NY Times

The people in black knew the man inside the Brooklyn chapel, the smiling 33-year-old in the photographs and in the coffin. They were friends and cousins, friends' mothers and aunts, neighbors and young children with no idea what was going on. All were wet from the steady rain outside.

The mourners in the blue line were firefighters in their dress uniforms, paying their respects from firehouses all over New York City to a fallen comrade. And yesterday was just the beginning. Most of them will wear those uniforms to wakes and funerals every day this week.

"Did you know Joey?'" one asked another.

"No,'" came the reply. "I work in the South Bronx.'"

Yesterday's wake was for Joseph Graffagnino, one of two firefighters killed on Saturday when they became trapped high in the burning Deutsche Bank skyscraper at ground zero. The second firefighter was Robert Beddia, 53, of Staten Island. Both were assigned to the SoHo firehouse of Engine 24 and Ladder 5.

Investigators have found that the standpipe in the building was inoperable, leaving the firefighters without water.

Firefighter Graffagnino's funeral will take place tomorrow, while Firefighter Beddia's wake begins today, with his funeral set for Friday. For firefighters who knew them and firefighters who did not, it will be a week spent in dress blues.

"These things are emotional for me,'" said Firefighter Joseph Buono, 37, outside the Andrew Torregrossa & Sons Funeral Home yesterday. He works in Manhattan and knew neither of the fallen men. He said: "I just think of my wife and kids at these things. My mother.'"

The funeral home opened three adjoining chapels into one large room. Broad, bright floral arrangements lined the walls, some with the number 5 in the center, for Firefighter Graffagnino's ladder company. Snapshots of him at work and at home were mounted on easels. He was a firefighter for eight years, an avid bodybuilder with a daughter age 4 and a son not yet a year old.

The firefighters filed by the closed coffin in groups of three. They stopped alongside, turned to face the coffin and performed a crisp salute before turning to the left again and marching away. Over and over, all afternoon and evening: Turn, salute, turn, march. Turn, salute, turn, march.

A captain with gray in his hair recognized a man his age in the other line, and they shook hands. "Who ever thought we'd be doing this again?'" he asked.

Outside, Robert Koster, 49, a lieutenant from a Chelsea firehouse, spoke warmly of a man he probably had met but did not claim to know. "It's like losing a brother,'" he said. "From everything the guys were telling me, he was a nice kid, a sweetheart.'"

"The toughest guys in the world can't put a fire out without water,'" he said, shaking his head. Then he walked away in the rain, done for the day. One day, anyway.