Firefighter
John Florio
Engine 214
Laid to Rest
on November 3, 2001
Iron
and Metallica
If it was 6 a.m. and Metallica was blasting from the
basement of Engine Company 214 in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
it meant that John J. Florio was down there pumping iron. Mr. Florio,
33, was an athlete, built like a box of bricks, the kind of man who made
starting halfback the first year he tried out for the Fire Department
football team. He was the metalhead of his Brooklyn firehouse, an electric
presence in a place that was already called "The Nuthouse." "He would
have been in charge of the mosh pit if we had one," said Roddy Richards,
a colleague and a friend. Mr. Richards said one of Mr. Florio's oldest
buddies once stopped by the firehouse and joked that Mr. Florio had been
an A- student in the fourth grade ‹ until the teacher moved the smart
girl away from him. But John J. Florio cared about other things, like
his wife, Shari, and his children, Michael and Kylie. Then there was
his beloved Metallica. The night that the men of Engine 214 found Mr.
Florio's body, someone called to say, turn on the radio. They did and
they caught the opening riff of a Metallica song. Mr. Richards knew it
was a message. "We were all like, 'O.K., John.' "
Newsday Article