Uniondale native Arthur McNeill dies

Arthur McNeill had a laugh you could hear around the neighborhood.

He was quick with a joke, members of his family said, but he was also full of compassion -- a hard working family man at his core.

After a three-year battle with uveal ocular melanoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer, McNeill died Thursday. He was 47.

McNeill was a serious Jets fan and a lifelong Long Islander. He was raised in Uniondale and went to Uniondale High School, where his sister, Mary Homola, said he was a star track athlete.

But he was no stranger to adversity -- McNeill was born with a mild form of cerebral palsy.

"From the day he was born he had many challenges," Homola, 54, of Fort Myers, Fla., said of her younger brother. "And people would never know it -- he overcame every challenge. He really never gave in."

After high school, he chose a career in plumbing, and worked for 22 years as a plumbing supervisor at A. Holly Patterson nursing home in Uniondale.

Before he met his wife Jeannine and settled down, he was the drummer in a rock band and played at Long Island venues.

But once he began a family, that was his life, Homola said. They met in 1988 through Jeannine's cousin and married in 1994.

"He was very compassionate, very loving," Homola said. "He was the greatest dad in the world. His wife and kids came first in everything."

McNeill and his wife were raising their three school-aged children in East Northport. He was "the kind of person that's great with kids," Homola said.

In the last month of McNeill's life, when his health suddenly declined, he still spent every night at home with his wife instead of in hospice care.

"He slept every night here with her and she took care of him," Homola said.

McNeill is predeceased by his mother, Mary McNeill. Besides his wife and sister, he is survived by his father, Thomas McNeill, of Fort Myers; sister Elizabeth Bello of Massapequa Park; and his three children, Victoria, 12, Kenneth, 10, and Anna, 8.

There will be visitation from 2 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Monday at Brueggemann Funeral Home in East Northport. Funeral Mass will be said at 9:45 Tuesday at St. Anthony of Padua, East Northport.

Interment will be at Genola Cemetery in East Northport.