LEAGUE HONORS FALLEN FIREFIGHTERS

LEAGUE HONORS FALLEN FIREFIGHTERS

 
 League honors fallen firefighters

Basketball loop now bears the names of MIKE FIORE and CHUCK MARGIOTTA

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Denis Driscoll (you probably know him best from these pages as the Notre Dame Academy junior varsity basketball coach but in real life he was a firefighter for lo, these many years until his recent retirement) was in charge of the Staten Island Fire Department Basketball League for something like five years.

But he isn't anymore.

Now he's the director of the FDNY MIKE FIORE-CHUCK MARGIOTTA BASKETBALL LEAGUE OF STATEN ISLAND.

"I'm very happy about changing the name of the league," Denis tells us. "I go back a long way with both Mike and CHUCK. I went to grammar school with CHUCKIE and I played against Mike in high school and up at PS 45 in West Brighton. And whenever we had a day off, Mike and I would meet at the Y, work out and then go shoot some baskets."

So it seemed a pretty good idea to rename the league after his friends, the only two of the nearly 100 firefighters who play in the Staten Island loop who perished on 9/11.

And so, the other week at the CYO Center in Port Richmond, Denis got the Engine 165/Ladder 85 team from CHUCK'S old house and the Engine 160/Rescue 5 gang from Mike's together for a ceremonial game to celebrate the renaming of the league started in the early 1990s by colleague (and former Curtis HS assistant football coach) Tommy McNamara.

The families of the two 9/11 victims were also on hand and widows NORMA MARGIOTTA and Charlene Fiore even hit center court for the opening jump ball!

And after Rescue 5 had won the game (incidentally, reffed by ref coordinator Steve Rossiter and our favorite March Madness coordinator Danny Kenny), the two gals accepted the FDNY MIKE FIORE-CHUCK MARGIOTTA Basketball League of Staten Island trophy (which, believe it or not, has room for the names of nearly 100 winners so, as Denis says, "their (CHUCK'S and MIKE'S) names will live forever").

Then the women joined Denis and a bunch of folks at everybody's favorite pizza restaurant, Denino's, to continue the ceremonial celebration.

 Julie Summers / Staten Island Advance Staff