Firefighter Remembered for Love of Music, Motorcycles and History

His life, as surmised from the famous refrain from his favorite band, was a long, strange trip, but one that ended still too soon.

It began in Elizabeth, and though Livingston was where he spent most of his nights, he also experienced this country's greatest cities as well as those in Europe.

Friends of Anthony J. Deltufo, particularly those he volunteered alongside at the Livingston Fire Department, remember his love of motorcycles, music, guns, politics, the Dallas Cowboys and his life, which ended after 54 years when his motorcycle hit an oncoming car in Short Hill in early July.

"Whenever you were with Anthony you were bound to have a good time," said Livingston fire chief Chris Mullin. "He lived a little on the edge, but he lived and nothing held him back."

Deltufo moved to Livingston along with his two brothers and a sister when he was young, friends said. He attended St. Philomena's Catholic school and graduated from Livingston High School. He went on to Seton Hall University.

Sergeant "Sarge" Gardner, Deltufo's best friend since grammar school, remembers the two backpacking through Europe together in 1980. They visited Amsterdam, Paris, Bonn and countless points in between. Deltufo, an avid reader of military history, loved Munich the best.

"He was a historical buff his entire life," said Gardner.

Almost twenty years ago, Gardner talked Deltufo into joining him at the Livingston Fire Department. He said that Deltufo rode an engine to Brooklyn on Sept. 11, 2001 to cover for the firefighters who had rushed to Ground Zero.

"He was a good fireman," Gardner said. "He got the bug and he loved it."

Music was the great love of Deltufo's life. He had a CD collection of more than 2,000 discs, Gardner said, and the ticket stubs from concerts he saw stretched decades and included acts like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Beach Boys, Kansas, the Allman Brothers and, of course, The Grateful Dead, whose sticker he sported on his Harley Davidson.

"We went to many concerts growing up, " Gardner said. "We went to everybody you can imagine."

Chief Mullin remembered his friend wearing do-rags and sporting tie-dye clothes.

"Anthony lived and breathed the Grateful Dead," he said.

But Deltufo wasn't exactly a hippie. He kept a sign in his yard that proclaimed that he was a gun owner who voted, and most holidays and weekends found him at a rural spread in Pennsylvania with his girlfriend enjoying target practice and riding all-terrain vehicles.

"They would live like they were out in Montana," he said.

Deltufo's girlfriend, who is 30, was thrown from the back of his motorcycle in the wreck, but she was treated and released from the hospital. The 63-year-old woman driving the vehicle suffered no injuries.

Gardner said that Deltufo was returning home after giving pictures of a dead high school classmate to the man's sister.

Deltufo had no children, but he adored his Labrador, named Owsley after the Grateful Dead's infamous LSD cook.

He also loved the Dallas Cowboys and, closer to home, the New Jersey Devils, friends said.

In recent years Deltufo worked for Computer Sciences Corporation, a New York-based company that sent him on many business trips to California and Florida. He also spent time working for defense contractors McDonnell Douglas, and before that, held down a series of jobs including a stint at Western Union, a year selling coin operated nut dispensers and, in college, delivering pizza, friends said.

Perhaps the greatest testament to his life was the scores of friends who turned out to his memorial, Gardner said.

"He would talk to anyone and anyone who talked to him loved him," Gardner said.  "It was just a nonstop laugh every time we were around each other."