continued from Vincent's Home Page
"I think he
watched too much Don Ho," said
Dave Breiner, a Connecticut firefighter who knew him as Vinny Van.
When
he visited his sister Bernadette at college in Hawaii, her friends
were amazed, she said, that a non- Hawaiian, "this haoli from the
Bronx," was so able on the longboard.
Even as the years rolled by, and he married the lovely Karen and became the adoring
father of Christina, now 16 months old, Mr. Princiotta, 39, who
lived in Orangeburg, N.Y., maintained his profile. He invested
in phony winning lottery tickets, which he would distribute to
his fellow firefighters and watch while they shrieked and kissed
the firehouse floor. But he also helped the younger ones get familiar
with firefighting tools, said Patty Boylan, a friend and colleague
at Ladder 7, and cooked heaps of Italian food for the entire company.
And he kept on surfing. "He was just supercool," Mr. Boylan said. "We
called him the Vin Man."
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