Family and friends of Christopher Raguso, an Air Force master sergeant and FDNY firefighter, gathered to say their goodbyes Saturday on Long Island. Raguso was killed in a helicopter crash earlier this month in Iraq along with three other service members from the tri-state. Ken Buffa reports.
What to Know
- Family and friends said their final goodbyes to Christopher Raguso, one of the seven guardsmen killed in a chopper crash in Iraq
- Raguso was a lieutenant of the FDNY; fellow FDNYer Christopher "Tripp" Zanetis and Long Island guardsman Dashan Briggs were also killed
- This week, The FDNY also mourned Michael R. Davidson, who was killed in a movie set fire in Harlem
An Air Force master sergeant and New York City firefighter who had faced bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan and hurricanes in Texas and the Caribbean needed to go where the action was, whether it was wrestling with his two giggling daughters or forcing his way into a burning building, his father told mourners at his funeral Saturday.
Christopher Raguso always came home to Long Island, alive - except this last time.
On Saturday morning, his flag-draped casket arrived atop a fire engine at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in the Suffolk County hamlet of Kings Park, with bagpipes intoning "Amazing Grace" and hundreds of white-gloved, uniformed firefighters lining the street. Some became pallbearers who carried him to the altar of the church where Raguso was married in 2009.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, attended the funeral along with city Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro.
Raguso, a 39-year-old lieutenant in the New York Fire Department, was killed March 15 in a military helicopter crash near the Syrian border that took the lives of seven National Guard members including three others from New York state - Capt. Christopher "Tripp" Zanetis, Tech Sgt. Dashan Briggs and Maj. Andreas O'Keeffe. They were stationed at the F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach.
"This man's entire life was dedicated to service of others, and he has done exactly what they and the country have asked him to; that's because Chris didn't know how not to give 100 percent of himself," said his father, John Raguso, in his eulogy. "He recognized that to be good at his job, he needed to go where the action was, he wanted to be there, whether that was home wrestling with his giggling daughters, or forcing entry into the heart of a six-story tenement on fire."
Raguso was a 13-year veteran of the city fire department, having spent 11 years at Engine 249/Ladder 113 in Brooklyn's Prospect-Lefferts Gardens before he was transferred to Queens.
He also was a volunteer firefighter in Commack, where he lived with his wife and two daughters.
