Wife of jailed fire official starts over (she has CMT)

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Wife of jailed fire official starts over

'This is just another mountain,' Madeline Cheney says.

By Joshunda

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/10/19/1019cheney.h\

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Monday, October 19, 2009

Until recently, Madeline Cheney's life probably seemed enviable to outsiders.

She lives in a 3,220-square-foot, four-bedroom house west of Round Rock. Her

husband, Gerard Cheney, had a good tech job and made good money. Together, they

raised two children, , 15, and , 14.

But in August, Gerard Cheney was arrested on suspicion of possessing child

pornography. At the time of his arrest, he was the subject of a felony theft

investigation, and in September, he was charged with stealing more than $200,000

from the Sam Bass Fire Department, where he had once been president. If

convicted, he faces up to 99 years in prison on the embezzlement charge and up

to 10 years in prison on the child pornography charge.

" Gerry had it all, " Madeline Cheney, 45, said. " He didn't realize what he had,

and money can't help him now. Now, I face losing

everything and I've got to figure out a way to take care of me and my kids. "

Bank accounts she could use to pay the $2,000 mortgage and two car notes — for

his F-250 King Ranch truck and her Lincoln Navigator — are in his name and have

been frozen by authorities. She supports her kids in the meantime with a monthly

$700 disability check and help from friends, she said.

She can't work because she has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder, or CMT, which

slowly weakens the nerves in her fingers and requires her to wear braces on her

legs because of the neurological damage the disorder causes.

After 17 years of marriage, she's filed for divorce. She gave away two of her

three dogs. She hates answering the phone because she knows the creditors are

calling.

But she's faced worse.

" This is the normal state of my life at this point, " Cheney said. " These are

challenges that make me stronger. "

She said she reads the Bible, listens to uplifting music and prays. " I just try

to remind myself that this, too, shall pass. "

Born in El Paso, Cheney lived with her mother after her parents divorced. In

1975, when she was 11, her stepfather was flying a Cessna 172 from Fort Hood to

Yakima, Wash., to visit family for Christmas when the plane crashed on

Mountain, just north of the Oregon-California line.

Her mother, stepfather and sister died in the crash. Madeline was the sole

survivor.

News reports said she clutched her dog, Baby, as she waited 22 hours for someone

to find her on the mountainside. Doctors said the dog had probably saved her

life by keeping her warm in the frigid temperatures. Cheney keeps a scrapbook of

newspaper clips and photos of the plane wreckage.

" I felt isolated and alone because everything I knew was gone, " Cheney said.

" The child in me died on that mountain. "

She was angry. She thought God had abandoned her, she said. But she said her

loneliness was eased by the kindness of strangers who sent Christmas gifts,

letters and money. They reinforced that " there are good people in the world, and

it helped bring a little bit of hope back into a bad situation, " she said.

On the plane ride to El Paso, where she was reunited with her biological father,

she wept.

" I just kept going; I had to just keep trying to find answers, " Cheney said. " I

kept talking to my sister and my mother, still trying to connect with the family

I lost, asking them to be with me. It gave me strength. "

The year she turned 15, her father died of a heart attack, she said.

After her father died, Cheney and her stepmother moved to Ohio.

In 1985, when she was 21, she married a funeral director's son there and started

attending Kent State University.

But her legs weakened and she started showing other symptoms of CMT, which is a

hereditary, incurable disease that gets progressively worse. CMT patients slowly

lose normal use of their feet, legs, hands and arms as the nerves in their

extremities degenerate.

Cheney said she had to drop out of college because of a series of surgeries

related to her illness. Her marriage fell apart.

She moved to Massachusetts to stay with an uncle. She found work as an optician.

It was in Massachusetts that she met Gerard Cheney in 1990 through a mutual

friend. " He was shy and very mild, " she said. " He had a good job working for

Intel, and he took care of his mom. He seemed well-rounded and well-liked. "

They married in 1992. Gerard Cheney got a job offer from IBM to be a layout

engineer, so the two moved to Austin that November. Their marriage started off

well, but over time, she said, the relationship became increasingly tense.

" When you first marry someone, you trust them and look up to them in a way, " she

said. " But his inability to keep communicating with me and working with me built

up a wall. "

It wasn't obvious to outsiders. , a close friend of the Cheneys,

said that the couple seemed happy.

" He was very generous with material things and he always showed up when the kids

had an event at school, " said. " I was always thrilled for her; he seemed

to be a strong family man. "

Madeline Cheney says that about five months before Gerard Cheney's arrest for

possession of child pornography, he told her that he had " borrowed money from

the fire department, that's how he put it, " she said. " After initial shock, I

asked him why he did it, and he said that he was going to pay it back. "

When months passed and their son found child porn on a family computer, Madeline

Cheney said, " it was the last straw. "

Gerard Cheney has been in the on County jail since August. Cheney's

lawyer, Jack Webernick, did not return numerous calls seeking comment for this

story.

Madeline Cheney said she asked him to get counseling. But after time passed and

he hadn't, she said, she realized her husband wasn't going to change and

reported their son's findings to police.

She paused and started to cry as she stood in her kitchen.

" I only know how to fight. I can't give up, so I'll continue to fight, " she

said. " Just like on that mountain. This is just another mountain. "