Lieutenant
Charles Garbarini
Engine 23

MISSING

By MERYL HARRIS AND KEN VALENTI
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: Oct. 07, 2001)

For a third week, families and thousands of friends celebrated in their own ways the victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, demonstrating in praise, prayer and applause that no life lost to terrorism was ordinary.

In services yesterday, Westchester remembered Charles Garbarini, Helen Crossin-Kittle, Michael Lyons, Dennis G. Moroney, Edward Ryan, Linda June Sheehan, Jeffrey Patrick Walz and Elizabeth Darling. Among the survivors were 11 children and an expectant mother. Crossin-Kittle was pregnant.

Hundreds of firefighters, police, emergency medical technicians and bagpipers formed processions in Pleasantville and Hawthorne to honor Garbarini and Lyons, both New York City firefighters.

More than 200 firefighters were among those who marched for Garbarini but had to hear the service from loudspeakers outside or see it on closed-circuit television in the auditorium at the Presbyterian church in Pleasantville. The sanctuary, which holds about 500, was filled.

Garbarini, 43, a lieutenant with Engine Company 23 in New York City, was honored by representatives of New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki.

Garbarini, formerly a plumber, loved his life as a firefighter. In his infinite good humor, he had business cards printed. Beneath his name was the motto, "You light 'em. We fight 'em."

One of nine siblings, Garbarini was remembered by two of his sisters for his deep love of his wife, Andrea, with whom he traveled extensively. However courageous their adventures, neither plunged heedlessly into lifelong commitment. They met when he was 20 and she was 16, were engaged for eight years, and finally married five years ago. They had two sons, Philip, 3, and Dylan, 5, with whom he spent virtually every off-duty hour.

Garbarini was appealingly goofy, one sister, Janet Garbarini-Arbuiso, told the mourners. "That face, that laugh, that energy, that's Charley," she said. "He made you feel happy.'' And he made you laugh out loud, she said, encouraging his little nieces to practice the phrase, "Uncle Charley is a genius."

"Charley died fulfilled. He found happiness in his life and himself," said Garbarini-Arbuiso.

His remains have not been found. Older sister Beryl Zawatsky said she likes to think he had an express trip directly to heaven, "and went up fast and furious."