A glimpse of Patrick Vecchio's record-long career in photos

With Sen. John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, Broadway, early 1960s. “He was a star,” Vecchio said of Kennedy. On that day a photographer got unacceptably close to the car carrying the Kennedys, Vecchio recalled, and he muscled the man away. “Take it easy, take it easy,” JFK told him. “Please don’t fight,” Jackie Kennedy said. 

Wearing his NYPD uniform, mid-1960s. Vecchio maintains he joined the police force on a whim, taking the qualifying test two days after he got out of the Army because some friends from his home neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, were doing it. His father disapproved of the move. "He didn't think a college guy should enter the police department," Vecchio said.

With Yuri Gagarin of the USSR, the first man in space, whom Vecchio escorted when the cosmonaut visited New York City in the 1960s. The photo was taken at Idlewild Airport. Earlier in the trip, Gagarin stopped the official tour to marvel at a Ford Thunderbird on Madison Avenue, Vecchio recalled.

With New York City Mayor John Lindsay, 1969. Vecchio is sitting in the front right seat during a parade honoring the astronaut who went to the moon. A number of photographs show Vecchio with Lindsay, whom Vecchio served as driver and bodyguard from 1965 to 1973. Vecchio, raised in pre-gentrification Brooklyn, grew close to the patrician Lindsay, accompanying him on official visits to foreign capitals and destinations around the metropolitan area. Vecchio stopped short of calling Lindsay a mentor, but said he learned the basics of retail politics from him. “I learned the things you say to people. If he was in a cab, he’d ask the driver ‘how’s the cab, how many miles do you drive.’ ”

With New York City Mayor John Lindsay on the lawn of Gracie Mansion, late 1960s.  “It was like a kinship. He was described as churlish, the ultimate WASP, but I guess I got on his level, or he on mine.” Lindsay helped organize the fundraiser at Charley O’s, Vecchio’s first, which raised $7,000 — “More than [Smithtown] Democrats had made in seven years.” Vecchio watched his boss closely and imitated some of his behavior, down to the jokes he made with senior citizens and the small talk he made with cabbies

With Marlon Brando in the early 1970s.This was a chance meeting, Vecchio said, when he was accompanying Lindsay on a walking tour of Harlem in the early 1970s and they encountered Brando, signing dollar bills for residents.

1. Emerging from a helicopter with Gov. Hugh Carey in 1978 at Sunken Meadow State Park. The two had flown over parts of Long Island to survey damage after an ice storm. 

With Sammy Davis Jr. at a gala at a Hilton Hotel in Manhattan, circa 1970. Vecchio and Davis met each other several times. Not preserved on film is another meeting in Atlanta in 1968, where they were both attending the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. Vecchio recalled Davis invited him to his hotel room where Vecchio saw jazz singer Nancy Wilson, football player Cookie Gilchrist and the comedian Bill Cosby, who was entertaining the room.

With New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay and Soviet Jews in a Moscow hotel room, 1972. Lindsay had been invited by the Moscow mayor and requested the meeting. Most of the Jews in the room told Lindsay they wanted to leave the USSR, Vecchio said. “I just want to be free,” Vecchio recalled one man saying. The Americans were confronted by the surveillance at work when they left the hotel: “Cars started up, lights went on, guys came running out of doorways. All to follow those Jewish people.”

With actress Maureen Stapleton at a campaign fundraiser for Vecchio in 1978 at Charley O’s, a bar in Manhattan.Why did he hold the event there, and not in Smithtown? “Where was I going to raise money? Nobody knew me on Long Island,” said Vecchio, who shocked many when he won as a Democrat in 1977 in heavily Republican Smithtown. He later switched parties in an unsuccessful bid for the Suffolk County Executive's seat.

With Gerry Cooney at a charity exhibition, 1980 at the Colony Hill Hotel in Hauppauge. “If he ever hit me, I was gone,” said Vecchio, a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth who was past his fighting days when the photo was taken. Pictures like this were useful publicity, Vecchio said. “I had to show a certain toughness because they beat me up, these Republicans . . . . I’d wake up at three in the morning, thinking what are they going to do to me tomorrow.”

With Mario Cuomo at a benefit for Italian earthquake victims at Smithown's Watermill Caterers in the 1970s.. Vecchio had known Cuomo since both attended St. John’s University — Vecchio received a baseball scholarship and played shortstop, though he later switched to catcher. The future governor of New York State did not make the team because the coach did not like his attitude, Vecchio said. Vecchio recalled the coach bluntly telling players: “See that kid Cuomo? I’m not picking him for the team because he’s a wiseguy.”

With New York City Mayor Ed Koch, 1980. “The garbage carters struck and I got an appointment and went in to borrow garbage trucks,” Vecchio said. It was a publicity stunt that didn’t amount to much, he said, as the strike was resolved two days later. 

Joseph Arico, Smithtown's park director, removes photos from Vecchio's office on Dec. 15, 2017. Vecchio will vacate the room Dec. 29 to make way for Ed Wehrheim, the councilman who defeated him in a fall GOP primary and went on to win the general election.