Jack Michael Cerreto

CERRETO, Jack M. 96, peacefully went to heaven June 23, 2020. Predeceased by his wife of 66 years, Florence Husni Cerreto. Survived by five children, nine grandchildren and great-grandchild. A U. S. Navy WWII Veteran. Formally Vice-President of Two Guys Dept. Stores and a Middle School Teacher in Edison, N.J. Retired to Midlothian, Va. A Memorial Mass will be celebrated 12:30 p.m. Thursday, July 16, 2020, at St. Edward The Confessor Catholic Church, Dolfield Road, Richmond, VA. Inurnment at 3 p.m. on Thursday at Virginia Veterans Cemetery- Amelia, Pridesville Road, Amelia, VA. Jack Michael Cerreto: A Builder Of Life A small wood box sits on a workbench in the dark corner of Jack Cerreto’s workshop. It remains unfinished, made of beautiful mahogany wood with intricately carved fig leafs on each side. It was meant to hold objects of memories but it now sits undone. A hammer, carving tools, and wood chips surround the box where he left them the night his wife, Florence, said “Jack, I need to go to the hospital” in 2018. After her sudden death, he never returned to that box, to that workbench, because a part of his heart went with her to heaven that day. Jack was a builder, a creator of things that never existed before. He built things in life that still stand along highways, street corners, and within people’s memories. He was a builder of life. He made the world a far better place than when it welcomed him 97 years earlier. Raised To Be a Builder Of Life Mount Vesuvius touches the sky on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy. In the turn of the 20th century, the volcanic mountain cast a shadow on a mosaic of small villages and a string of families. The families built lives so each subsequent generation would be better off than the previous one. While Jack’s feet never touched the soil on that majestic mountain, it was the one place on earth that set in motion the immigrant spirit of building life that embraced his soul until his last, final breath on June 23, 2020. At the foot of the mountain, Jack’s father, Giacomo, and his brothers traveled from village to village by donkey selling dry goods, fruit, and vegetables. The ash from the active volcano rained down on them like a snowfall. They would occasionally look up at the grandeur of Mount Vesuvius and dream of a better life for their families. Each year, they saw their lives plateaued like the mountain’s summit. So, as builders of life, they journeyed to America with their wives and children to create a better life for future generations. Jack was born in Kearny, New Jersey, in 1923. He was born in the year of courage and hope. It was the year of Charles Lindbergh’s first solo flight, the start of the New York Yankees long streak of World Series wins, and the last of US troops leaving Germany after WWI. He was the youngest son born with a significantly older brother and sister, Dominic and Marcia. Because of their age differences, his brother and sister helped guide his young life. Alongside his family, Jack learned how to build lavish gardens, refinish homes, and make and sell wine with his dad during prohibition (until his father was arrested and fined for refusing to sell wine to a drunken police officer late one night). Every Sunday, neighbors saw Jack holding his father’s hand as they walked to Saint Cabrini’s Orphanage for immigrant children to help young Italian and Irish kids who were alone in the world. Jack’s family instilled in him a love for opera as it echoed through his home every night. The best man at his father’s wedding went on to start the San Francisco Opera. Opera was in their blood and Jack loved it for his whole life. Jack was raised to be a builder of life. A Builder Of Freedom Before 1941, Jack’s life was filled with family, friends, Pioneer Boys Club, school at Kearny High, and church at St Cecilia. His life was lived in a four mile radius from his home on Highland Ave. That all changed on December 7, 1941, just before 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Eighteen year old Jack woke up that day and looked at the thermometer outside his window as it recorded 34 degrees, another cold day he thought. After 10:00 Mass, Jack heard the startling news about Pearl Harbor. Without hesitation, he enlisted in the Navy shortly after with a group of friends. He wanted to play a role to defeat enemies that threatened the country that gave his family a new life. Jack and his friends went to bootcamp together, and his first day at camp felt overwhelming. While in his bunk that evening, he said “I started crying because I was scared. I didn’t want anyone to hear me, then I heard other guys softly crying. I realized it was okay to be scared, then I felt responsible to everyone in the barracks. I knew I had to give it my all.” During an early morning transport after bootcamp, his truck ran off the road and seriously injured Jack’s back. He spent months recovering in a hospital. While in the hospital, he was separated from his friends. They were shipped off to Alaska and he remained in the hospital to eventually be deployed to the South Pacific alone. He endured extreme back pain from that injury for the rest of his life. The night sky onboard the USS LaSalle at sea was nothing like back home. The stars formed a tapestry he never witnessed before. “Sleeping below deck was hot and crammed so most of us slept on deck. The sky and ocean winds were a welcome relief from the smells and sweat down below. We didn’t know what was ahead of us, but we stuck together.” Jack was a cook assigned to the Navy’s construction battalion called the Seabees heading to Quadalcanal in the Pacific. He supported his shipmates by working long days and nights as they built the infrastructure for fighting forces. He always talked about the native islanders he met and befriended, and the kindness they showed him. He was then deployed as a cook onboard a tugboat in the New York Harbor saying “I only knew how to cook two meals and the crew got tired of them very quickly. I was ready for it to end.” And it did. He said that after his discharge “I sat on the front steps of my parents home in my uniform for the longest time before going inside. It was odd returning to everyday life back home after my service and I needed time to prepare for family and friends again.” His next chapter was just beginning. Jack helped build freedom. A Builder Of A Marriage and Family He saw her across the student union at Jersey City State Teachers College. She was trying not to stare at him but she wasn’t very subtle about it. Her name was Florence Husni. Their simple glance that day changed their lives forever. She was a thin beauty with dark wavy hair who laughed and told long amusing stories. She was full of life. She was Syrian and he was Italian. They were not supposed to date or marry. Both their