Retiring Cherry Hill firefighter looks back on career

When the alarm came in that bright April afternoon in 1977, Dan DiRenzo wasn't supposed to be at the Erlton Fire Company in Cherry Hill. But after a day teaching social studies, he stopped by to trade stories with the one full-time firefighter and a handful of other volunteers.

Then the bell sounded: a building fire at the Garden State Park racetrack.

As the seven men jumped for Engine 1323, spotting the light gray smoke wafting from the site, they realized there were 10,000-plus fans gathered for the afternoon's race.

"We looked at each other with a little concern," DiRenzo said last week, just days after his retirement from the fire department. "We anticipated ... something of consequence."

It would be by far the largest fire in DiRenzo's career, one that could be seen 30 miles away in Trenton.

Earlier this month, after 36 years with the Cherry Hill Fire Department, DiRenzo retired, taking along memories of the racetrack fire and many, many others.

Though he had worked as the department's chief finance officer since engineering the district's consolidation in 1994, DiRenzo spent his last day on duty responding to calls in an engine driven by his son, Dan DiRenzo III, also a Cherry Hill firefighter.

The familial bonds within the department were never better shown, DiRenzo said, than by the care put into his send-off.

From the egg-and-bacon breakfast prepared for him by the men finishing their night shift to spending the day with his son, who decided he'd follow his father to the department when he was 5, DiRenzo said his last day was exactly what the fire department - "a different breed" - is about.

"There's that camaraderie," he said. "I think it's the uniqueness of the job, to be honest with you. I remember one police officer said, 'You're crazy. Everyone else is running out of the burning building, and you're running in.' "

DiRenzo, 57, was born in South Philadelphia but moved to Cherry Hill, then Delaware Township, at age 4. Over the years, he's seen businesses replace the houses that lined Route 70, shopping developments spring up, and the turkey farm leave his old Locustwood neighborhood.

"I grew as the town grew," he said.

He joined the fire department near the end of his time at Rutgers University-Camden, when he'd often hang out with friends who volunteered at the Erlton firehouse, next to their apartments on Route 70. When their pagers went off, DiRenzo would look on as his friends scrambled down the stairs to report for duty.

"I'd follow them and say, 'My God, this is pretty cool,' " DiRenzo said. "That's how it started."

By the autumn of 1972, DiRenzo joined the department as a volunteer. He worked two years after graduation as a Cherry Hill police officer, then taught social studies at Heritage Junior High School, now Rosa International Middle School. He became a full-time firefighter in 1986.

It was watching his father keep the community safe, while forging meaningful bonds, that drew Dan DiRenzo III to join the Wildwood Fire Department after high school.

He'd been riding his bike down to the station whenever an alarm sounded since he was 5 years old.

"It's the best job in the world," Dan DiRenzo III said. "It's extremely dangerous, but it's a calling. Firefighters have it within their hearts."

Now an instructor for the Camden County Fire Academy safety and survival unit, Dan DiRenzo III travels around the region teaching firefighters how to rescue their comrades when disaster occurs. He said it's all because of his father.

His father faced a career challenge in 1994, when he was put in charge of orchestrating the financial aspects of consolidating the town's six fire districts - each providing different services and levying different taxes - into one Cherry Hill Fire Department. After countless hours of work, the departments were combined - so well that he received calls from fire districts as far away as Kentucky seeking advice about their own consolidations.

Though DiRenzo, like all Cherry Hill firefighters, maintained his active certification, he started spending more time with assets and liabilities than with hydrants and ladders. But he saw the move as a way to care directly for his fellow firefighters by making sure they and their spouses would receive the pay they deserved, said Jim Banner, a friend and colleague of DiRenzo's since joining the Cherry Hill department in 1976.

"When you talk about people's benefits, they get a little testy at times," Banner said. "Dan calmed the waters by answering their questions, and if he didn't have the answer, he would get it right away."

DiRenzo also provided a guiding hand for young firefighters on the job. When Banner was a new firefighter, he and DiRenzo responded to several calls together. Any firefighter who says he doesn't fear fire is lying, Banner said, but DiRenzo helped him focus on the job at hand.

"He was able to calm my fears and help me grow as a firefighter," Banner said.

Much of DiRenzo's time outside the station has been spent volunteering in his adopted hometown, at the school district, on mayoral committees and as vice president of the Erlton South Civic Association. He lives with his wife, Lisa, on Edison Avenue. His two children, Dan and Jaclyn DiRenzo, a teacher at Clara Barton Elementary School, are from a previous marriage.

Mayor Bernie Platt, who has known DiRenzo for 25 years, called him "a true public servant."

DiRenzo has already begun substitute teaching at Cherry Hill High School West, sometimes stopping by the Erlton station afterward for a round of storytelling. Often, he said, the tales wind their way back to that other day he stopped by after school, the day of the racetrack fire.

The April 14, 1977, blaze drew hundreds of firefighters from the region, with even the Philadelphia Fire Department sending two trucks across the river. The fire started in a kitchen and burned for three days, shooting embers across Route 70 and dropping ash miles away.

DiRenzo, the officer in charge of that first engine, was the first firefighter to enter the blazing grandstands.

He could see it was too late to save the wooden structure, built during the steel-rationing days of World War II. DiRenzo directed his crew as they leaned ladders and shouted commands to evacuate the hundreds of fans who remained, mesmerized by the flames. Of the thousands of people there that day, two were never found. One firefighter died of a heart attack en route to the blaze.

"There was a man standing on a narrow ledge with fire behind him," DiRenzo said of the clubhouse's dining room manager, rescued by firefighters who raised a basket from their truck just as flames erupted through the window.

"It was something out of TV, to tell you the truth. . . . Ironically enough, that gentleman came and gave us a souvenir - his suit jacket with holes burned in it. He got out in time."