Rangers Forward Chris Higgins Comes
Home To Firefighter Dad & Cop Brother
NY Daily News 8/15/09
On
the web site of FDNY Engine Company 231, there is a
message announcing the birth of two children to members
of the house. There is a family's somber note of thanks
to the Watkins St. house for providing an honor guard at
the funeral of a retired division commander from E231.
And there is one more item that catches the eye: "All
Members Of Watkins St. Are Now Officially NY Ranger
Fans!"
"Congratulations," the message reads, "to the newest
member of the NY Rangers - Chris Higgins, who happens to
be the son of Captain Bobby Higgins E231!" And finally:
"The men are hopeful in anticipation of a 'Stanley Cup
visit to Brownsville' sometime in the near future!"
"Hockey and firemen," Bobby Higgins says with a chuckle.
"Always a pretty solid pair right there."
But for a father of five who goes from one family to
another when he leaves home to go to work, it's the
hockey part of the equation that gets complicated. The
Flushing native has been a die-hard fan of the Montreal
Canadiens since 1965, which worked out rather
conveniently after Chris was drafted by the Habs with
the 14th pick in 2002. During that draft, Bobby was
shifting in his seat in the Air Canada Centre as the
picks were being made, not because he was nervous for
his son, but because he was thinking, "Oh geez, am I
going to have to start rooting for the Phoenix Coyotes
or something?"
This ain't Phoenix, but it is finally time for all the
Higgins men to come home and leave Montreal behind -
quite literally, in one case. After four seasons with
the team he grew up loving because of his dad - "If he
wanted to eat, he was rooting for Montreal," Bobby says
- Christopher Higgins, the kid from Smithtown, L.I., who
took his first hockey steps at the Suffolk Police
Athletic League, the son of an NYC fireman and the
brother of an NYC cop - is coming home to play for the
Rangers, grabbed by Glen Sather in a seven-player deal
that shipped Scott Gomez north. What the trade did for
the Rangers was rid them of enough salary to land prized
free agent Marian Gaborik on the first day of free
agency, while also bringing in a winger with scoring
ability in Higgins and an intriguing blue-line prospect
in the University of Wisconsin's Ryan McDonagh. What the
trade did for the Higgins clan was bring a
salt-of-the-earth New York family back together again.
And what was Bobby Higgins' first reaction?
"Heartbroken," he says. It took time to absorb the fact
that his beloved Canadiens had traded away his son - he
was driving when he heard the news and had to pull his
car over - but once it sunk in, a picture began to
emerge: three Higgins men working the night shift in New
York City, all decked out in a shade of blue.
"At the end of the day, that's an absolute thrill,"
Bobby says. "As a family, I've felt we've been a little
fractured with (Chris) being up in Montreal those years.
He's home now, and I count that as one of our
blessings."
What Bobby Higgins counts as the true blessings in his
life seem to fit under two roofs: there is his home of
nearly 30 years in Smithtown, where he and his wife Sue
raised five children - Jeannie, Christopher, Kevin,
Katie and Robert. And there is the two-story brick
firehouse on Watkins St. in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where
"the old man," as his kids are fond of calling him, has
served as captain for the last 11 of his 30 years in the
FDNY.
Only once a year do those two houses compete for his
loyalty: When Bobby, a hockey player himself who used to
play on the FDNY team, attends the annual FDNY-NYPD
clash at Nassau Coliseum and watches his other son Kevin
hit the ice in, good grief, NYPD blue. Bobby may bend to
support Chris' team these days, but Kevin's team? Forget
it.
"My mom is always a little nervous (at the game), she
doesn't know which side to sit on," Kevin says. "Dad
isn't."
Kevin Higgins is a fourth-year officer in Manhattan's
Midtown North precinct who "had the Police Department
sighted since he was a kid," Bobby says. "Which makes
him the black sheep of the family." It will also make
him a familiar face around the Garden this season.
Kevin's precinct begins 11 blocks north of MSG, and he
doesn't punch in until midnight. Translation? "Every
game," Kevin says he'll be attending. "Chris already
knows I'll be his biggest ticket burner."
He may see light competition from Chris' college buddies
who went to Wall Street, and from a family that hasn't
had Chris around for winter since he was 13. At 14,
Chris left for Avon Old Farms in Connecticut - Brian
Leetch's prep school - and after that came Yale, a move
he calls "the best decision of my life. In my house it
was school first, hockey second."
Except, perhaps, when the Canadiens come calling. The
Habs traded up in the first round of the 2002 draft to
grab the All-American at No. 14, and after a sophomore
season in which he was a Hobey Baker finalist, it was
time to go pro.
"That was totally crazy," Bobby says of the '02 draft.
"I never really envisioned Chris playing in the NHL. I
figured he might get to play a few seasons in Europe
before joining the real world."
The real world, of course, is where Bobby and Kevin
Higgins work, and where they throw themselves into
harm's way. It's the world in which Bobby Higgins spent
a day off eight years ago repaving his driveway in
Smithtown one moment, then racing to the burning World
Trade Center the next.
"It was just a bad feeling; something wasn't right,"
Bobby says of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he
heard a plane had struck the North Tower and looked up
at a clear blue sky. "After about a minute, I called my
wife and said, 'I have to go in. Something's going on.
You might not hear from me for a little while.' "
At the time, Kevin was a junior at St. Anthony's High in
South Huntington, where he remembers classmates losing
parents that day. Chris had been at Yale only a week. He
was walking back from Spanish class when news spread.
"And I knew my old man would be there right away," he
says. Back at the dorm, "we were just all sitting there
watching those two towers just coming down, and I knew
my dad, he was going to be close by. I was a little
scared."
While Captain Higgins combed the devastation in Lower
Manhattan, Sue Higgins set up a command center of sorts
back in Smithtown, where family and friends could check
in. Bobby was so consumed with the grim work at Ground
Zero that he didn't reach his wife for a day and a half
after leaving home, and he didn't return for two weeks.
"He spent two weeks down there looking for bodies,"
Chris says. "You could see the toll it took on him."
These days, it is Bobby Higgins who is hoping his son
can stay healthy. Groin and hand injuries limited Chris
to 57 games last season and just 12 goals - after
breaking 20 in each of his first three NHL seasons - as
the Canadiens crumbled in their 100th anniversary
season. Now the hope is that a change of scenery, plus a
formidable cheering section, will prove refreshing, even
if he's only around for the one-year contract he signed
at $2.25 million.
"When you're a New Yorker," Chris Higgins says, "you
don't ever feel at home unless you're back in New York,
ya know?"
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