The Family that Serves Together

by Kevin Fritz

They experienced 9/11 firsthand as a family. They did it again at the Pulse nightclub. They grieved together when one of them was severely shot and almost died. Their family dynamic is undeniable, so much so that the entire Green family migrated to Central Florida over the past 15 years seemingly by seniority, starting with the two oldest sons in 2005.

“Thank God we are all very close,” says matriarch Esther Green, who moved to Orlando with her youngest son, Yehuda, in 2010, the last of the close-knit unit to arrive. “It is not always that way with families.”Esther’s four children – Gershon, Menachem, Abraham, and Yehuda, all about three years apart in age – were raised in a normal, everyday household in Brooklyn, New York. The boys loved baseball, especially the New York Mets, and riding skateboards through the streets of New York.

“Growing up in Brooklyn, we spent a lot of time together,” says Gershon, 40, the eldest sibling, who relocated to Orlando with 37-year-old Menachem in 2005. “We are copies of each other. We can just look at each other and know what the other is thinking. And we never got into any trouble growing up. 

Not only do the Green boys get along famously, they share the same passion for public service. Three of them work for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) and one serves with the Orange County Fire Rescue Department – all four keeping us out of harm’s way. Mom gets in on the act, too. She’s an administrative assistant with the OCSO.

Gershon, a public accountant by trade, joined the OCSO last year as a Police Service Officer. He says it was his father, Marc, who taught the boys growing up about public service and giving back. Though he and Esther separated years ago, Marc still joined the Green migration and moved to Orlando, as well.

“We are not just brothers, but friends who talk to each other  8-to-10 times a week,” says Menachem, a Sergeant with the OSCO Community Relations Section. “We are really each other’s best friends.”

Menachem has been with the Sheriff’s Office since 2006.

Esther admits it’s not easy having all of her children in careers that pose a high degree of danger, but she perseveres.

“Mom worries about us,” says Yehuda, the youngest of the family at age 29 and a Corporal with the OCSO Emergency Management Unit. “But, it doesn’t always show. She just gives us lots of cake and cookies.”

“I am a mom. Of course I worry,” says Esther. “My kids are very brave. I am proud of them.”

Born and Raised to Serve

Beyond their father instilling a necessity to serve their fellow man, poignant events during their collective childhoods proved to be major catalysts for the brothers’ future careers.

“We had a lot of interaction with officers in Brooklyn,” says Yehuda. “One day, I stepped up for a kid being bullied on the train. A police officer responded to the fight, and I realized he was the type of person I wanted to be. He probably doesn’t remember me. I was just some kid. But you never know how an interaction in life will impact you.”

With his mind made up, Yehuda joined the Auxiliary Police Officers as a teen volunteer with the 61st Precinct. After high school, he enrolled in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A year later, he moved to Florida with his mom to join the rest of the family and transferred to the University of Central Florida to study sociology and criminology.

“I wanted to serve and be part of the solution,” says Yehuda. “I wanted to put myself out there and serve our country.”

When future firefighter Abraham was a teenager, he awoke one night to discover the neighbor’s house was on fire. He knew the elderly woman who lived there was home and ran to the fire station down the street for help. His actions saved the woman’s life.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and heard crackling and smelled smoke,” says Abraham, now 34. “Then I saw flames shooting from the house next door. At the time, I was enrolled at John Jay College to become a police officer. That all changed. I saw what those firefighters did, and it was amazing.”

However, with a four-year waiting list for a job at the New York City Fire Department, Abraham joined Menachem and Gershon in Orlando in 2008. Today, Abraham, who claims to have the only easy name in the family, is an 11-year veteran of the Orange County Fire Rescue Department and was recently named Battalion Chief, responsible for up to seven fire stations. A songwriter and guitarist, Abraham shares his life in Orlando with his wife Lindsey and three children, and he publishes a YouTube channel of acoustic melodies.

9/11 and Pulse

Abraham was only 16 years old when the events that shook the world unfolded on September 11, 2001, but he already knew a couple of the firefighters from his local station who would lose their lives in the aftermath of the attack. He also watched with pride as his older brothers took action.

Menachem, a student at Baruch College in Manhattan at the time, was in the Army Reserves and rushed to a nearby National Guard Armory to set up a triage center with his then-classmate and girlfriend, Nelly. After the World Trade Center towers collapsed, Menachem joined the grueling task of search and rescue.

“I was thinking, ‘What can I do?’ And that was it,” Menachem remembers. “I was going to put college on hold.”

Gershon watched the events of 9/11 in horror from Pace University, only blocks away from the towers. Like Menachem, he was moved to enlist in the military. Menachem was assigned to Fort Drum, New York; Gershon to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“As soon as I graduated, I also put everything on hold and joined the Army,” adds Gershon, who finished college on January 15, 2002, and found himself in basic training on January 17. While training for deployment to Afghanistan, Gershon was severely shot in the midsection, almost losing his life. He died on the operating table twice and endured years of recovery.

“I wanted to get deployed with my guys,” Gershon says of his unit’s eventual missions in Afghanistan. “But I couldn’t go.”

It was a very dangerous deployment, though, as Esther vividly remembers. “A lot of his friends did not come back,” she says.

Fifteen years after 9/11, another epic tragedy found the Greens at the forefront: the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub. On June 12, 2016, Menachem and his brother Yehuda risked their lives to help others survive, pulling wounded victims from the club as the active shooter continued his rampage.

“It was complete chaos,” recalls Yehuda. “I was wondering where the bad guy was. Then I saw Menachem heading toward the door of the club – he had already been inside – and I went in with him. I trusted his leadership.”

“I have seen the hardest of the hardest times,” Menachem admits. “But I feel very blessed to have been able to do things that have helped shape our communities and the world. It feels good to be part of something bigger than myself.”

Through it all, it is the hard times that bring the Green family even closer, helping them heal by sharing a common profession. And like every other family, when schedules permit, they get together for birthdays, sporting events, and holidays.

“Friends come and go, but family is your family,” says Menachem, who has two daughters, ages 12 and 16, with his wife Nelly.

“We are really pretty ordinary,” adds Yehuda. “Yes, we put our lives on the line, but we’ve always had the family to lean on.”

That, and mom’s cake and cookies.