Thomas Cardinale of Amityville dies at 81

Thomas Cardinale of Amityville had a distinguished business career, but his lifelong occupation was making things better, whether it was establishing online banking or treating the mailman like a close relative, family and friends said.

If an employee had a flat tire, the bank executive went to the rescue. When his daughter started a business, he helped her celebrate and wash away doubts with Dom Pérignon. He thrilled his new wife by encouraging her to be a stay-at-home mom because she had had a hard life as a single parent with two jobs.

“Anybody and everybody that came into his life came out a better person,” said daughter Lisa Cardinale of Merrick. “You looked up to him.”

Cardinale, who retired in 2005 as senior vice president and chief information officer at Greenpoint Savings Bank, died of lung cancer at age 81 on Oct. 22.

'Everyone loved Tom'

Cardinale's banking career started in 1963 as a teller at the Brooklyn-based Kings Highway Savings Bank, then quickly shifted to the data processing office, where he immersed himself in computer programming and IBM mainframes, those who knew him said.

In the early years of online banking, he realized branch-based computers would serve customers better.

“He kept advancing the system,” said friend Joseph Passalacqua of Rockville Centre, who started working with Cardinale at the bank about 57 years ago. “We were the first bank to use these small computers in each branch and to provide continuity if the mainframe went down. It provided us with a type of security that a lot of banks didn’t have.”

Born in Brooklyn, Cardinale showed his commitment to work early on. As a young man, he got a job as a butcher, and, the third of four children, he was the first to graduate from college, earning a bachelor’s degree in computer programming from St. John’s University in 1962.

He also did a stint in the Army as a sharpshooter, getting an honorable discharge as a sergeant in 1964.

Cardinale was still passionate about computers after Kings Highway Savings Bank was sold, so in 1978, he became president of the Joint Computer Center, which provided record-keeping and other online services to banks and businesses.

After the company closed in 1990, he ended up at Greenpoint Savings Bank, where Passalacqua and his boss hand-picked Cardinale to join them.

“He just loved the business and made sure all the ‘i’s were dotted and the ’t’s crossed,” his friend said. “Wherever he went, they all loved him. He cared about people.”

Cardinale showed the same caring for 35 years as president of the housing development where he lived, Timber Ridge Homeowners Association, said his wife, Theresa Cardinale. He made sure trees were pruned, kept the records and even dressed as an elf every Christmas, when he oversaw holiday parties for the families.

“Everyone loved Tom and they never wanted anybody else to be president,” the widow said.

She and Tom were colleagues at Kings Highway Savings Bank, and many years later, when she was working for another bank, she spotted him in the office when he came to drum up business for the Joint Computer Center.

She, a single mom with a son, and he, a divorcee with a daughter, started dating in 1984. He touched her with his generosity, often saying “I’ll pay for that” when he saw seniors at the checkout line or strangers he wanted to help.

“Tom’s philosophy in life was you treat the janitor exactly like you treat the president,” his wife said.

The two married in 1987. She had told him that her dream was to live in a house where she could sit by the fireplace on a cold winter’s night and watch the snow fall.

He delivered, buying the model home at Timber Ridge, a small development right off the Great South Bay, and telling her to buy any furniture she wanted.

She said of her life with her husband: “It was milk and honey.”

Besides his daughter and wife, Cardinale is also survived by his brother John Cardinale of New Rochelle, stepson Robert Spinello of Middle Island and four grandchildren.

A Mass was celebrated at St. Martin of Tours Roman Catholic Church in Amityville on Oct. 28, followed by burial at St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale.