Victor Alfieri remembered in East Meadow

In photos from his late teenage years, Victor Alfieri smiles in his Navy uniform, surrounded by palm trees in the Philippines. He rarely shared stories about his time in the military with his two children, they said, but he “lit up like a Christmas tree” whenever he saw another Navy veteran.

“He was very proud of his service,” said his daughter, Joanne Alfieri-Ippolito, who showed the Herald old sepia-toned photos of him along with other memorabilia, like his Navy hat, awards he received and letters he wrote.

Alfieri died on March 6, a month after having a heart attack that was followed by a stroke. He was 92.

A Mass at St. Raphael’s Roman Catholic Church in East Meadow on March 10 preceded a service with military honors at Calverton National Cemetery in Wading River.

Alfieri was born on June 18, 1926 in Woodside, Queens.

At age 18, rather than waiting to graduate from Brooklyn Automotive Tech, where he attended high school, he enlisted in the Navy three days after his birthday in 1944.

“He was hell-bent on joining the military,” Alfieri-Ippolito said, adding that his father, Andrea, and his uncles all served in the Army, and a cousin served in the Navy.

Alfieri, a seaman first class, served mostly in Samar, the Philippines, before he was honorably discharged in March 1946. Two years later, he married, and he and his wife, Anna, raised three children in Woodside, before moving to East Meadow in 1957.

“He called her the love of his life,” Alfieri-Ippolito said, explaining that the two met when they were both 5 and lived in adjacent neighborhoods in Queens. They grew close because their parents were friends, and Alfieri’s family owned a prominent butcher shop called Laural Hill Market, in Woodside, where Anna’s parents were regular customers.

The two attended the same middle school, Woodside Intermediate School 125, and Anna was on its swim team. After they began dating, Anna saw Alfieri carrying another girl’s books and, the next day, threw her into the pool.

“They had a typical Italian relationship,” Alfieri-Ippolito said of her parents. “They spoke very loudly. And I think you could say my mother wore the pants.”

After leaving the military, Alfieri pursued the family trade, working as a butcher at Bethpage Farmers Market. He took over Laural Hill Market in the mid-1950s, his daughter said, and sold it in 1969.

He worked in the meat department of what was then Modell’s, in East Meadow, before opening Superior Quality Meats, in North Bellmore, which he ran until 1988. He continued working in his later years as a butcher in the commissary of the Bethpage campus of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Corp.

Alfieri’s son, Victor Jr., called his father a “true sportsman” who enjoyed shooting for sport as well as hunting and fishing. “You’re talking about a time when all you saw on the television were cowboy shows,” Victor Jr. said. “My father reflected the time.”

Father and son were members of the North Bellmore Trap and Skeet Club, which dissolved in the 1970s. Many of its members, including the Alfieris, joined the Peconic River Sportsman’s Club in Manorville. Alfieri would shoot there every Sunday until shortly after Anna died 12 years ago.

He was also an avid chef, and would cook for club members. “He’d open the closet and put everything he could into a pot of soup,” Alfieri-Ippolito said.

In addition to his wife, Alfieri was also predeceased by a sister, Betty Hardin. Along with Alfieri-Ippolito and Victor Alfieri Jr., he is survived by a sister, Marie Cosentino, seven grandchildren, three of their spouses and three great-grandchildren.