NORTH PROVIDENCE - David Giammarco Jr. stood at the podium and faced a room full of approximately 230 of the people who matter the most to him.

Some of them he'd never met before that night. Still, he felt connected to them: they were fellow members of the old Geneva Volunteer Fire Company.

“One hundred years only comes once,” he told them. “We're not going to dance this dance again.”

The Geneva Volunteer Fire Company, named for the Geneva Mill, was founded in 1902 in Woodville. Like all the town's original volunteer fire companies, it ceased to exist in 1989 when the town switched to a centralized, full-time department. But it is far from gone.

On Saturday, when the fire company held a reunion to celebrate its 100th anniversary, the Knights of Columbus hall on Douglas Avenue was crowded with firefighters, their families — and their memories.

“This company has spirit, it has tradition,” said former firefighter Harry Westcott, 78. “It's old, but it's alive, as you can see.”

Over steak and shrimp, the old-timers traded stories with their sons and their friends' sons. They remembered a time when a fire company was as much a tightly bonded social club as a public safety facility.

“I remember brotherhood, togetherness, loyalty,” said Fire Chief Steven Catanzaro, who started as an apprentice firefighter with the Geneva company at 15. “I remember a bunch of young guys who respected a bunch of old guys. They took us under their wing, made us feel like we were part of the family. That's what these fire associations were about; it wasn't just about fighting fires.”

He said the older firefighters taught younger ones how to fight — punching sessions upstairs at the fire house — but also how to behave. “It was like hanging out with your father's friends,” he said. “... It was like having 20 fathers.”

Of the older generation of Geneva firefighters, many are gone. Before the meal, the Reverend Bertil Anderson — a firefighter and former Geneva chaplain — led the room in a brief prayer for the departed.

The oldest firefighter in the hall — Joseph Celona Sr., 94 — joined the company as a teenager in 1926. He remembers the fire truck they had before they bought the “modern” Larraby: it was pushed by hand, he said, and it held buckets of water along the sides.

In those days, he said, most fires in Woodville happened at night, the result of accidents at moonshine stills.

At the front of the room, Celona's face and the faces of his comrades gazed out of grainy black and white photographs taken when they were young. Old badges, helmets and boots adorned a table full of Geneva memorabilia.

David Giammarco Jr., only 45, appeared to have a memory almost as long as Celona's. He identified each blurred face by name and heroic epithet: “That's Clifford Ingham,” he said. “He never got beat in a foot race.”

He pointed to another photograph: Maxie, the dog, for 12 years the company mascot. “She disappeared once for three days once and came back and delivered 13 puppies.”

To Giammarco, the history of the Geneva Fire Company has always been family history. His father, former Geneva firefighter David Giammarco Sr., 82, calls his son a “dyed-in-the-wool firefighter.” He was the only one of six children to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Geneva company.

Giammarco said he can't explain why the history of the club is so important to him. “I don't know,” he said. “It's what I am... they tell me I was down there as a 2-year-old, on my bike, whenever the whistle blew.”

Later, he said, “This matters. This is the biggest thing in my life.”

A year ago, Giammarco happened to be around when an old friend of his father's blew into town. Harry Westcott had counted David Giammarco Sr. as one of his best friends in the Geneva company, but the two men hadn't seen each other in 30 years, he said.

Westcott barely remembered David Jr., he said. “He was only an anklebiter running around, always interested in the fire department, always down at the fire station.” He was pleased to meet the grown-up David, and happy to “put a bee in his bonnet” about arranging a 100th anniversary reunion.

He never thought the idea would come to fruition. But on Saturday, looking around the hall, Westcott pronounced himself “awestruck” at the event David Giammarco Jr. had coordinated.

“I think it's a tremendous tribute to the firefighters 100 years ago, and all of them in between,” he said.

After speeches from several firefighters, Mayor A. Ralph Mollis, and state Sen. John Celona (himself a former Geneva member), Giammarco took the podium.

He spoke for a while, joking and working the crowd like a stand-up comedian. Then, one by one, he called the names of the firefighters who were present. “It's too important of an evening to miss anyone,” he said.

From table to table, he knew them all.

When he was finished speaking, the crowd stood and applauded him, whistled, pounded the tables.

“We dance this dance only once,” he told them again. “Stay and dance a long time.”

“It's bittersweet,” he said later. “Every year, we lose members. We lose people, it's scary... We're together tonight, and that's what matters.”

Afterwards, Giammarco stood in the hall as friends and family came up to congratulate him. He talked to them about reincorporating the fire company as a social club, maybe getting together three or four times a year.

“We had to get everyone together,” Giammarco kept telling them. “It's important. It's important.”