Badge No. 3751

Sgt. John Gerard Coughlin was assigned to the NYPD's Emergency Services Unit Truck 4 when he died in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, while attempting to rescue people from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.  His body was never recovered. Sgt. Coughlin had been on the job for eighteen years, serving and protecting the people of New York City. He joined the NYPD after faithfully serving his nation as a United States Marine. 

He and his wife, Patty, lived in Pomona, New York.  Sgt. Coughlin, forty-three years young at the time of his death, and Patty were the proud parents of three daughters.  Erin, their oldest, was sixteen, Tara was thirteen, and Kayla, their tail gunner, was just six on the day he died.  In addition to serving his neighbors in Pomona as a member of the volunteer fire department, he was very much a "Girl Dad".  

Patty Coughlin called her husband "a big mush" who took a week's vacation in mid-December each year to volunteer with his fellow Marines on their Toys for Tots Program. "He was a firm believer that every child should have a toy for Christmas", according to Patty.  A sentiment that I, for one, support wholeheartedly. 

   

(patch created by Dee Cook for the
CubScout Pack 233 Memorial American Flag Quilt)

In late December 2012, his oldest daughter, Erin, followed her dad into the family business.  Erin Coughlin, at age twenty-seven, joined the NYPD as a Police Officer.  She not only followed him into the family business, she did it while wearing the same badge number that he had worn for eighteen years, badge No. 3751.  

Officer Erin Coughlin honors her father's memory not simply by wearing his shield as a member of the NYPD but by doing what she knows he would want her to do, which is forge her own path and make a career of which she shall be as proud as he was of his.

Fathers and daughters.  Apples and trees. 

-AK