Longtime manager, bowler rolls last ball in Wantagh

As in bowling, as in life.

Joan McQuade of Lido Beach described her friend Dotty Bennett as "the anchor" on their three-woman team for the three decades or so they bowled together in the Tuesday night ladies bowling league at AMF Wantagh Lanes.

"The more pressure on her, the better she bowled," McQuade said.

That's pretty much the way Wantagh Lanes general manager Jerry Corigliano described Bennett, too.

"Managers come and go, but Dotty has been here all along," said Corigliano, who has worked with Bennett for the past year and a half. "She's been the foundation."

Sunday dozens of family, friends and fellow bowlers turned out at the bowling alley to bid farewell to Bennett, 69, as she retires after 35 years of working as a manager there. She and her husband, David, a retired New York City police officer, are moving next month from their Wantagh home to Wilmington, N.C.

Her three daughters described her as modest and not given to great bursts of emotion, but Bennett made it clear that, while she was looking forward to the move, leaving the bowling alley was not easy.

"I will miss it terribly, terribly," she said. "It's been like a second home."

Trained as a registered nurse, Bennett worked part time at a hospital in Queens until she decided she wanted to be closer to her young daughters. So in 1975 Bennett - an avid bowler, like her husband - started work at the bowling alley minutes from her home. Her part-time job as a bookkeeper soon morphed into a full-time job managing everything from the front desk to leagues.

Kim and Craig Petrella of Massapequa, now in their 30s, started bowling at Wantagh Lanes in the second grade and worked there - where they met - in their teens.

"She used to tell me to clean the garbage can lids," Craig Petrella, 31, said. But when a Mets game was playing on the TV in the bar area, he said he preferred cleaning the windows there instead. "I told her the Mets game wasn't on where the garbage cans were," he said.

Petrella said Bennett would laugh - but then he would clean the garbage can lids.