Sid Grossman, DA investigator, dies at 85

Sid Grossman, who founded and served as the first president of the union for detective investigators in the Suffolk district attorney's office, has died in Florida. He was 85.

Grossman died Dec. 15, a little more than a week after suffering a gastric attack in his Delray condominium. He died at Delray Medical Center from infections that developed later.

A memorial service commemorating Grossman's life and career was held Friday at Shalom Memorial Chapel in Smithtown.

His role as union leader was a fourth career for Grossman, who started as a salesman for breweries in New York City, later becoming a Suffolk probation officer and eventually a district attorney's senior investigator, serving in the white-collar crime, fraud and anti-corruption units.

Grossman's rise to union leader came after he was active in the Civil Service Employees Association as a delegate for the investigators. He pressed for a separate bargaining unit for the cadre of investigators -- which has ranged in size from about 35 to 50 -- to better represent them as law enforcement officers. He led a battle against CSEA for the right to form the Suffolk County Detective Investigators Association in 1978. He served 14 years as its first president.

District Attorney Thomas Spota, who was chief homicide prosecutor, said: "He was a resolute and passionate union stalwart, who was a thorough detective-investigator when he was on the job. He was a person his membership could always count on."

"He really put the union on the map," said Robert Creighton, a former Suffolk police commissioner who worked with Grossman when Creighton headed the DA's investigation unit in the early 1990s.

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Grossman's daughter Sheila of Brentwood, Tenn., said her father was "very impassioned and he believed wholeheartedly that his members get treated fairly."

Jack Weishahn, who succeeded Grossman as union president, said the union leader fought to raise salary levels for investigators to the level of county police detectives.

Born in Meriden, Conn., Grossman was the youngest of three children. He graduated from the University of Connecticut, where he played football and basketball, receiving a bachelor's degree in business. He joined the Navy in World War II and became a yeoman third class on PT boats in the Pacific.

After the war, he worked as a salesman for breweries in Brooklyn and wed his high school sweetheart, Joyce, to whom he remained married for 55 years. The couple moved to Melville in 1955. He went to work for Suffolk County as a probation officer in 1967 and later moved to Coram in 1982 to be closer to his work in the district attorney's office.

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Grossman retired in 1992 and moved to Florida, where he was an avid golfer. His wife died in 2002.

Survivors also include son Mark of Katy, Texas; daughters Laura of Coram, Susan Hassett of Decatur, Ala., and Sharon Capelli of Margate, Fla.; sisters Leah Caplan and Beverly Marmitt, both of Connecticut; seven grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Grossman was cremated earlier this month after a service in Florida.