Frank: I speak my peace. I spoke my peace back then. And I’ll speak my peace again. 68 innocent Hispanics died during that era of, I will call evictions. Because what it was was you burned down the property, you bought it as is and then you made condos out of them. And, I was around basically almost every fire in Hoboken, growing up in Hoboken. I was in one in particular, I was in many houses that actually burned down after I left. So, you know, it’s really ironic how it happened and the friends that I lost, the people that passed, my friends. There was one in particular that stays with me before I became a fireman in 82. And, you know, that was me working in a bar on 14th Street in Hoboken.

Chris: The Pinter Hotel.

Frank: The Pinter Hotel. I got so inebriated I told my boss, Frank, the owner of the bar, and Barbara, Listen I can’t spin the records I’m drunk. Here, here’s your 50 dollars get the fuck out of my bar. And I went across the street, back to a girlfriend’s house at the time in 82. I went to the top floor and me and my compay, may he rest in peace, we started drinking more Bacardi and to the point of inebriation that I woke up the next morning in a bathtub full of ice because my girlfriend and her sisters and mother threw me in a bathtub thinking I was dead because I was totally blood alcohol toxified. And, when I woke up, I had a banging headache to the point that when I looked out the window, the sun was bothering me and I said Oh! What happened to the Pinter Hotel? They said it burned last night and they started telling me the story of how my friend’s wife was hanging out the window 9 months pregnant. Kids died. My boys 2 kids died. Friends of mine died in there. It was an overwhelming tragedy, to the point that, soon after the building was demoed, there was a condo going up, you know, and all those memories of every area echo. Almost single handedly point to every area that burned.

Frank: You know, going home at 3 o’clock in the morning from partying and that day, through the night, seeing people run out of buildings and not knowing that they had just started the fire, you know, stuff like that. It was just something very ironic, very, eye opening especially when I became a firefighter. And, you know, I kinda was there at the tail end of it. I did have several fires with fatalities, not as much as there was when it first started, from I wanna say, 78 to, like, around 82, 83, maybe even 84. But I came out 85, so we were still having the fires and, you know, then it started affecting more, you know, nationalities, Hindus. But I know for a fact, 68 innocent victims died in that process of what I call it again, you know, evictions. My mother was part of the eviction process and, you know, again, it’s just very sad what happened and how it happened then. Real estate grew. I know that Mayor Cappiello had a lot to do with that because his wife was a real estate agent. He probably owns about 35% of Hoboken.

Chris: So it’s like personal interest?

Frank: Well, yeah, that and there was allegedly some other public safety officials involved in the process. I got no proof of that, you know, but living in Hoboken, and watching all these people die. You know, to make what?

Frank: The gentrification of Hoboken started around 70 I wanna say 76. I’m sorry, 74 because a gentleman came to my house who still lives in Hoboken. I called him to scumbag because every time I see him I want to choke him. He came to my mom’s house. I was coming out of Brandt school in Hoboken. I was in 7th grade, 8th grade. So I come home and my mom is crying. I say, mami que te pasa? Viene un señor allí y me dijo que tenía que mudar y me amenazó. And I remember him coming out of the building so I fuckin ran outside and I caught up to him and said hey why did you make my mother cry? And he says, don’t worry about why your mothers crying just know that you guys gotta move. And I said, I’m about to, I don’t give a fuck how old you are. I’m about to choke you. He turned red and I and I started to fucking curse at him and then I said let me run back to my mom because my mom was pretty hurt. I ran back home and I told her what happened and then she goes, no, don’t worry about it. I’m gonna talk to your father. We gotta move out of here. I don’t like living here. And then we had a fire. 715 Clinton, in the hallway right next to my apartment. There was a hole in the hall and a guy, my next door neighbor who’s deceased came out and said, oh my god, there’s a fire and the guy says, nice fire right? And he ran. It was a white guy. At that time, I ran to the firehouse down the block because we had the firehouse on 8th and Clinton, living at 715 Clinton with my parents . I called the fire department and they came right away, they put the fire out. We weren’t forced out because the fire maintained itself and was confined to the hallway. The guy next door was the one that I heard. It was only because I heard him that I know what happened.

Frank: The old time firefighters were firefighters. Those were the original smoke eaters. They were basically clueless to why the fires were happening but there was never any arson investigation by PD because FD did not have investigators. The city of Hoboken did not have arson investigators until the late eighties.

