The Rutgers University Alumni Federation has presented the Edward J. Bloustein Award to two Livingston College graduates, who are also Livingston College Distinguished Alumni:

2006 KEVIN APUZZIO (LC’06)	2010 JESSIE J. HANNA (LC’07, RWJMS’14)
Heroic Firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician (Posthumous; died in 2006)	Physician Researcher on Pediatric Cancer Founder, Sean Hanna Foundation

The Bloustein Award was established in 1992 in memory of the 17th president of Rutgers University. It recognizes community service outside of the university by a Rutgers alumnus or group of alumni. 

In 2009, this award was integrated into the Rutgers Excellence in Alumni Leadership Awards.

Kevin Anthony Bernardo Apuzzio, a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician (EMT), died on April 11, 2006, in the line of duty while attempting to rescue a woman in a house fire. He was 21, and the woman, Betty Scott, was 75.

A month later, Rutgers University’s Livingston College posthumously awarded him a bachelor’s degree. Also in 2006, Apuzzio was presented posthumously with the Rutgers University Alumni Federation’s Edward J. Bloustein Award for Community Service.

In 2009 the Livingston Alumni Association honored Apuzzio as a Seth Dvorin Distinguished Young Alumnus.

At age 16, Apuzzio, a lifelong resident of Union, New Jersey, had trained to become an EMT. In 2002 he graduated from Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Apuzzio had worked as a part-time EMT in Rutgers Department of Emergency Services for more than three years, and for about two years as a volunteer firefighter with the East Franklin Fire Department, Station 27, in Somerset, New Jersey, where he obtained his Firefighter 1 certification and was promoted to foreman.

Apuzzio, who had studied criminal justice at Rutgers, wanted to become a police officer in New York City. On the day of his death, his family received his police exam test results in the mail. Apuzzio achieved an almost perfect score of 99.6.

A 2009 tribute video to Apuzzio (embedded on this page) interweaves recollections from his parents and from Dan Krushinski, East Franklin Fire Chief.

Joseph Apuzzio called his son a role model. “If he even knew you just a little bit, he’d do anything he could. … He volunteered for just about anything.”

At the fatal fire, Chief Krushinski said, Apuzzio answered the call and entered the burning house “without hesitation, without doubt in his mind.”

His father also remembers taking Kevin fishing: “The first time I took him fishing, I guess he was 6, maybe 7 years old. And he caught a trout, a good size trout, OK? So he drags the trout onto the shore, and I got to pick it up and he saw where the hook was and he got very upset. He said he didn’t want to hurt the trout.”

Krushinski remembered Apuzzio as “a gentleman and easy-going, but he wanted to help people.”

“I think if you drove down (Interstate) 287 and passed five people with flat tires, he probably would have stopped and helped all five people change their tires.”

In 2007, one year to the day after Apuzzio’s passing, members of the Rutgers community and the Apuzzio family gathered in the university’s Public Safety Building to honor him by renaming the training facility the Kevin Apuzzio Training Center.

“Kevin personified the best of Rutgers students: hard work, community involvement and a desire to help others,” said Richard L. McCormick, then president of Rutgers. “We use this training center to prepare public safety personnel to serve and protect our community. It is only fitting that it bear Kevin’s name.”

In December 2013, the voting members of the East Franklin Fire Company established the Kevin A. Apuzzio Memorial Foundation to provide funds and support to student firefighters following in Apuzzio’s footsteps of community service. In June 2014, the foundation officially incorporated as a New Jersey nonprofit corporation. Funds raised support the foundation’s mission to carry on Apuzzio’s legacy through scholarships and outreach programs.

On the 10th anniversary of his death in 2016, friends and family remembered Apuzzio, with the Union Township Committee and the Union County Sheriff presenting commemorative resolutions to his family.

Apuzzio was survived by his parents, Joseph and Marili, and a sister, Leila. He is buried at Mount Olive Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey.

Read more about Apuzzio:

• An EMT and selfless hero who was devoted to others (The Star-Ledger, April 12, 2006)

• A hero, a role model (Coverage of his funeral, April 19, 2006)

Watch the LAA’s interview and video tribute to Apuzzio (2 minutes, 32 seconds), embedded on this page, or open in a new window.

Photos courtesy of the Apuzzio family and the East Franklin Fire Department.

Physician and pediatric cancer researcher Jessie J. Hanna, LC’07, was honored as a Livingston College Distinguished Alumnus in 2013.

In 2007 Hanna founded the Sean Hanna Foundation in honor of his brother. Sean died on April 28, 2007, at age 20, after fighting cancer for most of his life. The nonprofit foundation assists families and organizations battling cancer and is a lifeline of support for various institutions, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

In 2014 Hanna earned a doctor of medicine degree from Rutgers’ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. 

Research for pediatric cancer is drastically underfunded, making it a “second-class disease,” Hanna wrote in a co-authored 2011 commentary in The Einstein Journal of Biology and Medicine. In addition to his other medical research interests, Hanna is working with the Rwandan ambassador to the United Nations to create a hospital in Rwanda focusing on pediatric cancer.

Hanna has also been active with Jessie’s Wish, The Blood Center of New Jersey, Sigma Phi Epsilon and church groups. Among Hanna’s many awards, he has received scholarships from the dean’s office of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and from the National Arab American Medical Association.

As an undergraduate student, he received Rutgers’ Spirit of Service Award in 2006, and in 2010 was honored with the Rutgers Excellence in Alumni Leadership Edward J. Bloustein Award, recognizing community service outside the university.

In 2007, he represented New Jersey as the recipient of the Jefferson Award, the highest national honor for public service, according to a 2014 profile from Rutgers Today.

Video (2 minutes): Hanna discusses his career and his brother’s legacy. Open the video in a new window.