JOHN J. FLORIO: 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.'"
.
