World War II veteran Santo 'Sandy' Minutoli, of South Setauket, dies at 99

Santo “Sandy” Minutoli grew up playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn; survived World War II on a fuel tanker in the Pacific; built schools and government buildings; and thrived in a series of blue collar and Civil Service jobs, learning skills that helped three generations of his family.

As his family saw it, Minutoli was truly a member of the Greatest Generation.

“He is an absolute example of that generation, people who grew up in this country, was thankful for the opportunities that the country gave them, was thankful for the opportunities to give back to the country,” said son Bob Minutoli, of Fenwick Island, Delaware. “He never took anything for granted.”

Minutoli, of South Setauket, died at age 99 on Nov. 22. The former longtime resident of West Hempstead, who also went by the name Sonny, had retired in 1985 after a 20-year career at the Hempstead Town building department, where he worked as chief building inspector and assistant supervisor of inspections services.

Like many in his time, he had been anxious to fight for his country after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. He went into the Navy in 1943, and after six months of training at Purdue University’s School of Electrical Engineering, he was assigned to be an electrician’s mate on the USS Mariveles, a tanker that supplied fuel to ships fighting Japan in the Pacific.

This start to a varied career showcased his respect for education and taking Civil Service tests. Discharged in 1946, Minutoli got a job as an electrician’s helper in the New York City metro area, then became a city bus driver — “drove stick-shift bus in Dec. 48 snowstorm,” he wrote in listing his jobs. By 1957, he was a union carpenter outfitting schools, government buildings and hospitals, and four years later, he was a driving inspector for the state Department of Motor Vehicles before scoring as one of the top three best in Hempstead’s building inspector Civil Service test.

“He told us to learn something new every day,” recalled daughter Annette Ventura, of Baiting Hollow.

Before his children were old enough to go to school, their father provided them an education in his style, with atlases, National Geographic magazines and more.

“When we were five or six years old, he had us reading the papers every day,” his son said. “He would have us looking at maps and ask us where things were.”

Minutoli was devoted to his family, building additions to his children’s homes, teaching his grandchildren how to drive and spending hours in front of a Wi-Fi photo frame, watching streams of images his grandchildren and great-grandchildren sent, his children said.

He was uniquely industrious in his love. First for his daughter, he made a ring from a coin, a silver quarter, by tapping it down into shape with a heavy tablespoon, a hobby learned during his World War II service. “As the years went by and our family grew, I began producing rings of different sizes from silver coins of different denominations,” he wrote.

When the love of his life, wife Genevieve, grew old with Alzheimer’s disease, they settled into a South Setauket senior living facility in 2018, she in one wing for patients who needed care and he in another for independent living. The two had been together most of their lives, growing up in neighboring buildings in Brooklyn’s Red Hook, watching baseball together, falling out of love with the Mets together and seemed always to be together, their children recalled.

“He would walk from his wing through the middle wing and into her wing and visit her every day and stay with her,” said son Lou Minutoli, of West Hempstead, a freelance photographer for Newsday. "Then at night, he’d come home to his apartment. After my mom died, he got lost."

To pass the time after his wife’s death in 2021, Minutoli started another coin hobby.

He exchanged coins for pennies and looked at the dates, keeping the ones with the birth years of his 12 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren, a love that exceeded the value of the 1 cents he gifted them, in hundreds of jars.

“He loved talking about family,” Ventura said. "He cared about all of us.”

A prayer service was held Nov. 24 at the Weigand Brothers Funeral Home in Williston Park. He was buried Nov. 27 at the Calverton National Cemetery.