For Marine Comitino, it was always country first

Former U.S. Marine Private 1st Class Rocco Comitino, of the 191st Division, always wore something to indicate his service in the Korean War. Drafted in Aug. 9, 1951, he was in charge of loading ammunition into a cannon and then firing on the enemy. The noise was so loud that it left him with hearing loss, but Comitino said he never regretted any part of his service. 

“He was a proud Marine and I was proud of him,” said Jacqueline Comitino, his granddaughter.

Honorably discharged on Aug. 8, 1954, he always found a way to honor his country. As he grew older, Comitino would place flags all over the yard of his daughter Doreen Hauser’s Glen Cove home, where he, too, lived, on Memorial Day, July Fourth and Veterans Day. And he was known to attend firework displays on those holidays. He did it to honor the United States, which he passionately loved until the day he died, Nov. 3, at age 89. 

Comitino’s parents immigrated to Glen Cove from Sicily — his father, Giacomo, in 1906, and mother, Mary, in 1912. The second-youngest of 13 children, Rocco was closest to his younger sister, Rita. She was one year his junior, and he doted on her. 

“Rocky was so protective of me until the day he died,” Rita Melchione recalled. “He needed to know where I was all the time and where I was going before I married.” She also lives in Glen Cove, and often prepared breakfast for her brother — an English muffin with peanut butter. 

Comitino always enjoyed making Italian cookies, Melchione recounted, bringing them to the Glen Cove Police Department and Fire Department. But over the past six months, he was unable to stand for any length of time. He told his sister a week before he died that he would miss being able to make the cookies. No longer able to drive or work in the garden, she said, her brother seemed to be losing interest in living. 

When he was 17, Comitino went to work for Columbia Ribbon & Carbon in Glen Cove, and stayed there for 33 years. A machine operator, he made ribbons for typewriters and other products. 

Drafted at age 21, he didn’t choose the Marines. The choice was made for him. As they stood in line, every other recruit was told he would either join the Army or Marines. 

“That was some tough training in the Marines,” Comitino said with a smile in an interview last spring. Then the smile faded. “When I went to Korea, I used to have to jump in foxholes because of the bombs. I lost a lot of friends over there.”

The bombs never came during the day, he recalled — only at night. “All we’d hear were the bombs, which kept us up all night,” he said. “What’s sleep? I was [in Korea] for 13 months and couldn’t wait to get out of there. But I loved the Marines.”

He also loved music, Melchione said. Before he left for the service, her brother had a habit of driving up First Street, blaring his car radio with the windows down. “I told him people were complaining,” Melchione said. “People used to think he was hard of hearing, he played it so loud. I’d say, ‘You’re going to go deaf.’ He’d say, ‘So what? I love music.’”

Comitino married Nancy Aquilino in 1953. She died of cancer in 1992. “When I was 14, I chased after Nancy and she hated me,” Comitino said last spring, and then laughed. “She was beautiful, and had a lot of guys crazy for her. I don’t know how she picked me. Maybe because I never gave up.”

After retiring from Columbia Ribbon & Carbon in 1980, Comitino worked as a parking attendant and security guard at the Glen Cove Bowling Alley until 1989, when it closed. Then he worked for the city for another 14 years, as a crossing guard at the Connolly School. 

He loved the children, he said, describing them as “beautiful.” In 2013, as he moved a little girl out of the path of a speeding car, he lost his balance and fell, fracturing his leg. He walked with a cane for the rest of his life. But whenever he told the story, he didn’t mention his heroics. He focused on his memory of lying in the street, surrounded by the crying children whom he loved. 

“Kids came by for weeks and raked the leaves to help my father out, because they knew he couldn’t walk,” Hauser recalled. “He never went back to work.”

After his death, Jacqueline discovered that her “Pop” had been promoted to corporal. Among his possessions she also found a Korean Service Medal, a United Nations Service Medal and a National Defense Medal. He never mentioned any of these honors in interviews. Jacqueline said she wasn’t surprised. Her grandfather just wasn’t one to talk about himself.