Santo Bivone, World War II veteran

Santo Bivone, a World War II veteran, died on April 30, at age 93.

Born on Nov. 1, 1919, in Manhattan’s Little Italy, to parents Lena and Charles Bivone, Santo was the youngest of their 10 children. His childhood coincided with the Great Depression, and it became even more trying when his father died when Santo was young. Lena, left to care for all the children, was forced to give four of them up to a foster home, including Santo.

Upon leaving foster care as a teenager, he returned to the foster home to retrieve his sister, Rosie, who was the last Bivone left there. “That’s how my father was,” said Richard Bivone, Santo’s youngest son. “He was that type of guy. Never leave anyone behind.”

For the rest of their lives, Santo and Rosie maintained a “phenomenal” relationship, Richard said.

Their mother died when Santo was still a teenager, the victim of a car accident in which she was struck by a drunk driver.

Santo enlisted in the Army at age 22, and was a member of the Signal Corps. He was part of the second wave that landed on Omaha Beach to liberate internment camps in Normandy, France. He also spent time in Germany, England and Belgium.

According to Richard Bivone, while his father was in a destroyed French town, he found an abandoned camera store, took a camera and began snapping photos of the destruction. His family still has the collection.

Santo’s older brother, Danny, was also part of the second wave that came ashore in Normandy. One night, Danny left his base to find Santo and check on how he was doing. “Which was unheard of,” said Richard. “How do you find somebody when there’s thousands of soldiers? And he found him.

“His family, they had a very close bond,” Richard continued, “and that’s the way they were.”

After the war, Santo settled in Brooklyn and worked as a mechanic for the Long Island Rail Road. He met his future wife, Virginia Maione, when he was 26, and they married on June 24, 1950. This year would have marked their 63rd wedding anniversary.

Santo worked for the LIRR for 11 years until being laid off. He and Virginia bought a house in Elmont in 1954, and for 20 years he worked as a driver for the Town of Hempstead’s Sanitation District 6.

Richard said that he and his brother, Steven, had a memorable childhood. “Growing up in Elmont, at nighttime, everybody on the block would come over to our house,” he recalled. “In the summertime, there was a party every night. All the neighbors came over, and it was amazing.”

Indeed, Richard said that when he brought his wife, Karen, to Elmont to meet his parents, she wondered why he didn’t tell her they were hosting a party, to which Richard replied, “No, that’s every night. That’s the way it is in our family.”

Santo never spoke of the war, but his family later learned just how much it haunted him. When he underwent open-heart surgery in 1999, doctors referred to him as “the Omaha Kid” because, according to Virginia, “under anesthesia, all he did was talk about the war.”

The operation took place on Santo and Virginia’s 49th wedding anniversary. Virginia said she told him, “If you survive this, we’re going to have a big blowout next year. Which we did.”

The following year, a party at the Westbury Manor marked their 50th anniversary. For their 60th, in 2010, the couple, with along with Richard and Karen, Steven and his wife, Joyce, and their five grandchildren, went on a cruise. “We really had a good life,” Virginia said.

Richard said he learned many things from his father, but what resonated most was the kindness with which he treated people. He recalled his father telling him, “You will go through life, and you will meet a lot of people, and there will be some people who may treat you unfairly. But that doesn’t mean you are going to do that. You were brought up different.”

Santo retired in 1980. Virginia worked as an assistant in Nassau County district court until her retirement. The two moved to the Knolls of East Meadow Senior Community in the early 2000s to be closer to Richard, who lives in East Meadow. In the winter months, the two would spend time in Florida and pay a yearly visit to Steven, who lives in Georgia.

Santo loved to dance, and continued to do so until his final days. “Even though he was 93 years old, let me tell you, that man could dance up a storm,” said Virginia. “He’s probably dancing up in heaven.”

But in March, while in Florida, he fell and broke his hip, and never recovered. After learning about his father’s condition, Richard said, he had reservations about going to see him, because he wanted to always remember him positively. But he decided to go, and says today, “It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.”

He and Karen, and Steven and Joyce, flew to Florida. When he walked into the hospital room, Richard said, he could see that his father “was in a lot of pain and suffering, he couldn’t eat, and he was rapidly losing life. And he looked up, and put both thumbs up, and his eyes opened up wide and he said, ‘I’m now happy.’”

Santo’s funeral was held at the Charles J. O’Shea Funeral Home in East Meadow, and he was buried at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury.

Richard said that his family intends to send the photos his father took in Normandy to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. “Not many people have seen actual, real photographs of what happened when they were liberating the camps,” Richard said. “We want the world to see it.”