By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, April 19, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01

One July evening three years ago, as Mary Ann Sorace and her two daughters tidied up in the kitchen of their Paramus home after dinner, a voice over the police scanner sent them into a panic.
“Officer needs assistance,” came the call from her husband, Bergen County Police Officer Edward M. Sorace.
Sorace was in the middle of a confrontation with two drug suspects, one armed with a gun. He ended up arresting one, but the other escaped and was captured later. Sorace wasn’t able to get in touch with his wife for some time.
“The only thing I remembered was being glued to the radio and being afraid to leave it,” Mary Sorace said. “It must have been four hours later before I found out he was OK.”
After four years of coping alone with the fears and frustrations caused by her husband’s job, Sorace resigned in October from her job in the Paramus school system to found a new support group, Concerns of Police Spouses of Bergen County (COPS).
“It’s the stress of not knowing when they leave the house if they are going to be returning, or if you’re going to get that fateful telephone call that something has happened to them,” she said.
The organization, Sorace said, would not become a “wives gripe group.” It will have available to it a family therapist, a minister who is a retired policeman, and other professionals who have pledged to either counsel or help spouses obtain information that would help them cope.
COPS, which had its first meeting last month, is one of a number of such New Jersey groups, including the 20-year-old Pascack Valley Police Wives Association.
Dr. Katherine W. Ellison, a psychology professor at Montclair State College and author of several books on police and stress, said such groups are helpful because they tend to lessen the sense of isolation that police spouses can feel.
“The wives I’ve worked with want to know about the job, but their husbands want to keep them innocent,” Ellison said in an interview. “The sweet little angels know a heck of a lot more than you think. . . . An important thing that can be done is to have the wives teaching the new wives how to cope positively.”
Sorace acknowledged that one of her biggest challenges would be reaching the spouses. Eileen Neillands, wife of Bergen County Police Chief Peter Neillands, and Judith Betten, wife of Rochelle Park Police Chief William Betten, were among 11 wives who attended the first meeting.
Chief Neillands, the evening’s keynote speaker, testified to a host of shirked familial responsibilities during the first 30 of his 40 years in law enforcement, starting with the Leonia Police Department in 1951.
“We get so smart too late,” Neillands said. “I hope people will learn from us, what we did wrong. Mary [Sorace] is going through some of those things that are difficult to go through, and she is crying out, Help me. Some of these other people, they are silent, but they want to be helped, too." Neillands concluded his talk by saying he wished he had not while trying to cure some of society's ills by doing police work abandoned his family all those years. He said he would do all he could to help the group succeed. Eileen Neillands seized on a symbol of the isolation spouses feel when she said that, for all his sins, Neillands was a good husband except at the annual police officers ball. She said the men tend to leave their wives on one side of the room and mingle with fellow officers on the other side. The Neillandses, who have been married for 41 years, have among their five children a son who is a policeman in the Bronx and a daughter about to marry a policeman. "You have to learn to do a lot of things," Eileen Neillands said, "including driving yourself to the hospital to deliver your baby. I did it with my fifth one. He was tied up in an accident or something." Ed Sorace, who said he supports his wife's efforts, said the group would be well worth it if it helps just one police family cope. He sat in the background during the meeting with the couple's 7-year-old daughter, Stefanie. The Rev. Kim F. Capwell, rector of the All Saints Episcopal Church in Glen Rock, said idealism leads many, in their desire to solve their communities problems, to seek law enforcement careers, but also has the effect of isolating them from society and, most acutely, from their families. Capwell spoke from experience. "I was married to a police department for 12 years before I took an early retirement and went into the seminary," he said. "I was very lucky that my spouse stuck with me through 10 solid years of nights with no rotation. We actually got to appreciate that I worked 8 at night till 4 in the morning." Rochelle Park's Chief Betten said he often asks new recruits if they are aware of the demands of the career. "I ask them,Are you aware what a police officer’s job is? ” Betten said. ” Are you aware that you have to work Saturdays, Sunday, holidays, nights?Oh, yeah, they reply. Later on, after they’ve become policemen, suddenly the wives will call you: `How come my husband is working on Christmas day? Many spouses don’t know what to expect when they get into this.”
The next meeting of COPS is at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Paramus High School, room 616.

Keywords: POLICE; FAMILY; COUNSELING; ORGANIZATION; MENTAL; HEALTH; PSYCHOLOGY

Caption: COLOR PHOTO – STEVE AUCHARD / THE RECORD – Bergen County Police Officer Edward M. Sorace giving his 7-year-old daughter, Stefanie, a kiss as he prepares to go to work. Looking on is his wife, Mary Ann Sorace, who founded a new support group for spouses of law enforcement officers.

ID: 17340327 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)