Lieutenant
Michael Warchola
Ladder 5
Laid
to Rest
on September 21, 2001
The
Name Meant Something
When Lt. Michael Warchola was a child in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,
his grandmother brought British tabloid newspapers into the
house. Paging through the tales of three-headed babies and ichthyological
anthropomorphism, he developed a passion for reading and a flair
for the bizarre. He parlayed his appetite for books into a teaching
certificate, and he joined the New York Fire Department in 1977,
after five years on the waiting list. "It was dangerous, but
it was a good job," said his father, Michael Warchola. It also
helped pay for his trips to the strange and historical sites
he read about. As he neared retirement, Lieutenant Warchola,
51, who was divorced, devoted more time to tending his garden
at his home in Middle Village, Queens, where he made elaborate
drawings of Venus flytraps, but he kept a Godzilla poster on
his wall. The attack of Sept. 11 spread his name around the
world, as it did those of many other victims. One who noticed
the name was Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda of Slovakia, and
when he came here recently to run in the New York Marathon,
he sought out Lieutenant Warchola's older brother Denis, who
was only vaguely aware of the family's central European ancestry.
Mr. Dzurinda took home a picture of Lieutenant Warchola and
held it aloft during a television appearance. "Everybody in
the country saw my brother's picture," Denis Warchola said.
The brother, a retired firefighter himself, had a chance for
the most intimate of farewells. After his brother was dead,
"I got to put my hands on my brother's arm." Profile published
in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 20, 2001.
Newsday
Article