Street Name Change / Memorial Game

Street Name Change / Memorial Game

 
 NAME CHANGE

Mike Margiotta tells us that his 9/11 hero brother is about to be honored again when Ingram Avenue from Victory Blvd. to Purdy Avenue, over in Meiers Corners, will be renamed and unveiled as LT. CHUCK MARGIOTTA WAY. (Margiottas, as you may know, have lived on that block, well, just about forever.)

Anyway, anyone who is anyone -- including guys from four different fire companies, politicos, family, friends and just plain people -- will be there at noon on Friday as Chuck's life-long friend (and Monsignor Farrell football teammate) Tony Bisignano unveils the sign for the newly named block.

You should be there too.

MEMORIAL GAME

After you hit the unveiling of LT. CHUCK MARGIOTTA WAY, you can head on out to New Dorp and catch the basketball game that the McKee/Staten Island Tech gals will play against Notre Dame Academy in memory of LT. PAUL MITCHELL, who also never returned from 9/11 and whose daughter Christine was a 1,000-point scorer and twice an Advance volleyball All Star for the Sea Gulls and whose daughter Jen, a two-time Advance golf All Star, played for NDA.

The game, at Tech, starts at 2 p.m., former MSIT coach Clare Guerriero-Mitchell (no, they're no relation) and the one who initiated the event, tells us.
"PAUL MITCHELL loved basketball and was at all the games," she says. "And he was a wonderful man and so great for the program. When I asked his wife Maureen if she and the girls would come, she said 'definitely' so I arranged it in his honor."

Then she relates a kind of personal anecdote that illustrates the essence of the man.
"When Robbie (Clare's husband and now a firefighter thanks to Paul) went to his first fire, he was a little scared," Clare says. "Then he saw a fire truck (Brooklyn Ladder 110) with a sign that read 'In loving memory of LT. PAUL MITCHELL, and he knew that Paul was right there with him," and was no longer frightened.

How can you not show up to honor such a man as that?

 Julie Summers / Staten Island Advance