Laura Gillen remembers the life of her father, William Gillen

He loved to have fun and loved to joke around. He was always present.”

Laura Gillen Former town supervisor

After William Gillen died at age 84 on June 29, his daughter, former Town of Hempstead Supervisor Laura Gillen, recalled a father who put his family first.

He was always protective of her, she said, and they were very close. He was always there for her. “He loved to have fun and loved to joke around,” Laura Gillen said. “He was always present.”

William Gillen, who grew up on Glover Place in Baldwin, was a former regional comptroller for Xerox’s Long Island operations. The youngest of four siblings, he was born on July 13, 1938, to Thomas and Ann Gillen.

After graduating from St. Agnes Cathedral High School in 1956, Gillen joined the Marines in Paris Island, South Carolina. He went on to serve in the reserves and enroll at Hofstra University, where he was a catcher on the baseball team. Before the Brooklyn Dodgers left New York for Los Angeles, he tried out for their farm team.

“My mother always told me a story about how when my dad was younger, he used to ride a motorcycle and he used to be a skier, so he did all these risky things,” Laura Gillen recalled. “But when my dad was driving my mom and I home from the hospital after I was born, he was driving one mile per hour.”

She said she has never heard members of a family say “I love you” as often as hers did. William was there for all of his children’s sports events, and according to Laura, he made sacrifices so he could be involved in their lives.

One of those sacrifices involved his career. Gillen rapidly climbed up the management ranks at Xerox, and began dating Elaine Catanzaro. They married in 1968, and had five children. Xerox eventually offered Gillen a promotion that involved a relocation to Stamford, Connecticut, but instead of making his family move, he opted for a long commute.

“He would commute back and forth every day just to not uproot our family,” Laura Gillen said.

When Lisbeth Gillen, Laura’s younger sister, was 6, she had to undergo a liver transplant.

The only hospital at the time that would do such a procedure was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

While she was being treated there, her father would work all week, and on the weekends he’d drive to Pittsburgh to see his wife and daughter. He made sure to find time to visit.

“So he would drive every weekend to go be with my sister and my mother,” Laura recounted, “and then drive back to be with me and the rest of the family and work.”

William Gillen was a lifelong member of the St. Christopher’s Parish, and served on the parish council. “He was also a really devout Catholic,” Laura Gillen said.

“And religion was really important to him, and he made a lot of sacrifices to send us to Catholic schools.”

Gillen spent some of his free time at the Sands Beach Club in Lido Beach, and also coached baseball and softball. He was an avid golfer ever since learning the game at his first job, as a caddie at the Rockville Links Club in South Hempstead.

Gillen is survived by his wife, Elaine, his children, Laura; James, of Rockville Centre; Paul, of Rye; Lisbeth, of Garden City; and Peter of Malverne, as well as 13 grandchildren.