Richard Rocchio, World War II veteran who held local government posts, dies at 99

It started with an ice scraper.

During a frigid winter day in the 1970s, Gloria Campbell, then an assistant in the Nassau County executive's office, was struggling to remove ice from her car when Richard T. Rocchio came to the rescue.

Rocchio, Nassau's director of energy resources, "loaned me an ice scraper to get ice off my car," she said.

They were married in 1975.

"I still have that ice scraper,” Gloria Rocchio, president of Stony Brook nonprofit Ward Melville Heritage Organization, said Wednesday in a phone interview. 

Richard Rocchio, a World War II Navy veteran who worked in a wide range of jobs in and out of government during a long career, died Sunday at Stony Brook University Hospital. He was 99.

Born in Queens and raised in Uniondale, Richard Rocchio came from a family with political ties, including an uncle, Peter Rocchio, who served as Nassau County comptroller in the 1960s, Gloria said.

Rocchio, who had started a photography business after World War II, worked as a volunteer photographer for the 1968 presidential campaign of Democratic Sen. Robert Kennedy, his wife said. Kennedy was assassinated that year while campaigning in Los Angeles.

But Rocchio worked for both major parties, leading a group of Democrats supporting Republican Hempstead Supervisor Ralph G. Caso during his successful 1970 campaign for county executive.

Caso appointed Rocchio to serve as director of Nassau's Division of Energy Resources, his family said in a prepared obituary. In that role, he championed new inventions that caught his eye, such as a “pedal power” battery pack that allowed cyclists to increase speeds without pedaling.

His family said he later served in positions with the trade group Oil Heat Institute of Long Island, Hauppauge-based engineering firm Cashin Associates, and golf course owners associations of New York State and Long Island. 

The family said he volunteered with Youth for Christ and chaired the Salvation Army's Suffolk County advisory board.

Suffolk County Water Authority chairman Charles Lefkowitz said his father, former Brookhaven Supervisor Joel Lefkowitz, appointed Rocchio to the town's Industrial Development Agency around 1980.

“Richard was definitely a true American patriot. He served his country and the community he lived in," Lefkowitz said Wednesday. “It’s the passing of a big voice in the Stony Brook community.”

Rocchio had enlisted in the Navy during World War II. In the war's waning days, he served on a ship that visited tiny Pacific Ocean islands "where our troops were waiting to be picked up," his wife said. "It was a tough job.”

After they married, the Rocchios moved to Stony Brook and threw themselves into local affairs. Richard volunteered in marketing and public relations with the Stony Brook Community Fund, the precursor to the Ward Melville Heritage Organization.

The nonprofit and its subsidiaries manage the Stony Brook Village Center shopping mall and several historic sites in the community. More recently, the heritage organization has focused on efforts to rebuild a dam destroyed in an August 2024 storm.

Gloria Rocchio said it was her husband's idea for her to apply for a vacant position in the nonprofit group.

“Richard wanted me to apply for the job with the Community Fund. I didn’t want to," she said. She was hired in 1980.

Her husband started a youth corps for the Community Fund that is still active, she said.

“It was never dull," Gloria said of life with her husband. "We went so many places and all over Long Island because of my position.”

Besides his wife, Rocchio is survived by a daughter, Valerie Rocchio, of West Hempstead; a son, Rand Rocchio, who lives in upstate New York; a brother, Tom Rocchio, of Huntington; and two grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete, Gloria Rocchio said.

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.