CircleSoft

I am very sad to say that my father, Salvatore Louis Cerchio Senior, has passed away.

My Dad's vocation was the heart blood of the fabric of our existence in this country, indeed, in this world.  Dad's older two brothers founded and ran a heating oil business. Dad started working in that business at 12 years old with a wheel barrow and then, when he turned 21, he became a full partner. Under my Dad's tutelage this business provided one of the core necessities of life to thousands of people in the greater New York Metropolitan area. My Dad's family ran this business as an extended family. Twenty some employees all were sure that they were part of that family...  the family of Efficiency Heating and Appliance Company. Each and every one of "the men" knew that his job was secure, his salary was fair, his health care fully covered and he had an employer that looked upon him as a whole person. "The Efficiency boys", my Dad and his brothers,  assumed a reasonable responsibility for all their employees' welfare.

What is more, out of the four boys, my father served as the heart of that extended corporate family. When any of "the men" had an issue, whether that issue was with his job or with his life, Sonny got a knock on his office door, a door that was very rarely closed.  I grew up with notion that offering employment was a much greater responsibility than just a paycheck. Never was it said aloud, but in my family's and my father's perspective, the stronger are duty bound to offer support and protection to the weaker. This is a multi-millennial aged value the modern world never extracted from Sal.

How Dad transferred this vital attitude to those around him is a complete mystery to me.  I never received any sort of lecture on the above topics. It was more a matter of osmosis. An osmosis that no one was exempt. Hundreds of people attended my Father's traditional Italian Wake. This three day wake at Migliaccio's Funeral Home in Bayonne NJ, which is three short blocks from the house that he carried me into when I was born, and 54 years later, the house he was carried out of after he died.

Throughout those three dreary days my Mom, displayed those family values, comforting many people that were besides themselves in grief, perfect strangers to me, uncontrollably weeping as my Mom comforted them. Mom murmuring words of consolation into their ear. Even on the last evening, standing at the funeral home next to the true love of her life, Mom delivered to her children, a soliloquy that was so sincere, so full of love, it was the perfect reflection of the strength of the man that passed on.

I am adding to the extended body of this post  the feature article that the New Jersey Star Ledger ran about Sal Cerchio the day after his burial. That article reflects his wit, his integrity and even captures just a tiny glimpse of Sonny Cerchio, the man. I would like to add my own anecdote about my Dad, that was not one of his stock stories.  A story I never heard him tell others, a story that reflects the true tenacity and heroism of my Dad.

In the 1950's all the way to 1970's Dad and his brothers shared a 37 foot Richardson sport fishing boat called the Riviera. Dad would take all sorts of people out on that boat, sometimes perks for doing business with the Efficiency Boys. One day, on one of those business outings, an unpredicted squall blew up at Sandy Hook, a point off the New Jersey Shore. The other Efficiency Boys were all busy that day so Dad was solo with a boat full of fishing novices. You see, Dad was also completely deaf in one ear. This was due to unsuccessful surgery around the time of the event described in the article below. The surgery exposed his inner ear to the outer environment and just as the squall started, a rogue wave hit the boat and filled my Dad's inner ear with cold sea water, completely disorienting him. Despite this condition, with no one on board that was able to help him, my father navigated the Riviera safely into port.

I hope that whatever port my sorely missed Dad found on the other side, it is at least half as loving as his port of embarkation.

Gerard J. Cerchio
Principal, CircleSoft Llc.
Former HVAC Specialist, Efficiency Heating & Appliance Company