The widow of a city firefighter who died from cancer linked to his time working at Ground Zero has finally been awarded his pension after a months-long fight over a legal snafu related to her prior marriage.
Kathleen McClean finally got justice late last month, when the New York City Fire Pension Fund agreed to start paying out Dennis McClean’s pension benefits to her.
The firefighter died from prostate cancer on Sept. 6, 2021.
Kathleen stopped working as a nurse to take care of both her sick husband and her sick mother — and was living off paltry savings since Dennis died, her lawyer told The Post.
The city on Jan. 19, 2022, denied giving benefits to Kathleen, 59, finding she hadn’t been legally divorced from her first husband at the time she married McClean, 71, in 2000.
But Kathleen had actually gotten a court’s judgment on June 9, 2015, ending her marriage to Serge Gauvard, “a drug abuser who abandoned her years before she had ever met McClean,” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Karen Rothenberg wrote in a March ruling that determined Kathleen was McClean’s wife — and reversed the city’s denial.
Kathleen discovered Gauvard died of a drug overdose in 2019.
McClean worked at Ground Zero on the day of the terror attacks and for months afterward. A year later when he was working at the World Trade Center site, he was “struck by a metal beam” fracturing his leg in several places, forcing him to retire on disability in 2002.
He was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 caused by his “exposure to toxins while working at the WTC site,” the ruling says.
Meanwhile, Kathleen was married to McClean for 21 years and “was a loving and committed wife” who “remained by his side as he fought and ultimately lost his long cancer battle,” the judge wrote citing, Kathleen’s arguments.
“I was crying that justice finally got served,” an emotional Kathleen told The Post about hearing the judge rule in her favor.
Kathleen, who doesn’t work, said the ordeal has put a significant financial strain on her.
“He was a loving man,” she said of McClean. “He would take his shirt off his back for you – even if he didn’t know you.”
She said on 9/11, they had been about to leave for a fishing trip when McClean saw the TV footage of the plane hitting the first tower.
“He was like ‘I gotta go. I don’t know when I’ll see you again,’” Kathleen recalled of her husband’s jump to action.
Kathleen’s lawyer Glenn W. Nick, of firm Sullivan Papain Block McGrath Coffinas & Cannavo P.C., said they “are thrilled” by the ruling.
“I know that the widow, Ms. McClean, is very happy,” Nick said. “She now has financial security going forward.”
“She has had a rough last year-plus because she was denied this back in January 2022 and she had been counting on this pension.”
Nick said the denial of the pension benefits was like a slap in the face for Kathleen. He said his client was called to FDNY headquarters last year for a plaque ceremony that added the names of firefighters who passed away as a result of 9/11.
“Here she is going down to accept this honor on behalf of her late husband when meanwhile she is not receiving his disability World Trade Center pension payments … because of this, what I’ll call, marriage technicality,” Nick said.
City Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci said the NYC Fire Pension Fund “has been sympathetic” to Kathleen’s situation from the start but that “it was obligated to follow state pension law.”
“Now that the Court has weighed in on this matter, which presents a unique set of facts, the NYC Fire Pension Fund will disburse the pension benefits to Ms. McClean,” Paolucci said.
