Firefighter's fund helps Babylon residents

Five years after West Babylon firefighter Mike Greene was killed during cleanup of a Montauk Highway fire, more than 100 people paid $35 a plate at a Babylon Village restaurant Sunday to raise money for a foundation bearing his name.

The nonprofit Mike Greene Great Guy Foundation has helped 30 families from Babylon village and the surrounding area since 2007, said board member Maria Ricciardi. One gift went to a woman struggling with bills after her husband's death. Another went to a family with two working parents who couldn't afford after-school care for their son. Another sent a girl to softball camp.

Funds come from the annual pasta dinner hosted Sunday by Cafe Il Villaggio; other fundraisers include a game night and a Family Fun Day.

The Greenes' neighbors packed the restaurant Sunday. A high school surfing buddy of Greene's was there, and friends Greene and his wife, Liz, had met shepherding their four children to school and sports. Chicken del sole followed mushroom risotto; there was talk of football, holiday shopping, kids.

Greene, 43, died after touching an electrified sign after a 2006 Lindenhurst fire.

In the kitchen, Lucy Domingo, who owns the restaurant with her husband, Michael, was flushed but happy. She'd known the Greenes since their college-age children were in nursery school together, she said. "If we can open our doors to something like this, it's almost more for us than for them," she said.

Great Guy's grants range from a few hundred dollars to $2,500 in cash or sometimes services from local tradespeople.

Such small-award foundations are growing in popularity, said Jim Coutre, vice president of The Philanthropic Initiative, a Boston-based consultancy. They even have some advantages over the larger philanthropic organizations, he said. Donors "feel as if they're making a big difference in individual lives and in their own backyard."

Almost all the foundation's donors and recipients live in or near Babylon Village, which has a population of 12,000.

"I don't know if this could work in a bigger metropolitan community," said board member Doug Chapey. "This works because we've become a part of this community."

The foundation got its start after Mike Greene's death with a softball game held to raise money for his widow and their four children.

"It was enormous, the way the community rallied," Liz Greene said recently. "But there were families who'd lost people at the same time who were not as fortunate as I was."

To help them, she and friends launched the Mike Greene Great Guy Foundation, named after a man who was "just an ordinary guy, but a great guy," as she recalled saying at her husband's funeral.

Michael and Dee Morrow received a grant after Dee Morrow began treatment for breast cancer that drained their family's savings and kept her out of work for months in 2009.

The Morrows knew the Greenes -- their children had attended school together and Michael Morrow was a fellow firefighter -- and they had donated at that first softball game.

When the foundation paid the Morrows' mortgage for a month, it was "one less thing to worry about," Dee Morrow said. It was also a kind of revelation: "I found out that people are just good, and that people want to help."