Today is September 11, 2026 — twenty-five years since the morning that changed the country. Twenty-five years since 343 New York City firefighters walked into two buildings everyone else was running out of. It's a day that belongs to the people who wear the uniform, and here at Prototype, that's Tony Potenti.
Tony has spent his whole working life running toward things most people run away from. Four years in the Marine Corps, the last stretch in a scout sniper platoon. A few more years working the House of Correction. And since 2008, a firefighter for the city of Worcester — the job he says he's grateful for every single day. He's the only active firefighter in our community, and there was never a question about which day his story was going to run.
He's also a husband, a father of three, a board member at WASA who helps run its annual golf tournament, and an insurance producer with Mancuso Nowak — more on that below, because Mike has something to say about it.
Worcester Kid, Marine, Almost a Cop
Tony grew up in Worcester, an only child, and graduated from North High. He tried community college for about six months and figured out what everybody around him already knew: school wasn't for him. So at 20 he joined the Marines.
"I was an infantryman. I was a machine gunner for about a year," he says. "And then I was lucky enough to be introduced to the scout sniper platoon. So I finished out the rest of my tenure in the Marines there."
The plan after the Marines was the same plan he'd had since he was a kid: become a cop. His friends' dads were police officers growing up, and even when he and his buddies "weren't always the most up and up kids," the respect was always there. He took a job at the House of Correction in West Boylston to bide his time while he waited for a police class to open up.
It never lined up. Civil service caps the police test at 32, and the years were going by. So he did the math and made a move.
"I have a bunch of friends that are firefighters. Let me try that out. So we took a test. Did well. The rest is kind of history."
— TonyHe took the job with Worcester Fire in 2008 and never looked back. "I fully embraced it. I'm still into it. I'm so thankful that I have the job right now," he says. "Every day, it's not monotonous in the least. I don't think I'm cut out to sit behind a desk. I like to interact with people — and I get to do that in the community, on the truck."
The Cat
Every firefighter has a first-big-fire story. Tony's has a twist.
He'd just graduated the academy in 2008 when his company caught a real four- or five-alarm fire. His crew was assigned to RIT — the rapid intervention team that stands by in case something goes wrong for the guys inside. So he's across the street, feeling the heat from a building that's fully roasting, watching and learning, throwing ground ladders in case somebody has to bail out.
And then a black-and-white cat appears on the second-floor porch.
"My lieutenant says, 'Get that cat.' So I get the ladder, I put it up, I climb up there, and I'm like, this thing's going to scratch me right in the face," Tony says. "I get my gloves on, grab it by the nape of the neck, bring it down the ladder, and I'm walking around trying to find whoever lives there."
The Telegram caught the whole thing on camera. The next morning, the front page was the fire — and a rookie with a cat.
"To this day, I don't live it down. The guys that are still around, they had some names for me I'm not going to repeat."
— TonyFor the record: yes, they save a lot of cats. And dogs. And exotic animals. And people.
Four or Five Fights. Never Lost One.
Somewhere in there, Tony also boxed. His grandfather was a professional boxer, so there was some lineage. He started in the Marines — "they kind of destroy you," he says, "you just go in there and fight guys" — and after he got out, he fought in what they call smokers: charity bouts between the jail, the police, the fire departments, all the agencies putting a guy or two forward.
His first one was at the Hippodrome in Springfield, in front of about a thousand people, against a corrections officer. He had a real trainer, a real game plan. He went out in the first round trying to conserve energy and came back to the corner to get absolutely lit up. "What the hell are you doing?" his trainer said. So he went out for the second round and poured it on. The kid made a mistake. Tony caught him. Second-round knockout.
The second fight was even shorter. The guy across the ring claimed to be good. He wasn't. "I was hitting him so much I looked at the ref and said, 'This is for charity,'" Tony laughs. First-round stoppage.
He went four or five fights and never lost. Then he stopped, for the same reason a lot of guys stop doing a lot of things: kids. "If I wasn't at work, I was home." And for the record, Colleen was never a big fan of the boxing.
"I Hear a Lot of Weird Things About the CrossFit People"
Tony and Colleen started their family in Worcester and moved to Westborough when the kids were little — better schools, a little closer to Colleen's work in the Boston area, and a lucky break on a house at the right moment in the market.
He'd always liked training with a group. That came from the Marines. But he'd never done CrossFit, and when a friend who was a trainer told him he'd love it, his honest response was that he'd heard a lot of weird things about the CrossFit people. She told him to just go. So one day in 2011 he took the dive at Small Town CrossFit here in Westborough.
He didn't know anybody. Then a guy in the warmup introduced himself, asked if he played softball, and told him to come down to the field for practice next week. It was a legitimate tryout. He made the team.
"The softball guys became golf guys. And then the wives all knew each other. That was the introduction into Westborough."
— TonyIn January 2016, Jesse Dimick — a former Prototype coach and physical therapist — handed him a holiday gift card and told him to come check the place out. Tony had been thinking about heading back into Worcester to train, but he didn't want to. He wanted to be grounded here, five minutes from his house. He came in with an open mind, did the fundamentals program, and stayed.
"Jesse is why I came," he says. "I'm glad Jesse led me here."
Ten Years on the Floor
Tony walked in thinking he was in decent shape. Then he watched guys do muscle-ups and drop straight into 25 deadlifts.
"I thought I'd been there, done that," he says. "And then it was such a good challenge. That's a real big part of why I like it — every day you come in here, it's a challenge within yourself, or with your buddies. And at the end of the workout, everybody's so happy. Fist bumps. 'Good job.' 'You crushed that.'"
He'll tell you the coaching is what makes it work, especially for someone with his kind of competitive streak. "You see people hitting PRs, benching this, putting this over their head. That's how you get in trouble. You can't lift that weight yet, so don't try to lift that weight yet. Here, there's always an alternate movement. The coaches are very welcoming to the athletes. That's refreshing."
The numbers back him up. Ten years in, at 105 class sign-ins over the last twelve months, Tony is still setting all-time PRs. And the guys he met on the gym floor became the guys on the golf trips — trips he's determined to get going again.
When people at work ask him where he trains, he tells them Prototype, and then he tells them why. "The programming here, there's a lot of thought and care behind it for every athlete. Each coach will say, 'All right, you can't do that — let's work on this, let's do some mobility.' You don't get that in other places."
"You come in here and you think it's just a gym. It's more than that. You have all walks of people here — 72-year-old women to 20-year-old guys. Everybody comes in with probably the same goal. Health. Wellness. Maybe some mental health."
For a guy who's spent his career walking into the worst day of other people's lives, that last part isn't a throwaway line.
One More Thing About Tony
When Tony isn't on the truck, he's a producer at Mancuso Nowak Insurance — home, auto, life, and commercial coverage. Mancuso Nowak is a Prototype community business sponsor, and they've backed what we do here for years.
A word from Mike: Tony is my insurance guy. Not "a guy I know who does insurance" — he handles my policies, and I would send my own family to him without a second thought. He's honest, he picks up the phone, and he treats your coverage like it's his own. If you need home, auto, life, or commercial insurance, or you just want someone to look over what you've got, call Tony at Mancuso Nowak. I recommend him and his company without reservation: mancuso-nowak.com.
