Lt. Geoffrey Guja, 47, was on light duty at a Brooklyn headquarters recovering from a previous injury and was not required to respond to fires. But when he heard the alarm for the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, Guja and another lieutenant hopped on a subway and sped to the Twin Towers, where they geared up with another company. He was killed when the towers crumbled.
"He didn't have to go, but there was no stopping him. He died doing what he loved to do," said his wife, Debbie, of Lindenhurst. Guja, who worked for the New York City Fire Department for 13 years, also was a registered nurse part time at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre. "He never talked about that part of his life, but so many people from the hospital came to his service and talked about what a good nurse he was and how much they all loved him," his wife said. Others came from his former firehouse in the Bronx and told anecdotes about Guja's good-natured antics that kept everyone's spirits up. After years of service in the Bronx, he was transferred as a "floating lieutenant" to Brooklyn's Battalion 43.
Guja's passion was his 43-foot houseboat, which he kept at Gilgo Beach. Every July 4, he would take his wife and stepdaughters, Kelly and Jamie, on a cruise to the Statue of Liberty. "He was the king of Gilgo Beach - everybody knew him," Debbie Guja said.
