Scent
of a Firefighter
Louis
Arena loved being a firefighter, and one of the ways he showed
it was this: He would return to his Staten Island home from Ladder
Company 5 and tell his wife, Wanda, "Smell my head."
Mrs.
Arena, 31, was crazy about the way her husband smelled, especially
after a fire. She would rub his hair and breathe the smell of
smoke and sweat from his pores.
The
two had been friends since grade school, and married for the last
six years, yet this was one of the rare times she had her husband
to herself. "I used to be so jealous" of the other firefighters,
she said. "I'd tease him, 'You love them more than me.'"
The
couple had two children, Nina, 4, and Joseph, 3. They dreamed
of retiring to Key West, sleeping on the beach and listening to
Jimmy Buffett. Over the summer, she bought him tickets to a Jimmy
Buffett concert in November.
Now
Mrs. Arena is left with the unused tickets, and with the shirt
he wore their last day together, on a trip to a Long Island beach.
She has not washed the shirt, she said. She lost her husband,
who was 32, but she cannot part with the last traces of his scent.
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 13, 2001.
LOUIS ARENA, 32, of New York, a firefighter with the New York
fire department, died trying to help others. "It's so typical
of him. He was always helping people," said his wife, Wanda.
"He was not concerned about himself." It was a trait
he developed early. His sister, JoAnn Arena-Eisinger, recalled
telling her then-3-year-old brother that she was hungry one day.
"He walked down to the (store), got a loaf of bread and walked
out with it," she said. He brought it home to her. "You
said you needed something, you got it," Arena-Eisinger said.
Copyright © 2001 The Associated Press
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