Joseph DiGiorgio still remembers rebuilding the first ambulance of the Mineola Volunteer Ambulance Corps 32 years ago.
Somebody told him that the Town of Hempstead had a broken-down ambulance it wanted to get rid of. DiGiorgio jumped at the chance.
“I rebuilt that thing myself, like a new ambulance,” DiGiorgio recalled. “I was in the auto parts business and everybody helped me out.”
The ambulance capped off two-year effort by DiGiorgio and his late wife, Louise, to create an ambulance corps in Mineola that is now considered one of the top ambulance corps in Nassau County.
DiGiorgio credits his late wife for getting the campaign started.
“My wife was a tough woman. She said, ‘The town needs an ambulance corps’,” he recounted.
So in 1977, DiGiorgio enlisted the help of his fellow veterans in that effort. He convinced the village board of trustees to lend $20,000, and added that to $18,000 he and his friend Bruce Nedelka collected from local businesses. And on April 28, 1979, what has become a local institution – and a model organization – was born, with Nedelka as its first president.
The volunteer ambulance corps currently comprises 54 members and responds to an average of 80 or 90 calls each month.
DiGiorgio, now 89, had retired due to a bad back before starting the ambulance corps.
Taking advantage of the extra time, DiGiorgio secured contributions from four auto parts businesses in the Mineola area.
He recalled that Izzy Irus, who owned Mineola Glass, gave him the windshield and the glass for the side windows of the vehicle. He installed new brakes and brake pads, and everything else.
For DiGiorgio, who had been helping his brother-in-law out in his Flushing auto parts business since he was 13 years old, it was old hat.
He had become an expert at rebuilding cars while he was in the Flushing business since leaving the U.S. Army 78th Lightning Division after four years of service during World War II.
DiGiorgio had served in Europe as a platoon sergeant, training troops for combat before he himself landed in Le Havre France after D-Day.
“I was in the infantry. I worked very hard training men,” DiGiorgio said.
His unit moved from France to Belgium and then Holland, then back into France, ultimately becoming the first unit to enter German territory during the final phase of the European conflict.
He has a vivid memory of the war, of friends he lost in the fighting and, like other veterans who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, a vivid memory of the frigid temperatures in the Ardennes Forrest during that winter of 1944. “It was a cold, very cold. We tried everything to keep warm,” DiGiorgio recalled.
His unit was sent back to France after V-E Day, and was being prepared for deployment in the South Pacific before the war there ended.
DiGiorgio returned home to Mineola and married Louise, the girl who literally lived next door.
DiGiorgio, who used to like to go dancing at Roseland, fondly remembers his sweetheart as a woman who had the proverbial two left feet – and an iron will.
Tom Devaney, president of MVAC, remembers witnessing DiGiorgio’s uncompromising style of soliciting support first-hand.
“You should give me a contribution,” Devaney was with DiGiorgio when they stopped at a 2nd Street garage for a welding job DiGiorgio needed done. He immediately introduced Devaney as the MVAC president and reminded the office manager that her hadn’t chipped in. He suggested they should give $200, “and he just wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Devaney recalled. She walked out of the office and promptly returned with a check for $200.
“We definitely could not be where we are today without the hard work of Joe and his wife,” Devaney said.
In 1997, DiGiorgio and his wife, who helped assemble the core group of 30 original volunteers, were given a New York State Assembly citation for exemplary service to their community.
“I feel very happy that I started an ambulance corps,” DiGiorgio said. “I worked like hell to get it going and it’s still on the run.”
