In memory of

Anthony F. Mastrelli

Died of it afterward on November 13, 2024, aged 58.

United States of America

Their life

Born in Maspeth, New York, Tony attended Half Hollow Hills West High School, where he played football and lacrosse. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Geology from SUNY Cortland. There, Tony proudly played football for the Red Dragons, forming lifelong friendships. Inspired by his Uncle Tommy, Tony joined the FDNY in August 1991. He served in Engine 202, transferred to Ladder 48/Engine 56, then to Engine 313/Ladder 164. He retired from Hazmat 1 in December 2022. No matter his station, Tony always made time to honor traditions, never missing a Memorial Day event or the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. While on the job, Tony developed a love for cooking, inspired by his grandma’s Italian heritage. Cooking became a passion, whether for the firehouse or at home with friends and family. Tony was a leader for the FDNY Bravest football team—18 years as a player, five as a coach, then with the alumni association. He was known to the Bravest as having the “Heart of a Lion.” The annual NYPD game was the highlight of his year, if the FDNY won of course. Off the job, he served as a volunteer in the East Farmingdale Fire Department for 25 years and as a longtime youth coach. Affectionately known as Coach Tony, he impacted many through Farmingdale Hawks football, sharing the passion he displayed after school with the Brooklyn Mariners and the Bravest, for 20 years, long after his own kids moved on to high school and college. With phrases like “Christmas at the Cratchits’” or “Raise Your Pants, Raise Your Image,” Tony instilled pride, discipline, and humor. He contributed to the ongoing football success in Farmingdale but is remembered not for wins or championships, but for his mentorship and the example he set for countless young athletes growing into young men.

Tony loved movies, music, and making people laugh. He quoted films (The most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen), sang karaoke, and even sang at his wedding. Coaching, he’d bring up “Waiters and Butlers” or “The name on the front of the jersey.” Songs like “The Boys of Fall” and “Just Like You, Dad” touched his heart. Tony was a proud father to Alexis, Cameron, and Kyle; a loving husband to his wife and soulmate; a devoted brother to Scott (FDNY, retired) and sister-in-law, Loyda; and uncle to Ryan. A man of deep faith, he embodied “Always be Humble & Kind.” He toiled in the rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero on and after 9/11 and was later diagnosed with 9/11-related cancer. He passed away on November 13, 2024.

Tony Mastrelli is missed every day by all who knew and loved him.

How they died

Firefighter of the Fire Department of the City of New York, who died of an illness from the rescue and recovery at the World Trade Center. The department added the name to its World Trade Center Memorial Wall at the ceremony of 09 September 2025. He died on 13 November 2024, aged 58.

The Years After

September 11, 2001

For eight months after the towers came down, men and women worked the site. Firefighters, police, paramedics, iron workers, truck drivers, cleaners, volunteers. They breathed what was in that air, and many of them have died of it since - cancers, lung disease, illnesses that took ten years or twenty to arrive.

More people have now died of September 11th than were killed on September 11th. They are not a footnote to the day. They are the day, arriving late.

A man who walked down eighty flights and out into the street, and who died of a cancer in 2031, was killed by the same attack as the man who never got out. This gate holds them together, because the same morning took them both.

Everyone taken by The Years After →

September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001

On a clear Tuesday morning, four airliners were taken. Two were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one into the western face of the Pentagon, and one came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers and crew went forward at the cockpit door.

Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven people were killed. Three hundred and forty-three were firefighters of the New York City Fire Department. Seventy-one were law enforcement officers. Eight were paramedics and emergency medical technicians. One hundred and twenty-five died at the Pentagon, military and civilian together. The rest - some two thousand four hundred of them - had gone to work, or boarded a plane, and belonged to no service at all.

None of them began that morning as heroes. A great many of them ended it as heroes: men and women who carried strangers down stairwells, who stayed with people who could not walk, who held a door, who went back up. Four men on a flight over Pennsylvania, who had thirty minutes of telephone calls and knew what had already happened, decided where their aircraft would come down.

At Arlington, the nation set aside its own rules of eligibility and buried the Pentagon's civilian dead in national ground. It had decided that on this day the distinction did not apply.

Everyone taken by September 11, 2001 →

Media

Portrait of Anthony F. Mastrelli
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