Charles Margiotta, 44, FDNY, known as 'the nicest
tough guy' The 20-year veteran was also a movie stuntman, private
investigator and sports coach Date of Death 9-11-2001 By Jay Price
Advance staff writer Thursday, 11/01/2001 There's a story — so
old it must be true — about the time some wannabe hardcase was
trying to pick a fight at Demyan's Hofbrau in Stapleton, another
piece of Staten Island that isn't here anymore. "You Chuck Margiotta?"
"Yeah." "I heard you were tough. You don't look so tough." The
guy took a swing. Mr. Margiotta took it, and turned back to face
his attacker, who braced for the mayhem that was certain to follow.
"If that's the best you've got," Mr. Margiotta told him, "you
better sit next to me and have a beer." Lt. Charles (Chuck) Margiotta
was a tough guy — a football player, movie stuntman and 20-year
veteran of the Fire Department — long before the morning of Sept.
11, when he heard the news on his truck radio and drove to the
nearest firehouse in time to jump on the rig with the guys from
Rescue Co. 5 in Concord. Now, he is among the thousands missing
as a result of the attack on the World Trade Center. But beneath
his forbidding exterior — the stern facade, the tattoos and 240
pounds of muscle — was a gardener who nurtured tomato plants alongside
Ladder Co. 85 in New Dorp; a caring neighbor who ran into the
street in his pajamas to help an elderly woman who had fallen;
a loving father who coached his kids' basketball, softball and
soccer teams. "He was the nicest tough guy I ever met," said Jimmy
Ernst, a classmate at Monsignor Farrell High School. For every
burning building he ran into, there are three stories about the
college student who brought stranded classmates home at Thanksgiving;
the Samaritan who plowed every sidewalk on the block when it snowed;
the hunter who stopped to give mouth-to-straw-to-beak resuscitation
to a bird that had fallen from a tree. "He was the champion of
the underdog," said his brother, Mike. "If you were the kid nobody
wanted in a choose-up game, you wouldn't be his last pick. You'd
be his first pick." Mr. Margiotta, 44, lived most of his life
on the same block in Meiers Corners, where he knew everyone by
name. He played football almost as long — at Monsignor Farrell,
where he was a hard-blocking tight end and a member of the National
Honor Society; at Brown University, where he was an undersized
nose guard, and later for the Fire Department team and in the
Staten Island Touch Tackle League. When Brown's 1976 Ivy League
champions were honored at their 20th reunion, his teammates chose
Mr. Margiotta to speak for them. But football wasn't his first
sport. He was an indefatigable outdoorsman, having learned to
hunt and fish at an early age. "That was his passion," said his
father, Charles Vito. "If you were in the woods, lost, you wanted
to be with Chuck." Marriage and children didn't curb that enthusiasm
for the outdoors. He just rearranged his schedule, often leaving
in the dead of night to go hunting, so he could be home to coach
a soccer game later that day. He was the youth basketball director
at St. Rita's R.C. Parish in Meiers Corners. After graduating
Brown with a double major in English and sociology, Mr. Margiotta
worked for General Motors before being called by the Fire Department
in 1981. He was first in his class at probie school and worked
15 years at Ladder Co. 40 in Harlem, earning eight departmental
citations. After his promotion to lieutenant in 1996 he was assigned
to Staten Island's 22nd Battalion, and spent the bulk of that
time as an interim lieutenant at Ladder Co. 85. At the time of
his death, the paperwork had just been finalized on his permanent
assignment to Ladder Co. 83 in Westerleigh. In his "spare" time,
Mr. Margiotta found time to work as a stuntman in dozens of feature
films, including "Hannibal"; as a private investigator, and for
20 years as a substitute school teacher for the New York City
Board of Education. "He wasn't happy," his brother said, "unless
he was doing four things at once." He was driving home from Brooklyn
after working a "mutual" for another officer Sept. 11 when he
heard the news on the radio, turned off the Staten Island Expressway
and found the Rescue Co. 5 truck ready to go. His wife was working,
so Mr. Margiotta called his mother from the speeding rig, concerned
that because he wasn't on a duty roster, nobody would know where
he was. By then, the men from Rescue Co. 5 were minutes from the
World Trade Center, close enough to see the horror awaiting them.
"Ma, it's bad," Mr. Margiotta told his mother, Molly. "I love
you." Then he was gone, leaving a neighborhood in mourning, wondering
who's going to be there the next time somebody falls in the street,
and who's going to clear the sidewalks when it snows. Just last
week an elderly man in the local 7-Eleven, where Mr. Margiotta
often stopped for his morning coffee, spotted a button his father
wears bearing the missing fireman's picture, and started to cry.
"Bring him back," the old man wailed. "Please just bring him back."
In addition to his parents, Charles Vito and Amelia (Molly), and
his brother, Michael, Mr. Margiotta is survived by his wife, Norma,
and his children, Norma Jean and Charles Vito II. A memorial mass
will be celebrated Tuesday at 10 a.m. in St. Rita's Church. The
Casey Funeral Home, Castleton Corners, is handling the arrangements.
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