Home » Listen » Michele Garcia and her husband Frank

“He described what he used to feel when he came home every night...”

Michele Garcia and her husband, Frank, remember her son, NYPD officer Robert Oswain, who patrolled the World Trade Center site shortly after September 11, 2001.

In 2010, Oswain died from a rare form of cancer that his family believes was caused by exposure to toxic dust at ground zero.

Listen to
Recorded in Palm Beach Gardens, FL.

  • Browse by Category

Credits

Produced by Katie Simon, Michael Garofalo.

Facilitated by Naomi Greene.

Transcript

Click here to read the transcript for this story.

Interview transcript

MG:  He found a golf club. And I guess he wanted to practice a swing. And, he hit the TV and broke the glass. I went crazy, I tried to catch him and he ran under the bed. And every time I went to one side he'd go to the other side. (laughs)

FG: I came into his life. He was thirteen. Somebody dating his mother, I don't think he was taking too well at the beginning. But I let him have my Walkman and     that was it. He was easy (laughs.) I owned a hardware store and after Bobby had graduated college, he came to work for me as my manager. After being there a few years, Bobby realized this wasn't for him, so he applied to the police department.

MG: He joined the forty-seventh precinct in the Bronx.  And he never went to another precinct in the ten years that he was a policeman. Then right after nine eleven, that’s normally not his district, but he was called in.

FG:  He patrolled the streets around the site.

MG:  Yeah.  And he was there for three months. He described what he used to feel when he came home every night, you know how his nose felt, and how his mouth felt...

FG: ...just the smells and the dust.  And, you know, he says you couldn't open up your coffee container cause it would just fill up with dust.

MG: He started to have problems, until August of 2007...

FG: ...when he turned yellow.

MG: And he kept on getting skinnier and skinner. And then, when I knew he wasn't gonna to get better, I said, "Honey I love you, and if I could trade places I would’ve done it in a heartbeat. But you can go." We’ll be fine. I just want you to know you can go.