Nicholas Chiofalo, Eng.235 Nicholas P. Chiofalo‚ 39‚ firefighter‚ FDNY‚ Engine 235. Chiofalo also served as the fire chief in Selden‚ N.Y. For a third job‚ he worked as a pyrotechnics engineer with Fireworks by Grucci‚ a company that sets off the Fourth of July fireworks display in New York City. The job resulted from a letter of condolence he sent to the company after an explosion killed several employees. Chiofalo married his wife in 1981 and they have a son‚ Nicholas Jr. Loving parents: Ben and RoseMarie Chiofalo. Devoted husband to Joan Nardello-Chiofalo. Beloved father to Nicholas Chiofalo Jr. Nicholas Chiofalo, a firefighter in Bedford-Stuyvesant and a fire chief in Selden died along with five other New York City firefighters from Brooklyn’s Engine 235 in the World Trade Center attack Sept. 11. He was last seen entering the South tower to help evacuate people. His engine company, except for the driver, was lost. No remains were recovered. Nicholas was a firehouse cook, prankster, family man and had just ended a 24-hour shift when he called his wife, Joan, to say he was needed in Manhattan, he would call when he could and that he loved her. That was the last his family heard from him. Joan Chiofalo said she wasn’t surprised her husband rushed into the building to help. “When he called me that morning and said he was going I knew he wasn’t coming back,” she said. “When that building came crushing down, so did the rest of my life.” Nicholas was memorialized at the Selden fire department along with two others, at the fire station. They did a shadow box with all Nicky’s personal belongings and it’s hanging behind Nick’s truck, engine number one. He grew up in Bay Shore, with a brother and two sisters, and “found light in everything,” his mother said of her third-born. “He took everything lightly, he turned everything around.” Chiofalo, also longtime volunteer firefighter and officer on Long Island, had worked at several jobs before being hired by the FDNY in 1994 and took a pay cut to be a career firefighter. “He wanted that job more than anything,” she said. “We lived in an apartment up until the day he died.” Chiofalo, 39, along with five other FDNY firemen from Engine 235 were killed when the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed shortly before 10 a.m., an hour after it was struck by the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175. September 22, 1961–September 11, 2001 BORN IN: New York LIVED IN: Selden, Long Island, New York New York City Fire Department, Engine 235, Firefighter
