Cougan was an adult when her father, "Woody" Gelenius, died while fighting a fire in the Indianapolis Athletic Club in 1992.

"I got lucky. My father called me about an hour and a half before it all went down for the Athletic Club. We were joking around, I was coloring my hair, and he was telling me how crazy I was. And before we ended a phone call, I always said, 'Be careful,' and he said, 'As always.'

"And then he hung up, and my husband at the time came home -- he was on duty -- and he told me that my dad had died in a fire Downtown," she recalled. "I would say I was pretty much in shock. I was woken up out of a dead sleep. It was pretty rough, and I had to call the family."

Firefighters helped each family through the grieving process.

"For me, they had sent a fireman, and he was kind of like a liaison between the Fire Department and me and my three sisters, whatever we needed. They helped us out with the funeral," said Cougan.

Kriech's experience was similar. "Not only was family there, but a lot of his friends from the Fire Department were there, and they were always coming around and helping out," he said.

Since they were children when their fathers died, Kriech and Moore appreciated firefighters' stories about their fathers.

"I heard he was a heck of a guy and could do pretty much anything and was just a great guy to be around, but I really don't feel that I ever got to know him. I just wish I could've done that," Moore said.

Kriech learned a little more about his father.

"I do know that he was very hard-working. He was a very disciplined person, and everybody that I've talked to, they never have a bad word to say about him. He was such a nice guy and such a good guy, and you know, I would like to be thought of that same way."

They not only missed their fathers, but a way of life.

"What I remember about the Fire Department was Thanksgiving. The table was long, and you'd go in there on Thanksgiving, and you had like five pies. You had two turkeys. You had bowls of stuffing. It was a feast," Cougan said.

Kriech, Moore and Cougan all agree updated laws offer more protection for firefighters today.

"It's good to know they've made a lot of changes to maybe prevent further accidents from happening," Moore said, citing new restrictions "such as drunk driving laws, not riding on the back of firetrucks, wearing your seat belt, and mandatory helmet straps on everybody."

Other changes came after the Athletic Club fire, such as in fire gear, Cougan said.

"They no longer wore black because it was hard to see in a burnt building. . . . So they changed the gear to tan."

Cougan, Moore and Kriech all felt a special loss during the September 11th terrorist attacks.

"I felt it more as a loss of a nation to a nation, nothing really to do so much with the firefighters or policemen or civilians that lost their lives, but pretty much how the nation lost a degree of security, well-being or comfort. Everybody's on much more alert now; obviously we have to be. And we lost a little bit of innocence on that day," Moore said.

Cougan felt she could relate to families who lost loved ones, especially fathers. "I think I know the loss they felt. That was very tragic," she said.

Just as Kriech, Cougan and Moore received support from their fathers' departments, new organizations are forming to support emergency workers. One is the Fallen Firefighter Families Project, a national group hoping to provide financial information and crisis counseling to grieving families. It also plans to be involved in long-term needs of fallen firefighters' families.

Kriech, a firefighter like his father, knows firsthand that the public values the sacrifices made by firefighters.

"We're driving down the street on the trucks, and people will honk and wave. If we go into the grocery store, people make it a point to say, 'Hey, you know, we appreciate what you're doing,' " he said.

While the three are grateful for the respect and honor given to firefighters, personal memories mean the most.

"I still remember how excited I was to see him be a firefighter and how I looked up to him. I would love to tell him that he was my hero as a child, and that wanting to be a firefighter was what I always wanted to do. And when I actually became a firefighter, I would've loved for him to be there to see that," said Kriech.

REPORTERS : Emily Kasnak, 12; Miranda Lindley, 12; Rebecca Salois, 13.