WWII vet Tony Palumbo, 87, loved to build, create

Tony Palumbo was good with his hands. He used them to resuscitate a crew member during a bombing mission in World War II, to expand his Plainview home as his family grew, and to tinker in the basement of that home, rebuilding antique lamps to the delight of his relatives and friends.

Palumbo died Sunday after a stroke. He was 87.

Anthony Palumbo was born in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, and grew up in Corona, Queens, where his father, Joseph, a sanitation worker who had emigrated from Italy, taught him to fix cars.

He was 20 years old when he enlisted in 1943.

A B-17 waist gunner with the U.S. Army Air Forces based in Italy, he survived 50 missions including, in 1944, missions over a Romanian oil refinery complex in Ploesti.

On one mission, Palumbo noticed that his tail gunner had passed out, his oxygen line blocked with ice. With a five-minute auxiliary oxygen tank, Palumbo crawled to his crew mate, revived him, cleared the oxygen line and made it back to his own oxygen source before the air ran out, said his son, Tom Palumbo, 46, of Oyster Bay.

Among other honors, Palumbo received an Air Medal.

He returned to Corona, where the Randazzo family had moved into the second story of his parents' two-family home. They had a daughter named Victoria.

It was a short courtship.

They married in 1950 and moved to a four-room bungalow in Plainview. It grew, out and up, with the births of their five children. Palumbo worked as a milkman for Sheffield Farms and Sealtest Dairy, delivering on Long Island's Gold Coast where, invited into customers' homes, he developed an eye for antiques.

Soon, he was buying and restoring his own. For a few years, he owned an antique lamp shop in Amityville. But mostly, he worked out of his basement, where on his day off he tinkered with his oldest son.

"He was a force, a strength," recalled his son Anthony Palumbo Jr., 52, of Plainview, who is now a cabinet maker. "There was a very calming way about him."

Tony Palumbo was known for always lending a hand, shoveling snow, painting a door, fixing a leaky pipe.

He also had a soft touch, Tom Palumbo recalled.

Kids in the neighborhood, scared to pull a loose tooth, came to him.

They would open up, and he would poke in a finger. Shaking his head, he would say, “Hmmm ... it’s a little loose but not loose enough.”

As they walked away, their tongues would discover that it was gone.

In addition to his wife and two sons, Palumbo is survived by his daughters Joann Palumbo, 58, of Manhattan, Linda Palumbo, 56, of Hicksville, and Donna Cardillo, 54, of Plainview; his siblings, Louise Benigno, 89, of Springfield, N.J., Rudolph Palumbo, 84, of Plainview, and twins Henry and Arthur Palumbo, both 78, of Colonia, N.J.; and three grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Plainview.