John Leonard's life, at first glance, is the picture of stability. He has been married for 27 years, to a woman he started dating as a teenager. He is in his 28th year of firefighting and is a Lieutenant at Engine 60 in the South Bronx. There, his firefighters call him "Lenny" or "Mom," because of how he takes care of them. He's got four healthy kids, all of whom want to be cops, firefighters or nurses. He goes to church every week.
Nothing he projects would make you think he's been through so much.
"He's great in a crisis," said Lieut. Bill Lynch, who works with Leonard in the firehouse. "How could you not be when you have all that experience?"
Experiences like his on September 11. Leonard lost 51 personal friends among the more than 343 firefighters that died that day. September 12 is his wedding anniversary, but he and his wife MaryAnn didn't go out to a romantic dinner that night—they stayed home and mourned.
Then, in 2005, a trauma in triplicate hit. He nearly lost his eldest son John Jr., he did lose a surrogate daughter in a car wreck, and then his house caught fire, all in a matter of a few days.
Lately though Leonard has also encountered a new set of problems, those related to his approaching retirement. When the economic crisis hit in September, Leonard, who harbors an irremediable Irish gleam in his eye, lost his position as fire safety director for the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns. He has a mortgage and three kids in college. He could have retired from the firehouse years ago but has decided to stay on for at least two more to bolster his retirement.
Some put in his position would panic. But John Leonard stays calm when the sky plummets. He's got practice with it.
Leonard's Irish Catholic parents were strict while raising him in Washington Heights before it went to the dogs in the 1970s. His father was a cop and noticed the neighborhood around his family changing. When the upper floors of their apartment building burned, the Leonards moved to Rockland County, where he still lives.
He attended Catholic schools through high school, went to community college upstate and received an associates degree in criminal justice. He did two more years to get his bachelors in the same, during which he studied arson. He married a girl named MaryAnn, four years his junior, whom he met through a mutual friend.
After a short stint as a police officer in Florida and then in New York, he decided he would fulfill what he called a life-long dream and become a firefighter. His first post was in Harlem at Engine 96. It was 1982.
Kids ensued. Tracy, his eldest, is 24. John Jr. followed 13 months later. Robert just graduated from high school and Kevin, the youngest, is 14.
