Not in the running for Father of the Year:
The mother of a Sept. 11 victim is trying to prevent her son's absentee father from trying to collect half of the $2.9 million awarded by the Victim Compensation Fund, the Daily News has learned.
Elsie Goss-Caldwell will be petitioning a Brooklyn Surrogate's Court judge tomorrow to keep her ex-husband from financially benefiting from the death of a son that she said he had little contact with for 28 years.
[. . .]
Kenneth Caldwell's remains were never found. He was single at the time of his death and left no will, so his mother was appointed the administrator of his estate, according to her lawyer, Paul Bschorr.
But Kenneth's death prompted his father, Leon Caldwell, to try to reenter the life of his ex-wife, whom he had divorced in 1979 and not seen since 1984.
"This is a craven and disgraceful attempt to profit from the death of his son whom he abandoned at age 2," said Bschorr. "This woman raised her sons by herself and she deserves the full award."
Leon Caldwell received half of his son's $50,000 workers' compensation payment but immediately had to use $12,000 of it for child support because he had not been sending $30-a-week payments to his former spouse, Bschorr said.
It sounds almost unpatriotic to mention it, but does it bother anybody else that the relatives of the 9/11 victims were given so much money in the first place? If we are really at war with fundamentalists terrorists who can strike anywhere anytime, then we are all soldiers who might die. Why do we deserve any more compensation than the families of soldiers who die every day in Iraq?
