Anthony Lagnese, 90, of Selden, retired Suffolk County jobs specialist

Anthony Lagnese was about 80 when he confronted a man strangling his neighbor’s daughter with a seat belt in her car. 

“Tony came and pounded on the window of the passenger door of the car and said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ ” the neighbor, Gary Breslin, recounted. “Tony saved my daughter’s life.”

Lagnese’s actions reflected the lesson learned watching his father, who helped Italian immigrants: One had to look after the community. 

The Selden resident died May 9 due to a decline after a fall. Lagnese, a retired jobs specialist from the Suffolk County labor department, was 90.

“My father always showed up whenever anyone needed help, whether it was to lend an ear, or give advice, comfort or support,” his daughter Linda James said. “I think he viewed being there for people when they needed him as the purpose of his life, and it gave him fulfillment.”

Lagnese often put up a macho front, like pretending he disapproved of his wife’s cat, but he was a “real mush” who was community-minded, his loved ones said. At Middle Country school board meetings, he and his wife, Arline, parents of a daughter who is deaf, were lonely voices fighting for resources for children with challenges.

He attended to constant calls for help during his political years, including as president of the Mid-Brookhaven Republican Club. When he saw kids waiting in bad weather for the school bus, he’d urge them to stand under his garage overhang. 

Born in Westbury during the Great Depression the third of nine children, Anthony was a youngster when he began contributing to the family coffers. He skipped classes in sixth grade to caddie at a celebrity golf tournament. He spent summers cleaning cow stalls and harvesting crops. When his sick father stopped working, he quit school at 16 and got various jobs, along with some of his siblings.

“We all turned our paychecks over to my mother and got a small allowance, $10 or $15 a week,” Lagnese wrote during his retirement. “Somehow we managed to go to a movie or bowling and even have a few beers.”

During a 1953 renovations job at a Manhasset department store, he met employee Arline Loeb, a recent high school graduate. The two married in 1955 and moved to Glen Oaks, Queens. Six months later, Lagnese was drafted into the Army and served for 18 months in Germany as a communications specialist during the Cold War.

Upon his return, he started a 12-year stint as a milkman for the Borden dairy company, then worked 23 years in the Suffolk labor department, where he was also president of CSEA Local 852 for six years, his family said.

Life for Anthony and Arline Lagnese was full of large family dinners and activities together. The couple clicked despite being opposites — he was sociable, while she was shy and artistic — relatives said. He encouraged her creative side, going on nature walks for her photography and helping sell her holiday decorations and other handiwork at flea markets and fairs.

“You got the sense that they had a lot of inside jokes,” said his grandson, Will James of Seattle.

When his wife died in 2011, Lagnese's extroverted nature faded, even as he enjoyed keeping in constant touch with his extended family through social media, relatives said. 

Four years ago, the retiree thrilled his family by exploring a new side of himself as “Tony Lager,” his pen name for autobiographical accounts, poems and fiction.

“I wonder if my great grandchildren will ask their fathers about me and what the world was like in my lifetime,” Lagnese wrote. “Five of my siblings and most of my cousins and friends have passed on. Loneliness becomes your anxiety.” 

“It was so hard for him to be vulnerable,” said his grandson, a former Newsday reporter. “I can only imagine he was feeling things so deeply and he’s having emotions so big that he couldn’t keep them in.

“He was a really intelligent guy, and he really didn't get a chance to finish school. It makes me wonder, if he had more choices about what he did in life, what he would have done.”

In addition to Linda James and Will James, Lagnese is survived by daughter Deborah Kunins-Cerisier of Ronkonkoma and sisters Angela Engelson of West Babylon, Theresa Wheeler and Ann Cotroneo, both of Massapequa.

He was buried May 12 at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram.