Wesley A. Williams “saved our whole generation of our kids and us and our grandkids,” says Cathy Guiga-Tubens
NEED TO KNOW
- The New York City Fire Department’s very first Black officer, Wesley A. Williams, rescued about 20 people from a burning tenement building on the Lower East Side on June 20, 1929
- Among those he saved were Turkish immigrant Rachel Coffino — who had come to the U.S. nine years earlier — and her three young children
- The grandchildren of Coffino and Williams met for the very first time not far from the site of the rescue in an emotional reunion on Jan. 28 after linking their histories through Ancestry.com
Nearly 100 years ago, one firefighter’s heroism saved a mother and her three children — and decades later, her descendants live on.
The weight of the rescue was not lost on a group gathered at a Lower East Side tenement late last month, when Rachelle Muraca, Cathy Guiga-Tubens and Carmine Guiga met Charles Williams for the very first time in New York City.
Muraca, Guiga-Tubens and Guiga are grandchildren of Rachel Coffino, the woman rescued on June 20, 1929, by Wesley A. Williams, Charles’ grandfather…