Alfred 'Jack' Melleby, LIRR conductor, dies at 60

BY NOMAAN MERCHANT

nomaan.merchant@newsday.com

Alfred "Jack" Melleby, a longtime Hicksville resident and a Long Island Rail Road conductor for 26 years, died Tuesday. He was 60.

Melleby was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and graduated from Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School in Brooklyn in 1969. He entered the U.S. Naval Reserves after graduation and later served in the Vietnam War as a helmsman on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, his wife Pat said.

Melleby joined the LIRR in 1974, two years after leaving the Navy. The job was a natural fit for his personality, his family said. "He enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow workers," Pat Melleby said. "He also enjoyed the opportunity to meet and greet other people."

On the train, Melleby dealt with everyone, from the rich and famous to those down on their luck, his wife said. In one memorable encounter with '70s-era singer Harry Chapin, Melleby handed Chapin a train ticket and told him, "Harry, keep the change" - a reference to the song "Taxi."

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On another occasion, a rider on Melleby's train fell asleep and woke up at the end of the line, Pat Melleby said. Rather than let the man wait two hours for the next train, Melleby drove him 30 minutes to the station he had missed, she said.

Pat Melleby met her future husband on the train. One afternoon, her pocketbook had been stolen and she didn't have train fare for the ride home. Jack Melleby agreed to pay for her, and in return, she invited him to dinner. "That was 25 years ago," she said.

Melleby retired in 2000, a spokesman for the LIRR said, moving with his wife to Jupiter, Fla., in 2002.

He continued to organize annual golf outings with a large group of retired LIRR workers before being diagnosed with Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare form of skin cancer, in 2008.

Throughout his illness, he stayed upbeat and kept in close contact with his two children. "I called him three times a day on anything and everything," said his daughter Kathy Faunce of Coram.

Melleby is also survived by another daughter, Tracy Melleby of Bohemia; a sister, Patricia A. Melleby of Lake Worth, Fla.; and two grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Sept. 11 at 10 a.m. at the Charles J. O'Shea Funeral Home, 603 Wantagh Ave., Wantagh. Donations can be made to the Merkel Cell Carcinoma Fund at the University of Washington, or the Hospice of Palm Beach County, Fla.