A rainbow is a trick of the light. The refraction of the sun’s rays creates the multicolored band that often appears after a sudden storm.

On July 1, 1988, a rainbow of terrible and ironic beauty appeared over Hackensack in the immediate aftermath of the fire at the Ford car dealership that claimed five firefighters’ lives. On July 1, 2008, at the same time and at almost the same place, another eerily beautiful rainbow appeared over the commemoration ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the fatal fire.

Memories can play tricks with our hearts and minds. What did your mother’s perfume smell like? Was your son’s favorite color blue, or purple? What did your grandfather’s voice sound like? What was the last thing he said to you?

For the wives and children of the firefighters who died on July 1, 1988, the last 20 years has been in some ways an exercise in chasing rainbows. They have tried to keep the images of their loved ones intact in their heads even as time inevitably erodes memories. But some things never fade. Rainbows evaporate. People die. Love, together with its ally hope, remains.

Lost loved ones remembered

Many of the widows and children of the Ford fire five sat in the cafeteria of Holy Trinity School on Maple Avenue after the commemoration ceremony and remembered their husbands and fathers. Keith Reinhagen, 43, now lives in Northvale, but runs a landscaping company in Hackensack. He had the misfortune of finding out that his father, Lt. Richard Reinhagen, had died from a reporter who just beat the firefighters to his family home. But he is fortunate to be able to take the imprint his father made on his mind and use it as a blueprint for raising his own children.

"I always wish that he was around while I’m raising my kids," he said. "What would he do? I need him here. But I reflect on how he raised me, and that’s how I try to raise them. I really can’t complain."

"It’s extremely emotional," she said. "I appreciate this, but it brings it all back up. Things were done wrong, but I don’t feel any anger or bitterness. My family, my friends and my faith helped me get through the whole thing."

"They called my husband ‘Rotten Rich’," Mrs. Reinhagen continued, laughing at his erstwhile nickname. "But he was a great guy, a great husband and a great father. He was the life of the party. I was lucky to have him."

Earlier in the day, after their husbands posthumously received the Medal of Honor, Marge Reinhagen walked from the memorial podium hand in hand with Clara Krejsa, the widow of Firefighter William Krejsa. According to Clara, the bond they share, forged by tragedy, is a demonstration of what their husbands felt while they were alive.

"The firefighters are the greatest brotherhood," she said. "They work together, they live together, and sometimes they die together."

Krejsa’s reflections on the passing years since her husband’s death are a comment on the elusiveness of time.

"Sometimes it was yesterday, and sometimes it was a lifetime away," she said. "I don’t know if you ever do get over it. It’s always there. I told my daughter Joanne at the time that we always say that things happen to other people. Now we are those other people."

"I talk to Bill a lot," she added. "Not every day, but a lot. It could be any place. I always end it with ‘I love you.’ I’ll always love him."

Children cherish even painful memories

Nicole Radumski, 29, the daughter of Firefighter Leonard Radumski, expresses that love in a different way. She remembers the day, when as a little girl playing in her Bayonne backyard, her life irrevocably changed.

"I remember being in the yard with my mom, and my grandfather heard a report about the fire on the news," she said. "He came outside and just said to my mom ‘That’s not Lenny, is it?’ She left very quickly after."

In that moment, Nicole in many ways left being a little girl behind.

"It was a totally unique situation going on around me compared to kids my age," she said. "I remember everything very vividly. I remember being there for my mom and my grandfather. You grow up very quickly."

"I didn’t really go through a lot of the emotions until I was in college," Nicole continued. "Then I had a major period of processing to go through. Since then, it’s been very important to me. It’s not so much in the background. It’s more in the forefront."

Now once again living in Bayonne, Radumski is sometimes unexpectedly confronted with memories of her father.

"When I went to Rutgers and later on, I would come across so many people that knew the story without knowing me and without having lived in Hackensack," she said. "I made a very good friend in college who had been trained seeing a video of the fire. What happened probably saved a lot of people’s lives."

The life of someone whose family member died so tragically and so publicly isn’t always easy. But Radumski handles the mantle of memory as best she can.

"Sometimes I’ll be out somewhere and someone says my last name. They’ll come up to me and say ‘Are you Boom-Boom’s daughter?’" a nod to her father’s baseball prowess. "Honestly, I depend very much on hoping that it keeps coming up. Then I can keep remembering everything that should probably be somehow fading away at this point. I don’t want to lose anything of what I remember. I would continue to go to memorials even if it stalled the healing process. It’s like keeping my father alive to me."

Craig Williams, 42, was living with his father, Capt. Richard L. Williams, around the time of the fire. The time under his father’s roof brought back happy memories for him.

"My father was my best friend," he said. "We did a lot of things together. We enjoyed each other’s company very much. I’d work in the garage on antique cars, and he would work on his motorcycle. I couldn’t get enough of him."

For Williams, the yearly ride down memory lane is not a bumpy road.

"I love doing this. I love seeing everybody," he said. "I yearn for this. When my father was working, I would spend a lot of time down at the firehouse. I would sit and have dinner and coffee with the men. They knew me, and I knew them."

"When it first happened, what you see here tonight carried on for about 18 months," Williams continued. "The fire department was always doing something. There was a softball game, there was a dinner, and there were trips. It reminds me of that time, both the pain we felt and the bonding that took place. I got my life back in order, but I miss this. I enjoy the camaraderie. I not only know these guys’ names. I know that they’ll never forget what I felt and what they felt in 1988. Over the last 20 years, the Hackensack Fire Department has done more than enough for the families of the five firefighters. They’ve shown their support. They’ve done what they can."

There is one thing that Williams, the families and the department refuse to do.

"Forgetting is the worst," Williams said. "Forgetting means that their souls have gone and died. My father lives within me in my memory. Forgetting would be like forgetting him. I can never forget him."

Forgetting is definitely not an option for Kevin Ennis, 51, Firefighter Stephen Ennis’ older brother, who rode up from South Jersey to attend the memorial ceremony with his father George.

"When they gave my family my brother’s Medal of Honor award, I sat up on top of the fire truck with it," he said. "They all earned that together. They are one family, and they’ve never forgotten mine in 20 years. I could not allow the rest of Hackensack’s firefighters not to share in that award. It’s theirs. It’s always going to be theirs."

The legacy left behind

What the Hackensack Fire Department also shares with the families of these newest Medal of Honor winners is a drive to ensure that the lessons learned from the Ford fired are still taught.

"Twenty years later, we see countless improvements in the fire service that are a direct result of the supreme sacrifices that your husbands, fathers, sons and brothers made on July 1, 1988," said Deputy Chief Charles Grieco, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (I.A.F.F.) Local 3172 – Hackensack Uniformed Fire Officers Association, at the memorial ceremony. "Improvements in tactics, in firefighting strategy, and radical improvements in safety procedures are a direct result of what we call the Ford fire. They have truly saved the lives of countless firefighters and civilians alike."

Grieco’s comments were later affirmed by several volunteer firefighters trained in neighboring communities in the years after the fire.

"The Hackensack Ford fire changed training in the fire service greatly," said Firefighter Mike Mickendrow of the Little Ferry Fire Department. "It made my training when I joined much better. They taught us about building construction, especially truss roofs (the design structure that was in place at the Hackensack Ford dealership). They taught us what to look for."

"When I became a firefighter, I went to the Bergen County Fire Academy in 1985," added Steven Iurato, former chief of the Little Ferry Fire Department. "We didn’t learn anything about previous fires in which firefighters got killed because of bowstring truss roofs. After the Ford fire, the mentality changed. Word spread nationwide. People learned."

Iurato was at the Ford fire scene 20 years ago. In this instance, he welcomes his memories.

"Not a day has gone past that I don’t think about it," he said. "It made an everlasting impression in my mind. I never want to see it happen again."

Firefighter John Linquito, president of I.A.F.F. Local 2081 – Hackensack Professional Firefighters & EMTs, looked ahead during the memorial ceremony with the same focused but haunted eyes.

"I’ve seen too much," he said. "I’ve been through too much. We all have. But we’ve grown together. We’ve bonded. We’ve gotten through."

Hackensack Ford Part I: Memory still flickers

Hackensack Ford Part II: What went wrong?

E-mail: bonamo@northjersey.com