STUART — Ferdinando “Freddie” Pierno wanted to make everyone in the room laugh, even when he was sick.

Fred Pierno

The Martin County Fire Rescue firefighter paramedic was dying of liver cancer, and toward the end, his fellow firefighters took shifts caring for him.

When it came time to carry Pierno to bed, the larger-than-life Brooklyn native would belt out in song. In Italian.

“He didn’t want us to feel sad,” his older brother, Anthony Pierno, said.
On Monday, the tears came anyway.

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Fred Pierno in July 2007, when he was working to put out a small brush fire near the Holly Creek subdivision, just off Jensen Beach Boulevard. Photo by Vada Mossavat.

Fellow firefighters stood at Pierno’s bedside Wednesday as the Martin County Fire Rescue veteran lost a battle with Hepatitis C complications at his Port St. Lucie home.

“He died with his friends and his crew,” fire rescue spokesman Jon Belding said on Friday.

Afterward, Pierno’s friends remembered his commitment to Martin County Fire Rescue. Others said they considered the Vietnam War veteran a hero.

But Pierno, 55, also leaves behind a legacy of a different sort — he is the department’s first to die in the line of duty.
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