NY Daily News

"It seems with the city it's really all about money. It's not about human life," said Linda Graffagnino, whose courageous husband died in the toxic Deutsche Bank tower.

"Now, who is paying the price? Me, my in-laws and my children. My children don't have a father now."

"My husband had to die for someone to take notice and take action," she said. "It's sad. ... No one apologized. I don't know if anyone will."

Two weeks after her husband and fellow Firefighter Robert Beddia were killed in a fire at the tower in lower Manhattan, Linda Graffagnino broke her silence, speaking at the dining room table of her Brooklyn home.

The numbing sadness that came with burying a beloved husband who will never see his 9-month-old son stand has given way to anger.

"Why was this work still going on in this building with all the violations?" she asked, referring the litany of problems found at the tower by buildings inspectors since demolition began in March.

"It's not just dollars and cents. People's lives are at stake. But you don't realize it until lives are lost."

Graffagnino said she also wonders why no one knew that a standpipe in the tower had been disconnected, preventing firefighters from getting water up to the blaze, dooming her husband.

"If you don't have water to put a fire out, I don't know how you're going to put it out," the 33-year-old widow said. "I don't know who you're going to save.

She spoke in the Dyker Heights home that her husband renovated room by room, piece by piece, right down to the door, leading to the foyer, that never seems to close just right.

"Joey's been fiddling with that door for years. He still hasn't got it right," she said, as if her husband were still alive.

A gold replica of badge No. 375, her husband's FDNY number, hung around her neck.

Her mother-in-law, Rosemarie Graffagnino, sat beside her, clenching her hand for support, wiping away tears as they talked about what their future will be like without Joseph Graffagnino. "I didn't lose a son," Rosemarie Graffagnino said. "I lost a best friend."

The night before he died, Joseph Graffagnino, 33, called his mom and sheepishly asked what she was doing. "Joey, what's going on?" she responded.

Joseph Graffagnino said his wife, a nurse, was working late and he had to get to work.

Could he bring the kids over?

The Graffagninos are a close-knit family. Rosemarie Graffagnino and her husband live down the block with Joseph Graffagnino's grandmother. His uncle lives across the street.

Rosemarie Graffagnino has trouble walking around the neighborhood without someone coming up and recalling a favorite story about her eldest child.

"They cry with you," she said. "They don't know what to say."

At her son's funeral, Mayor Bloomberg pledged to investigate the fatal fire until all the questions are answered. "I just hope to God that we will get to the bottom of this," Rosemarie Graffagnino said yesterday.

Linda Graffagnino has been comforted by widows of firefighters who died on 9/11. Years ago, when she was still dating her future husband, she remembers wondering how they could survive such a loss.

"This is the worst thing that could have possibly happened," she said. "I'm 33 and now I'm a widow and I have two small children. I never thought that I would be here."

The couple met while they were teenagers but didn't begin dating until 2001. They were married in 2002 at St. Finbar's Church in Bensonhurst.

"He truly was the best," she said. "I couldn't have asked for a better husband. When we got married, I knew I was the luckiest person in the world."

He doted on their young children and was a superb cook who was constantly asking his mother for recipes. "He did everything that a mother would do; sometimes he did it even better than I did," Linda said.

Hours before Joseph Graffagnino died, she called him at the firehouse and asked if he knew where the vacuum bags were in their home. "I'll see you in a little bit," he said. "I love you."

She said she has been wondering why, if he was destined to die so young, he survived the terror attacks on 9/11. That day, his rig was stuck in the Battery Tunnel when the south tower collapsed.

He lived, she believes, so that he could bring two children, a 4-year-old daughter and 9-month-old son, into the world.

"I'm grateful for my children because they are going to get me through this," she said. "They're a piece of him."