District Transportation Center Named In Honor of Joe Merola

The Kings Park Central School District recently dedicated its bus transportation center posthumously to longtime San Remo resident and civic leader Joe Merola.

The center will now officially be called the Joseph C. Merola Transportation Center.

Merola, originally from Brooklyn, spent much of his youth in San Remo after his father bought a lot in the area in 1926. He eventually settled in San Remo, building a home for his wife Lorraine and son Craig. In 1962 he opened Merola’s delicatessen in San Remo, which sold penny candy and catered to the crowds of St. Anthony’s school.

Merola a bus driver for the district for 27 years successfully fended off the district’s attempt in 1975 to contract the maintenance of its fleet to an outside company. Merola believed the kids were safer and the district was better off to have its own drivers, most of who were residents, operate and maintain the school busses. He started a successful grassroots campaign to keep the service in the district.

“It is something I never want to change and I know Joe wouldn’t want it either,” said Marge Higgins who served as president of the Civil Service Employee Association when Merola was vice president.

Steve Weber, a neighbor of Merola’s recounted Merola’s ability to keep things simple and approach problems with common sense solutions.

“He stood for workers and decent pay. He was never intimidated by anybody because he used common sense,” he said.

The naming of the garage was an idea borne by Merola’s good friend Jack Hessel.

“It was Jack’s idea,” said Susan Agruso, district superintendent. “It was like, how come the rest of us didn’t think of it.”

Hessel presented the idea last year to the school board and they agreed.

“Joe was a friend, a warm person with a good sense of humor. He always had a story,” said an emotional Hessell as he recalled one of those stories.

“One time Mary DeRose (the previous superintendent) wanted to keep the motor oil outside of the garage in a drum. Joe said, ‘Mary, when you put olive oil in the refrigerator what happens? It congeals.’ They kept it inside.”

It was that common sense approach, friends and family said that helped Merola negotiate seven successful contracts as vice president of the CSEA.

“He knew a lot about people, a lot about things,” said Hessel.

It was the working people that Merola cared most about. He was born in Brooklyn and spent much of his youth coming out to San Remo, building what the early families there referred to as shacks; crates stacked one on top of the other, no running water, no indoor plumbing. The early people of San Remo relished in the simple. Fig trees full of fruit, bare feet on unpaved roads. For many of the early Italians who settled there it was a paradise.

“He called my sister-in-law Mary Fish,” said Susan Robinson who bought her property from Merola. “Back when were able to walk around as kids she would buy penny candy from him at the deli. He would count out a hundred gummy fish for her everyday.”

It seemed everyone there had a story to tell about Merola. As the ceremony finished, people lingered over food, shared stories and lamented how the store bought cookies couldn’t compete with Merola’s pound cake.

“ I feel good, like he is still here,” said Merola’s son Craig. “He would have been very proud of this bus garage being named after him. He would be thrilled with this.”