Lynn man looks back on 1942 nightclub fire that killed 500

LYNN – Lynn resident John Rizzo worked as a waiter all his life, but in 1942 the 21-year-old had just started his career waiting tables at the hip Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston.On that chilly night of Nov. 28, Rizzo remembers chatting with the head waiter of Cocoanut Grove, Frank Balzarini, telling him about plans to grab a meal in Chinatown after work, when he heard a ruckus through the revolving door that led down to a popular basement lounge.”I was talking to him about who we were going out with tonight, when I stopped and said ?Frank, I think there’s a fight,'” Rizzo said from his Lynn home last week.But what the rookie waiter turned to see was much more terrifying: people bounding up the stairs, fireballs of flames over their heads and wide-eyed terror on their screaming faces. Rizzo watched in horror as the revolving door jammed, the result of too many people trying to get through the only exit they could reach to escape the flames quickly engulfing them.View historic photos from the fireNow the 92-year-old is one of a dwindling number of survivors of the worst nightclub fire ever, which killed nearly 500 people.”He is a living piece of history,” said Leominister resident Jim Dora, who along with his brother, John Dora, collects memories and items from survivors of the Cocoanut Grove.View Rizzo’s memorabiliaThe Dora brothers have met with Rizzo about a dozen times to recount again and again Rizzo’s story of how he ran across the main dining room to another exit but was instead pushed down into a basement bar, where he fell onto a pile of panicked, trapped people.”People were running around, hitting doors like the refrigerator doors, the stock room doors,” in hopes of finding some exit, Rizzo recalled.As he struggled to stand, Rizzo remembered that he had joked earlier that night with a bartender in that very room who seemed relaxed working under the cool breeze of an open window.Rizzo looked up and saw the narrow window. It was shut. He snapped a pipe off the wall, threw bottles of liquor off shelves and climbed up on the bar to reach it, balancing precariously on an uneven lump of dirt.He pried it open and started hoisting people through, not sure what was on the other side and hoping it was a relatively soft landing.”I was afraid there were all brick buildings around there,” he said.One-by-one he tossed people into the cold night; a 15-year-old busboy was the last one to go.Those he helped escape had all scattered except for one shivering woman. She told Rizzo her husband was under the bar, too injured to move, and she wasn’t leaving without him.”I really didn’t want to go back in there,” Rizzo said. But he tumbled back through the window head first, grabbed the woman’s husband and squeezed him and himself out one more time.Once safely out again, Rizzo hoisted the woman around his neck, cradled her injured husband in his arms and ran down the alley to a street, where an ambulance picked up the couple and left Rizzo, his waiter’s jacket bloody, to catch his breath.Once, his late wife read a column in The Boston Globe written by a couple searching for the man who rescued them from Cocoanut Grove’s basement and carried them both to safety. Rizzo never was able to reach them.Stories like Rizzo’s are precious memories of a disaster many people are quickly forgetting, said Jim Dora.Not Rizzo.He recites every detail of that night with matter-of-fact clarity.”He is literally a part of that history of that fire, and for someone who is of his mindset and his ability to recall every detail; it’s like talking to somebody in history,” Jim Dora said.Rizzo went on to wait tables at many more restaurants, serving celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Pearl Bailey.But the fire never left him. He and his brother, who also survived the fire, testified about their experiences in court; Rizzo has given dozens of newspaper interviews and even written chapters in books like John Dora’s.He keeps all of the newspaper clippings and Cocoanut G