families wanted them to marry within their ethnic group but they deeply loved each other. He needed her and she needed him. “We go well together,” he would say to his parents. Ultimately, Jack and Florence built a marriage across ethnic groups, unheard of at the time. As their family grew to five children (Giacomo, Felicia, Lee, Steve, and Katherine), they wanted more for themselves than living in a small two room apartment. Jack knew that his salary as a math teacher was not enough. In the mid-1950s, he decided to get a second job to create more opportunity for his growing family. He started working for two brothers, Sidney and Herbert Hubschman, who had a small appliance store called Two Guys From Harrison. Jack started the job to grow prosperity for his family and he was eventually able to expose his children to sports, arts, camps, and travel. He had no idea, however, the extent his life would change forever with his new job. Jack was a builder of a marriage and family. A Builder Of Prosperity Jack returned to the office after inspecting a Two Guys store in Woodbridge, NJ in the early 1970s. He sat behind his desk in a large, wood paneled office with no windows. It was not the grandest setting for the VP of Operations for the first major discount department store in the country. It was the forerunner of the present day Walmart. Along with the two owners, Jack was a business pioneer by creating a retail model that never existed before. He was a brilliant innovator for anything he built. While back in his office, Jack looked at the map of store locations in the North East on his wall. “I couldn’t believe we grew so quickly to 280 stores and 18,000 employees,” he would say years later remembering that moment. The growth tested Jack as he oversaw every aspect of building and running the operations, and achieving consistent profits year after year. During those boom years, the road was his home. His colleagues were his best friends. Their families got together frequently. They all felt that they were creating something special in business and life. The post WWII world offered them endless possibilities and they grabbed them. Besides overseeing major growth in the business, Jack formed an enduring friendship with one of the owners, Sidney, that lasted a lifetime. Sidney was a builder of things like Jack. They would sit for long hours in their homes talking about possibilities, the next new idea, and encouraging each other to go for it. They looked out for each other, traveled together, fished, and brought their families together. Jack’s greatest success out of those Two Guys years was his lifelong friendship with Sidney Hubschman. After over 30 years of endless business growth, the road, and still being a caring father, Jack retired from Two Guys. Jack was a builder of prosperity A Builder Around a Tree While Jack retired from retail, his work did not end. He was a man in perpetual motion. The first year after leaving Two Guys, he wanted to build a family room extension in the back of his house. He was going to tackle the project himself but there was one problem. There was a large oak tree in the way. What Jack did next symbolizes his entire life. He got creative. Instead of cutting the beautiful tree down, he designed a way to build the room around the base of the tree while still keeping it alive. No matter what obstacle was put in his way, Jack innovated. He made it work. His whole life is a testament to that one quality. His drive for “can do” was embedded not just in a room around a tree but in his children. He would never accept excuses why they couldn’t do something. He would often say, “You need to take full responsibility for what you want and use everyone around you as a resource to achieve it.” He wasn’t just innovating a room at that time, he was teaching a life lesson to his family about overcoming obstacles to achieve what’s important in life. For the rest of his work life, Jack returned to his roots and taught math to middle schoolers. He was deliberate and innovative as a teacher, and enjoyed the quirkiness of young teenagers. He and his wife, Florence, continued to share their love for teaching until they both retired. A Builder To the End Jack stands at the scroll saw in his workshop cutting wood from patterns of Santa Claus and farm animals. He was following a list of wood cuttings Florence gave him for her folk art painting. “I actually work full-time for your mother now,” he would often say. After finishing Florence’s orders, he would get down to the real business at hand, his own woodwork project. He was an artist with wood. He built beautiful shelves, bowls, tables, boxes, utensils, candle sticks, doll house furniture, and anything that would create sawdust in its wake. Jack and Florence created wonderful art in their lifetime that was shared with family and friends. Jack created beauty from wood until that final mahogany box was left undone after Florence’s death at age 90. He never finished another woodwork project again. He was now without Florence after over 66 years of marriage, surrounded by his five children. A small light seemed to dim inside of the builder, the innovator, the battler, the creator, the father, the friend, the husband. For Jack, a piece of him died when Florence took her last breath. Now 95 years old, Jack battled on with life focused on his five children, nine grandchildren, and one great grandchild. In tired moments, he would sometimes say “I feel like I am just waiting.” At first, that comment seemed sad, but it was not. Imagine loving someone so deeply that you feel you are less alive without them. That is deep love, romantic love, a love forged together over life’s joys and sorrows. There was something truly beautiful in his longing for her. For two more years, Jack did not experience a major illness and was always mentally sharp, but his body ran out of steam, ran out of gas. In the stillness of each day among his pain and weakness, he still asked about our day and lives, gave us advice, and comforted our sorrows. When he was at his weakest and was asked if he worried about anything, he said “How can I fix this?” He remained a builder and fixer of life to the very end. Always thinking how to make life better. On June 23, 2020, the man of steel struggled for each breath with his children and grandchildren touching and holding him, and telling him that mom has her arms open for him in heaven. With his last breath, the great man left us and is warmly embracing Florence in heaven. Our minds could not grasp it. We want him back so badly. We hold back tears missing his presence in our lives. We will miss you forever dad. Life will never be the same without you. Thank you for showing us how to build things in life just like you did. We miss you dad. Tell mom we love and miss her, too. Jack Cerreto was a builder of life.