John Hassell, of Stewart Manor, mechanical engineer, dies at 87

John Hassell faced heart-rending decisions with his wife when she was pregnant and learned she had breast cancer, their family recalled.

“I just want you to save her life because she is my life,” Susan Hassell remembers him telling the doctor.

It was part of the family’s “crazy love story,” in which their child was safely born, she beat breast cancer and he mastered creating warm family memories, like often loudly proclaiming, “Isn’t your mom a beauty?”

“We were the last to have air conditioning, cable TV, and he never owned a new car,” Liz Rossi, of Floral Park, said about her father. “But if my mother asked for something, it was given. All our new clothes, dinners out, splurged vacations were for her. She was his person.”

Hassell, a retired IBM mechanical engineer who had dementia, died at age 87 at his Stewart Manor home on May 22, the moment Susan stepped out for the first time in days, his family said.

The father of three girls, he grew up in Barbados in a household of six females — his mom, three sisters, an aunt and a cousin. His father, a seaman, was often away on trips, so little John was the man of the household, the one who did odd jobs and figured out things, his family said.

His childhood with females helped bring out the “social butterfly” in him, from dancing to talking with strangers, his relatives said. He could turn what should have been a 15-minute walk to a store into a one-hour confab with neighbors and friends who were driving by.

He was 14 when his family emigrated to Woodhaven, Queens, relatives said. After high school, he served in the U.S. Army in Germany, got his engineering degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and was hired in 1963 by IBM, where he retired after 30 years.

He and Susan knew each other as kids but were young adults when they met again at a wedding party. Susan, impressed by his interactions with people, ended up asking him to a New Year’s party.

“He just made people feel good,” said his wife. The couple was married 59 years.

Hassell was thrilled to have only daughters, because he wasn’t into what he considered guy activities, like mainstream sports or watching television, his children said.

When his daughters were little, he often traveled around the country setting up IBM computer systems and made his returns special occasions, bringing back gifts and packets of plane snacks, his family said. They could put makeup and hair clips on him while he read the papers in his corner chair. Every Christmas, he would chase his young daughters around the block to the tree salesperson, telling them they could have the biggest tree they could carry and surreptitiously giving a hand with the tree on the way home.

“He was awesome,” said daughter Gretchen Goldblum, of Stewart Manor.

As a parent, he taught his children not to worry over the small things, and that mistakes, even falling while learning to skate, had a good side, recounted his daughter Caroline Olfano, of West Islip. “It was just an opportunity to learn,” she said.

After his daughters married, Hassell gamely joined his sons-in-law to watch sports, invariably mixing up his terms, like calling a touchdown a home run, family members said.

He volunteered as a Bellerose Fire Department firefighter and an usher at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Bellerose, but his proudest volunteer role in retirement was helping sick children, family members said.

For years, he drove children with spinal issues and other problems and their parents to appointments at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, making about 100 trips as part of the nonprofit’s Road Runner Club, which he later ran, they said. He also helped organize a mobile scoliosis van to go to one of New York City’s low-income areas, happy that 20 children were identified for treatment, according to his family.

“He showed his love, he showed his sadness, he cried,” Rossi said. “He was very forthcoming with his emotions. He wasn’t shy about it. He didn’t feel like he was less of a man.”

Besides his wife, Goldblum, Rossi and Olfano, Hassell is survived by his sisters, Mary Young, of Syosset, and Carlyn Piccoli, of Vero Beach, Florida. 

A service was held May 28 at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Bellerose Village. His ashes were interred at Christ Episcopal Church in Garden City.