Love Story: Their first meeting wasn't exactly a day at the beach

Gus Petruzzelli of Deer Park talks about meeting his wife, the former Sally Italiano.

It was June 1953 when I met Sally at the Anchor Bar under the boardwalk at Coney Island where she and a girlfriend were sipping soda. We were both 16. I asked Sally if she would like to join me on a blanket to watch fireworks. Insulted by my boldness, she and her girlfriend ran away.

On the subway home to Little Italy I met two friends who told me they met some girls, one named Sally. When I recognized the name, I asked if they had gotten her phone number. When one friend read it aloud, I memorized it and called Sally the next day. Right away she wanted to know how I got her number. I said, "I have my ways." We chatted, and I realized I was being struck by a thunderbolt of love.

I invited Sally, who lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to a friend's graduation party. At the party I asked Sally to dance, and we danced the night away. We started seeing each other regularly after that. On July 5, 1953, we returned to Coney Island. I asked her if she would go steady with me if I asked. She said yes, and I said, "Well, I’m not actually planning to ask you." She got angry, but I immediately said I was kidding and really wanted to go steady.

We dated through our senior year, Sally at the former Bishop McDonnell Memorial High School in Brooklyn, and I at the former Haaren High School in midtown Manhattan. After graduating, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy, one of two recruits recommended to the U.S. Navy Honor Guard in Washington, D.C., and was assigned to sea duty on the USS Kittiwake, a submarine rescue vessel.

On Christmas Eve 1956, Sally and I were at my sister’s apartment on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. In a long hallway, I proposed to Sally, who said yes. We decided to wait until I was discharged before tying the knot. We were married April 12, 1958, at St. Clare Roman Catholic Church in Rosedale, Queens, followed by a lovely reception at Hotel Granada in Downtown Brooklyn. After honeymooning at Hotel St. Moritz (now the Ritz Carlton) in Manhattan, we moved to an apartment in Bensonhurst.

Sally worked as a stenographer for Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., a Wall Street bank, until our first son was born. I went to RCA Institutes, a technical school in Manhattan under the G.I. bill.

In 1961 we bought a house in Deer Park, where our second and third sons were born. I worked at Grumman as a radar test engineer on the lunar module. In 2000, I retired from a staffing company where I had been executive vice president. I wrote a memoir in 2010, "Memories of Growing up in Little Italy, NY," which sells on Amazon.

Sally and I have enjoyed traveling. We had a memorable trip to Europe in 1985, visiting Italy and France. A second trip was to Portugal, Spain and London.

My beautiful wife is truly my soul mate. She raised three wonderful children and is the perfect wife — intelligent, caring, and she makes friends easily. She has a gift for compromise when we have a difference of opinion.

Our three sons gave us six grandchildren who gave us six great-grandchildren, increasing our family to 20. They all love when I make zeppole from an original Feast of San Gennaro recipe.

Thank God I met Sally at Coney Island that day. I was truly blessed. She made both our lives complete, and I wouldn't change a thing.

— With Ann Donahue-Smukler