Frank: Yo te puedo decir historias de cuando yo fue para hacer bombero por la menoridad. Me consideraron menoridad y ahi me estuve problema aplicando por bombero tambien por correo porque me decian que no tenian clases(disponibles). I was part of the quota system. And I won’t tell you why, but 2 of my white comrades, I was ahead of them. And one of the fathers was a deputy chief and the other father was a captain. And they literally because, I lost my job before I even had it because of politics. And then they went looking for me because we had lost we had lost our case in court. Judge Sorokin was the, the judge at the time in Newark, in this federal building. And, they said, oh, and when they found me, oh, we’ve been looking for you. And I was already in the street. I lost my girlfriend at the time. I lost my apartment. I told my job to kiss my Puerto Rican ass on Macy’s window and like it. Because I was gonna be a fireman so I told them to fuck off. And then I wound up not getting my job. And then one day, I’m walking to the club. Cappiello’s club on 610 and Jefferson Street. And here comes the deputy chief. He says Frank! And I was walking in the rain. I was, like, almost, like, homeless. So I was walking to my mother’s house and, you know, I was high. I was drunk. I was depressed. And he goes, Frank, we need you. We gotta have you on the list. I said, what are you talking about? Oh, we’re appealing. We’re appealing, and we got a good shot at getting our jobs. But at the time, being naive to the fact that we were minorities, that we were labeled. I didn’t know that. So I tell them, I said, yeah but listen, I ain’t got a pot to piss in, man. I lost my job. I lost my girlfriend, my apartment. He says, dont worry about it, we’ll carry you. But I still, no me di cuenta, you know? I didn’t capture the moment until I realized that they labeled me a minority. But there was a lot of shit going on. There was a lot of racism. The police, the fire departments. I went to get my test, my application, and they didn’t have them. They were holding on to them for personal family. You know how I got my job besides going to court? There was a fire downtown Hoboken. I had gone for the application for the fire department in 1980. And they said they had no applications to come back. So 2 days later, there’s a big fire. I could see the black smoke billowing from downtown Hoboken. So I was half a block from the firehouse. My mother told me to go to the store to Finest. And this was in 79, I believe it was. And I recall passing by the firehouse. I said, oh, they left the door open. So I said, let me see if the applications are out. And I went into the booth. Booth that I worked in that I watched out of after I became a fireman, and I found a plastic stack of yellow applications. Greedy, I could’ve gotten every application and spread them out to all my friends. But I didn’t wanna make obvious, so I just grabbed one application, put it in my pocket, back pocket, and I went to Finest. I got my mom’s groceries. I went back home. I signed the application. I sent it in. And I got called 4 years later. That’s how nuts! People don’t actually believe what I did, but nobody ever saw me. Next to the firehouse was Twizzlers, the sweetarts. There was the factory next to me there, and the only person that saw me, because she was always nosy, was the owner of the factory.

Frank: Back then, we didn’t have to pay for applications. Today the applications are $35. So I took the test. Couple of months later, I received the civil service that I’m to take the test. November 13, 1985. 1985.

Chris: Look at that!

Frank: That’s when I became a fireman. And only because Cappiello and Tommy Vezzetti were running for mayor. Now what happened was we had to go to that minority quota in the city of Hoboken. And we didn’t have that one extra guy, so we didn’t meet the quota. We needed a Hispanic or black so that we can meet the quotas mandated by the state. So I winded up not getting made, and we had to go to court. And I was already starting to lose it because I was very upset, like, I took my test. I passed. I came out 26th on the list. I recall telling you also that they messed up my timing. They didn’t stop the clock. And we had to go to court, with judge Sorokin. Judge was a very angry judge to me at the time, but, you know, it was a minority issue and, you know, he wanted to know what’s going on and why are we over here in court for a job if we’re already on the list. Well, the thing was that the quota had to be met, and they needed another Hispanic or black body to meet the quota. So from June, we went to court. We lost it. We lost the case. Then I was wandering around the city of Hoboken in the rain one day. I lost my then girlfriend, my apartment, and my job. I was kinda depressed. And as I’m walking through 6th and, I wanna say it was 6th and Jefferson or Monroe. The mayor, Cappiello, had a club there. They used to play cards there. It was a civic club. A civic association club. And, you know, Cappiello lost.

Chris: That’s right Vezzetti won.

Frank: It was actually he didn’t get the 51%, so they had to vote again. They had to run the election again. So I remember telling Vezzetti coming up one day and he said, if I win this election, you’re gonna be a fireman. And I promise you, I’ll keep my word. Thomas Vezzetti won the election. On November 13 we won our appeal, and he made us firefighters. It was 13 of us. Literally, it was 12, but the other one was in the police academy. We had 2 guys that went to police academy. But they made us and we got sworn in November 13, 1985. I’m still trying to find pictures from that and I can’t. I’m still trying to find pictures of when I got promoted and I can’t. Somebody’s got them out there, but, you know, I lost a lot of pictures that my son had. I think what happened was he got rid a box not knowing that I had those treasures in there and especially the plaque that my mom and my dad gave me when I got promoted to captain. I still think about that plaque now because that was a gift that my mom and my dad gave me. And I never got a chance to, put it on the wall. Then when I did find it, it was a it was broke. I remember feeling bad about it. I put it away to save it. Unfortunately, I lost that. I lost many pictures that I had from back in the days. Me when I was 2 years old walking around naked in my house with my little baby sister crawling on the bed. Pictures of my mom, my dad, my siblings, old pictures from, like, 1960. You know, back then, black and whites. Didn’t even have the Polaroids back then. It was a very precarious upbringing in Hoboken, you know, with the Hispanics and the rest of the world around us, you know. But I learned a lot. I learned how to be respectful. I learned how to be understanding. I learned how not to be judging people because being judgmental in a society today, it’s not something that you wanna be. There’s too many, there’s too much in this world.

Chris: Come take a picture with me.

Chris: This is what?

Frank: This is my first souvenir that I bought when I retired from the rescue unit. That I had it engraved.