The
Family's Core
When you are smack in the middle of a family of nine children,
you could, understandably, have a rough time getting attention.
Or, you could not. Charles Garbarini's siblings would clear the
coffee table so he could leap up and entertain them. He even had
his sister Janet fooled into thinking that if she washed the family's
dinner dishes while he just sat and talked to her, she had it
good. "Nobody gets out of more work than I do!" Charley Garbarini,
44, would shout, even as a Fire Department lieutenant. By her
own admission, Andrea DeGeorge, whom Lieutenant Garbarini married
after a decade-long engagement, was the source of his best material.
Parodying her New Age-like interests, he wrote a monologue about
a woman much like her who tells her husband that their new house
in Westchester requires "a $10,000 deck so I can meditate and
keep in touch with my lack of needs." A softie at heart for all
his wisecracking, Lieutenant Garbarini would march Dylan, now
5, and Philip, 3, into their Pleasantville, N.Y., home bearing
flowers from the A.&P. for their mother. He was a proud if sardonic
professional. His business card read: "Firefighter Charley Garbarini.
You light 'em, we fight 'em." Profile published in THE NEW YORK
TIMES on January 22, 2002.
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