Under several sections of Chapter 32, Massachusetts' public retirement law, a surviving spouse (usuallya woman), including killed in the line of duty survivors, loses her pension if she remarries. This legal mentality is a throwback to an earlier time when framers of the law felt that if a widow remarried it was the duty of the new husband "to take care of her."

The bill, S-1237, filed by Senator Brian Joyce and several others. It would allow a surviving spouse, who now loses her pension upon remarriage, to retain that pension.

After receiving a ringing endorsement by Senator Joyce and Representative Paul Casey, co-chairmen of the Public Service Committee, the Committee voted "favorable" on the bill. Representative Rachel Kaprielian, who has taken a personal interest in this legislation, will carry the bill on the House floor.

The four widows who gave impassioned testimony in favor of the bill are members of a group known as Concerns of Police Survivors.

The women are Cynthia Hurley of Readville, whose husband Jeremiah, a Boston police officer, was killed by a bomb in 1991; Carol Perry of Salem, whose husband Paul, a state trooper, was killed in a Cambridge helicopter crash in 1995; Ann Marie Charbonnier of Westwood, whose husband state trooper Mark Charbonnier was killed in a gunfight with a fleeing felon in 1994; and Jennifer Mattaliano of Sandwich, whose husband Jim, a state trooper, died in the same crash as Paul Perry.