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Mostly Cloudy Sept. 11 'feels like yesterday'
Lakeview firefighters remember former chief and friend Robert DeAngelis Jr.
Joe Cipolla still has Robert “Bobby” DeAngelis Jr.’s number in his cell phone. He remembers well the day he tried calling DeAngelis repeatedly, either unable to get through or reaching only his voicemail. That day was Sept. 11, 2001, and DeAngelis was in his office on the 91st floor of the south tower.
After American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower at 8:46 a.m., DeAngelis, a former Lakeview fire chief and West Hempstead Fire District commissioner, began evacuating his floor in the south tower as a precaution. He led a group of people down to the lower floors and returned to his duties as the 91st floor’s fire warden. Before United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower at 9:03 a.m., DeAngelis was in his office, fielding calls from relatives and friends of his colleagues at Washington Group International, telling them not to worry and that everything was alright.
Although he had helped many others escape, DeAngelis never made it out of the south tower.
“It was a big loss to us,” Cipolla, 54, told the Herald at a blood drive the Lakeview Fire Department held on Sept. 11 in honor of DeAngelis. “He was just a really great guy to have as a friend.”
Many of DeAngelis’s friends at the firehouse described him that way, including Lakeview Fire District Commissioner Fred Senti, who met DeAngelis in 1959, on their first day of kindergarten at St. Thomas the Apostle School. “He was my right-hand guy,” Senti said.
Living only blocks from each other in West Hempstead and attending the same schools from that first day at St. Thomas until graduation from West Hempstead High School, DeAngelis and Senti were best friends. They served together throughout the ranks of the fire department — when Senti was chief in 1982, DeAngelis was his assistant chief — and stayed close in their personal lives. DeAngelis and his late wife, Diane, who died from breast cancer in 1994, had two daughters around the same ages as Senti’s two children, and their families socialized.
“He was a family guy,” Senti said. “I couldn’t say enough — it’s hard for me to even talk about cause I start getting choked up.”
