Salvatore DeFeo, 94, storied Port Washington motorcycle shop owner, has died

Salvatore DeFeo, a storied seller of motorcycles to generations of Long Islanders, refused to let his age — 94 — get in the way of riding his Harley.

In fact, the founder of Ghost Motorcycles, a Main Street mainstay for years in Port Washington, was still riding that 1995 Harley-Davidson — the type with a sidecar attached — until two days before he died at a hospital on Aug. 19, said his son, Robert DeFeo.

"He ate and drank those motorcycles," DeFeo, 62, said of his father. "That was his life."

On Wednesday, a procession of motorcycles from the Patriot Guard Riders as well as the Nassau and Port Washington police departments led a motorcade from Fairchild Sons funeral chapel in Manhasset to St. Peter of Alcantara Roman Catholic Church in Port Washington for Salvatore DeFeo's funeral Mass.

The Port Washington resident was born on May 14, 1927, in that hamlet to Augustine and Maria DeFeo as the middle of three children.

After graduating from Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington in 1944, Salvatore DeFeo was drafted into the Army in August 1945 and served in France, Belgium and Germany.

Known to many as "Sal," DeFeo's passion for motorcycles as a young man was a perfect match for post-World War II Long Island. Veterans like DeFeo, who was drafted into the Army just as the war was ending, came home to an expanding highway system and more transportation choices.

Discharged from the Army in 1947, DeFeo, with an entrepreneur's eye, saw opportunity. He incorporated Ghost Motorcycles in 1950. Three years later, he opened his Port Washington store.

DeFeo chose to have "Ghost" in the name of his shop because when he was younger, his son said, he would speed by cops atop his white Harley. They could never catch him, Robert DeFeo said, so he earned the nickname "The Ghost."

As Long Island grew and tastes changed, so did Sal's inventory of bikes. By the time the store closed in 2000, Ghost Motorcycles had earned the reputation as a place for rare, vintage motorcycles, or more high-performance racing models like Ducati.

The cops may have had a hard time catching "The Ghost" for speeding, but more serious legal problems would eventually find DeFeo.

Along with two of his sons, DeFeo was sentenced in 1995 to 6 months in prison for the theft of $200,000 in state sales taxes, Newsday reported at the time.

One of his nephews, Anthony Scaramucci, who served for a few days as former President Donald Trump's communications director, tweeted a tribute to his uncle last week.

"A full life. Veteran, Entrepreneur, Motorcycle enthusiast, son, brother, father, grandfather, great-grandfather," Scaramucci tweeted. "A force of nature. … Live without fear."

In an interview with Newsday, Scaramucci described working in his uncle's shop at age 13 and keeping at it for eight more years, eventually delivering motorcycles all over Long Island and Brooklyn.

"What I learned from him was not to take any guff from anybody," said Scaramucci, a Manhasset financier who founded SkyBridge Capital, an investment firm. "That was his kind of thing. And I think I built my business based on that."

Of his uncle's legal troubles in the mid-1990s, Scaramucci said: "He paid his debt to society."

DeFeo’s service in the military was never forgotten by Port Washington. In 2014, he was chosen as a grand marshal for the Memorial Day Parade by the VFW Henderson-Marino Post 1819.

"He could have hit the million-dollar lotto, and it still would not have meant as much to him as that did," Robert DeFeo said about his father serving as a grand marshal.

Besides his son Robert, Salvatore DeFeo is survived by sons Salvatore Jr. and Christopher, daughters Sally-Ann Witcomb and Susan Oldford and 12 grandchildren.