Peter Acquavella, 81, Korean War vet

Peter Acquavella's Franklin Square home was damaged in 2006 by a massive gas explosion traced to a neighbor's faulty stove. When his home was being rebuilt, he had the architect make room out front for two chairs and a table.

Acquavella wanted more room to hold court, cigar in hand, and talk with neighbors. The talk might be about his father's old tavern, watching the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field or his service in Korea. Maybe they would talk about how his tomato and basil plants were doing.

"That's what he'd had in Brooklyn," his son, Anthony Acquavella, said of his father's regular confabs. "And that's what he wanted to have there."

Peter Acquavella, who took the deep commitment to community and family that marked his upbringing to a new life on Long Island, died on New Year's Eve. He was 81. He'd been ill since suffering a stroke on Christmas Eve.

He was born in Brooklyn on June 17, 1930, to second-generation Italian immigrant parents. His father worked for the city sanitation department and owned a tavern and grill near Pratt Institute.

Peter Acquavella grew up in downtown Brooklyn and studied watchmaking in high school. He served in the Army during the Korean War, his son said.

When the war ended in 1953, he returned to Brooklyn and married Lucy D'Agostino, a neighborhood girl he'd met during his high school years. The couple moved to East Flatbush.

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Peter Acquavella worked for a time at his father's tavern then got a job at Williamsburg Steel Company in Greenpoint. He'd spend some 30 years with the company, Anthony Acquavella said, working as a welder and then a shipping foreman. The company is no more.

In the early 1980s, the couple left East Flatbush and moved to Franklin Square, where Peter Acquavella worked tirelessly on various home projects.

While the house and vegetable garden were his domain, finances fell to his wife. It was not until after Lucy Acquavella died in 2009, after 56 years of marriage, that her husband, at age 79, wrote his first check, Anthony Acquavella said.

He said his father was gregarious and at times outspoken. Peter Acquavella took an interest not only in the rebuilding of his house, but in almost any construction project on the block.

"He would take his chair and go sit there to make sure they were doing a good job," said Anthony Acquavella, 56. "He never had a problem when he was watching people build something to tell them when they were doing wrong."

In addition to Anthony, who lives in Ambler, Pa., Peter Acquavella is survived by two other sons, Peter Jr., 52, of Doylestown, Pa., and Robert, 48, of Seymour, Conn. He is also survived by four grandchildren and many brothers and sisters-in-law.

He was buried Wednesday. The family said donations in his name may be made to the American Stroke Association at www.strokeassociation.org.