By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, May 10, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | Edition: Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01
Two weeks ago, Bill and Joan Metz’s next-door neighbors and two couples from across the street brought them a cake to celebrate both their birthdays.
Despite Bill’s protests about making a fuss, they had a good time reminiscing about when their children were young, and looking at wedding photographs of the Metzes oldest daughter.
Early Thursday, the neighbors watched helplessly as Bill, 60, and Joan, 59, perished in a fire that destroyed their house at 96 Columbus Road, Demarest.
“I will never forget the sight of those flames shooting up at midnight last night,” Randi Dalaker of 90 Columbus Road said Thursday. Dalaker and her husband, Tore, had been neighbors of the Metzes for 31 years. “Our worst fears came true that they were in the house. “
Demarest Police Chief James Powderley, on routine patrol with one of his officers, reported the fire about 12:15 a.m. Thursday. Fire Chief Gerald Smithson said the house appeared to have been burning for an hour when Demarest volunteer firefighters, assisted by firefighters from Closter and Haworth, arrived.
Investigators are labeling it an accidental fire, said Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy, but he added that an investigation is continuing. Preliminary indications were that the fire started in the kitchen on the first floor, he said.
The Metzes were found dead in the second-floor bathroom, off the master bedroom. They died of smoke inhalation, Fahy said.
The two-story house in a neighborhood of neatly kept single-family homes was roped off Thursday; a police car was parked in front. Motorists stopped and talked to an officer about the fire.
Bill Metz had been a mechanic with the Otis Elevator Co. in New York City since 1950, and Joan was a former nurse at Demarest’s Northern Valley High School who still substituted there periodically.
Randi Dalaker, a month younger than Joan Metz, said that with the Metzes four children two sons and two daughters grown and departed, the neighbors savored the time they spent together.
“When the children were younger, we were constantly eating at each other’s house,” she said. “We belong to the same church, the Methodist Church, with the Greenwalds and the Garrans. Our children grew up together. We celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, picnics, Christmas; we did church activities together. “
Gary Garran of 91 Columbus Road said the neighbors often had parties, with each family trying to outdo the others.
“It was a family tie rather than neighbors, so it was quite a shock,” Garran said. “If we could relive that and put it in a movie or something, it would be a thing for the whole world to see, that this is how neighbors should live. “
Keywords: DEMAREST; HOUSING; FIRE; DEATH; FAMILY
ID: 17342742 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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