Joseph Angelini, Jr.
Firefighter
Ladder 4
Memorial Service was held
on October 22, 2001.
Joseph
Angelini Jr. may have lived for the New York City Fire Department,
but he didn't hang around when his tour ended.
"Gotta
get home to the kids," he'd tell the guys in Manhattan's
Ladder Co. 4 before heading to the 6:33 p.m. train to Lindenhurst.
Angelini's
wife, Donna, has scheduled a memorial service for today to help
7-year-old Jennifer, 5-year-old Jacqueline and 3-year-old Joseph
Angelini III to finally understand that he won't be coming home
anymore.
"My
son asks everyone he sees in uniform, 'Did you find my daddy,
did you find my daddy?'" Donna Angelini said Friday.
The
seven-year department veteran followed in the footsteps of his
father, Joseph Angelini Sr., 63, who was the senior member of
Brooklyn's Rescue Co. 1 and also perished in the World Trade
Center attacks.
The
younger Angelini, 38, was assigned to a house that protects
New York's theater district. Its motto: "Never miss a performance."
But
at home, he was a cook, craftsman and avid gardener who grew
pumpkins, zucchini, eggplants and hot peppers and filled the
house with the smells of pizza and focaccia.
"He
was the air in my lungs, and now that air is taken away from
me," Donna Angelini said. "I keep waiting for him
to come off a 24 [hour shift] and come through the door and
say, 'You wouldn't believe what happened to me today.'"
Angelini
also is survived by his mother, Anne, a grandmother, Mary, sister
Annmarie Bianco and brother, Michael, all of Lindenhurst; sister
Mary Angelini of Washington D.C.; and by seven nieces and nephews.
**************
Between
Funeral and 'Pile'
September
21, 2001
Michael's
choice: remain with his mother, Anne, in Lindenhurst and support
his family during the wake, today, and the funeral, tomorrow,
for his father, New York firefighter Joey Angelini, 63; or,
return to The Pile to continue searching for his missing brother,
New York firefighter Joey Angelini Jr., 38.
Michael,
33, knew yesterday that his mother and Joey Jr.'s wife, Donna,
his two sisters and his nieces and nephews needed him, needed
a strong, grown, male Angelini nearby, perhaps as much or more
than he needed to be nearer his brother. "It's hard to
figure out what's the right place to be in," he said, already
having decided to stay with the family. "I want so much
to go back there."
Michael
works for the Fire Patrol of New York, which operates under
the New York Board of Underwriters, protecting the interests
of insurers during and in the aftermath of commercial property
fires. Wearing the same firefighting gear, except for the distinctive
red helmet that denotes Fire Patrol, he responded to the World
Trade Center disaster last Tuesday morning, as did his father,
a 40-year FDNY veteran assigned to Rescue 1, and his brother,
of Ladder Co. 4 in the Theater District. "We were all in
the same area, and none of us knew it," he said.
In
the lobby of one of the stricken towers, a fire supervisor suddenly
ordered him out of the building. They passed firefighters who
had just encountered the body of department chaplain Father
Mychal Judge. Michael helped carry Judge away. "... but
then my officer grabbed me and said, 'Let's go!'" he said.
"We ended up a block or two north on West Murray Street."
Michael
entertained a slender hope that his brother might have finished
his tour early and gone home. He suspected otherwise, and he
learned later that afternoon that Joey had done what his father
would have done and what so many other firefighters did who
were supposed to be ending their tours at 9 a.m. They went to
work.
Once
a jokester and a partygoer, Joey Jr. had undergone personality
changes increasingly noticeable to Michael during the past seven
years, since he had joined the department and Donna gave birth
to the first of their three children, Jennifer. He had worked
previously as an electrician with the Transit Authority. "I
didn't want him to leave Transit," said his mother, "because
they were about to make him a foreman. But, for some reason,
he switched over to the fire department."
"Since
then," Michael said, "I saw him taking on more and
more of my father's traits. Before, we used to go out a lot,
he and I. He was silly, funny. Now, getting him to go out was
like pulling teeth. I tell old stories to guys he worked with,
and they'll look at me like I'm talking about somebody they
don't know. He had become so, like, straight. He just wanted
to be with his family. He was showing more and more of that
integrity, that seriousness, like my father.
"Three
things were important to my father: his family, the church and
the department, and I'm not sure in what order. My father was
honest to a fault, religious. I remember walking back from the
store with him. I was only little. He realized that the counter
girl had given him 30 cents too much in change, and we had to
walk all the way back. I mean, it was almost ridiculous. Joey
was becoming more like that. It was good to watch, but it's
hard to live up to."
The
elder Angelini was in special operations that morning, and Michael
hoped he too might have been sent elsewhere, but he really knew
better. His father was legendary in the department for loving
the work, for loving "to get dirty," for loving "making
a grab [rescuing somebody]," for routinely walking out
of a mostly extinguished inferno and lighting a cigarette while
younger firefighters lay sprawled around him, exhausted.
Earlier
this year, at a Holy Name Society communion breakfast tribute
for his 40th anniversary as a firefighter, the short, wiry,
gray-haired Angelini resisted efforts by his fellow firefighters
to get him to wear more of his medals. "They convinced
him to put on maybe a third of them," Michael said. "Then
he said, 'Stop. I'm tired of pinning these on.'
"He
kept them in the back of a drawer, in a box," Michael said.
"He didn't tell us about half of them. He didn't talk about
what he did. You would be eating dinner across from him and
notice that he looked dif- ferent, like, strange, and then you
would realize that his face was all red, and his eyebrows were
completely gone, and his hairline had receded. He was burned.
You would say, 'What happened to you?' And he would say, 'Aw,
something flashed over me.'
"At
the site, all week, guys were joking about him finding a pocket
and eventually walking out. They said to me, 'He was probably
buried in a void, and as soon as he runs out of cigarettes he's
gonna come walking out.'"
Rescue
workers found the body of Joey Angelini on Monday. He had been
listed as missing since the day after the attack. Joey Jr. still
is missing. After tomorrow's funeral Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual
Help in Lindenhurst, Michael probably will return to the site.--Ed
Lowe (Newsday Columnist)
Legacy.com
Article
CNN
Tributes
Back
To Firefighter Index