John Trobian, South Farmingdale volunteer firefighter, vet, repair shop owner, dies at 96

John Trobian became a volunteer firefighter after his daughter fell off a fence and broke her hip while going to school in South Farmingdale in November 1971.

"So a bunch of women got me around to my mother’s house," daughter Laura Chiomastro said, recalling the fall. She was placed in a car, and the fire department was called.

The firefighters put a splint on her calf, but she wouldn’t let them get her out of the car — she wanted to wait for her dad to do that.

Chiomastro said her father was "just amazed at what" the volunteer firefighters did to help her. After talking to their volunteer firefighter neighbor, Trobian decided to join the South Farmingdale Fire Department, said Chiomastro, who lives in Sayville. He served 50 years with that fire department, as a member of the truck company, a department captain, and South Farmingdale Fire Department Benevolent Association president.

John Trobian died Aug. 29 at Stony Brook University Hospital. He was 96.

Trobian was born July 22, 1929, in Nyack. He was raised by relatives and was close to his mother and stepfather, Elsie and Bill Isenberg.

Chiomastro said her father was "mechanical" as a child.

"My grandmother saved all her pennies and got him a bicycle, and he proceeded to take the entire thing apart ...[and] put it back together," she said.

After dropping out of high school, he worked in an ice-cream parlor with his mother and stepfather before enlisting in the Air Force. He served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1954, when he was honorably discharged.

After returning home from the Air Force, Trobian was set up on a date with his future wife, Eileen McKinstry.

John and Eileen married in 1957, had Chiomastro in 1958, and their second child, John, in 1965, while living in Queens.

Chiomastro described him as very caring, understanding, gentle, and "a very moral guy."

"If you had a flag up and it was dark out and you didn’t have a light on it, he’d have a heart attack about it," she said, because he thought that was disrespectful and unpatriotic.

Shortly after moving to South Farmingdale in 1971, Trobian opened his own forklift repair business, before joining the South Farmingdale Fire Department.

South Farmingdale resident Michael Suwalski, who joined the fire department in 1992 when he was 19, described Trobian as "a stern man, but fair."

Every Thursday night on "firehouse night" Trobian, Suwalski and others would play cards, which he described as important and "a big thing for us to do down there."

After retiring and the death of his wife in 2005, Trobian worked at the Bethpage Golf Course until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In November 2021, he moved into the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook. 

Along with his two children, Trobian is survived by two grandchildren;  and five great-grandchildren.

Trobian's funeral was Sept. 2 at McCourt & Trudden Funeral Home in Farmingdale. He was buried on Sept. 3 at St. Charles / Resurrection Cemeteries in East Farmingdale.