Fehling, Lee

Lee Fehling, Eng.235 About Lee S. Fehling Lee Fehling, 28, of Wantagh, was a New York City firefighter assigned to Engine Co. 235 in Bedford Stuyvesant. He was last seen heading toward the south tower. A brother, James Fehling, also a firefighter, was in Florida on vacation that day. If visitors to the National September 11 Memorial Museum in lower Manhattan happen to see Lee Fehling’s picture, his widow, Danielle, and his mother, Joan Bischoff, hope they will pause for a moment and say thank you. “I want my son to be remembered as the ordinary guy who did the extraordinary thing that day,” Lee’s mother said. His family will remember Lee for that and many other reasons. A middle child, he loved to pull pranks, tell jokes and make people laugh, his mother said. “I used to tell people he came out laughing … And he never stopped laughing his entire life,” Bischoff said. The day Lee died, his mother said she was done living. But then, a month after Sept. 11, Lee’s second daughter, Megan Lee, was born. All her grandchildren have made it easier for Joan Bischoff to go on. “There was new life coming into this very sad life we were living,” said Joan Bischoff, of Wantagh. For Danielle Fehling, the parenting responsibilities fell squarely on her shoulders. She missed Lee the most at night. That’s when she used to call him at work during one of his 24-hour shifts and they’d talk about their days. “It was tough to learn how to live alone again,” Danielle said. However, the welfare of her newborn and that of their elder daughter, Kaitlin, then almost 4, helped Danielle. “They really helped me move forward. You kind of learn to deal with it,” Danielle said. “You just learn to live with the loss.” Although Danielle never thought it would be possible to love another man, eventually she did. In 2005, with Lee’s mother’s blessings, Danielle remarried. “You have my support,” Joan told Danielle. “Lee’s not coming back. Life goes on.” – Chau Lam