Like almost every World War II veteran I ever met, Richard P. Biagiotti didn’t talk about his exploits.
Granted, you don’t learn much about people when you really only spend about an hour a day, one day a week, with them. So I wasn’t aware that Mr. Biagiotti, who died Oct. 26 at the age of 91, fought not only in WWII but in Korea as well. I didn’t know he was a member of the Disabled American Veterans. I didn’t know that side of him.
It would have been an important side to know.
Mr. Biagiotti, who was the district fire chief for West Lynn from 1978 through 1992, and before that was stationed at the Fayette Street garage, took me to school for three years and into a fourth, by which time his son, Richard Patrick (Pat) got his license and was able to take over carpool duties.
Mr. Biagiotti was part of the carpool brigade that took me and four others (his son also being one) up and back to St. John’s Prep. I always looked forward to his day, as he had a better rapport with boys than the mothers who shared driving duties.
These were the Vietnam years and we were five kids who could certainly see the handwriting on the wall. Unless this war ended soon, we’d all be forced to make some serious decisions.
I’m sure we were awfully vocal about it in our carpool conversations. And I’m sure we bloviated in front of Mr. Biagiotti. Yet, Dick Biagiotti never said a word, and certainly never engaged us in debate confrontationally.
He probably had every right to. But, as Capt. Joe Zukas, who oversees the Emergency Medical Services for the department said, “he was an old-school guy, in terms of being a firefighter, but he was a good guy too, well-liked, and he liked to kid around with you.”
I remember him, too, as a man who kept things light. He probably figured the five of us were under enough pressure just to keep up The Prep’s academic regimen. I struggled in the beginning, like a lot of people, and he gave me a few pep talks when I seemed down. He probably helped me get through that first year more than he ever knew.
“You have to be motivated,” he’d say, quoting perhaps a Marine sergeant from his service days, “ya know what I mean?”
He came by his education the hard way. He left school before he graduated to join the military, and completed his education via a GED. Then he went on to get degrees in business administration and fire science.
I remember the very first quarter of our freshman year, Pat made honors. It’s important to note that The Prep never was, and still isn’t, in the “everybody-gets-a-trophy” business. Making honors was a significant accomplishment.
It’s pretty safe to say that parents such as Mr. Biagiotti, and mine, and the others, sent their sons to St. John’s because of its uncompromising academic standards. So when Pat got into the car and told his father he’d made honors, his father was genuinely touched and proud. And said so in front of the rest of us.
He was also a pretty funny guy. Once, after a couple of days of being sick, I got into the car and he asked me what was wrong.
“Oh,” I said, “I had some kind of stomach thing. I kept getting these pains. They’d come and go, and they wouldn’t go away.”
He paused and then he laughed.
“Congratulations, Steve. You’re gonna have a baby.”
As Zukas said, “he could bust you now and then, but always in a jovial way.”
Graduation meant the end of that relationship, not because it was ever strained, but because everybody just went their separate ways. Plus, we were old enough to drive ourselves.
I saw his picture in the paper a few years later because he was hurt during a fire. He seemed to come out of it OK, but I got the same feeling you always get when someone you know, and like, is hurt. I also took note of the fact that Pat was also a Lynn firefighter. Apples, when it comes to firefighting, don’t fall far from the tree.
Zukas said Mr. Biagiotti was old-school in that he came into firefighting when the equipment was rudimentary, compared to what it’s like now. By November of 1981, when the downtown area was engulfed in a conflagration, he’d seen it all, Zukas said. That’s the last time I saw him.
I was with The Item, and I was walking down Spring Street to get a better look. I ran into him, standing guard in full firefighters’ gear.
“You don’t want to go down there,” he said. “It’s too hot. You’ll get burned if you get too close.”
Figuring I’d be OK, I went anyway. Soon after, I was knocked back by a wall of intense heat the likes of which I’d never experienced. I had no choice but to turn back.
“Told you,” he said, smiling. “Always listen to me.”