Charles Garbarini: 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."
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