Patsy Michael Cannavino, Jr.

Patsy Cannavino, Jr., 78, died Friday, October 19, 2018 in Concord, NC. He was born in Ithaca on September 19, 1940 son of the Late Pasquale “Patsy” Cannavino, Sr. and Lucy DeAngelis Cannavino.

Patsy grew up on Cascadilla St. in Fall Creek. He attended grade school at Immaculate Conception and then Ithaca High School where he met his future wife Susan Howe. He graduated in June of 1959, and he and Sue were married the following October. They lived on Corn St. in Fall Creek until 1961, when Patsy took a job in Bridgeport CT with Lockheed-Martin Aircraft. His time away from Ithaca was short-lived as he and Sue returned to Ithaca that same year for the birth of their eldest daughter Michelle, and they again took up residence in Fall Creek. Patsy began work at Ithaca Rock Salt, where he stayed until 1965 when he accepted a job with Prudential Life Insurance. His Daughter Tonia was born in 1962 and his son Patsy Michael in 1963. The family moved to Renwick Heights in 1976 where they remained until Patsy retired from Prudential in 1995. Retirement didn't suit him well, and he soon took a job as an investment advisor with Marine Midland Bank. Patsy continued to work in the financial services industry at M & T Bank and Community Bank until a serious automobile accident in 2002.

In 1989, Patsy and Sue purchased a cottage on Black Lake in northern NY where they enjoyed summers with family and Patsy pursued his interest in gardening. Following his recovery from the accident, he and Sue divided their time between Ithaca and Black Lake, until they moved to North Carolina in 2015 to be near family.

Outside of his hectic work schedule and spending time with his family, Patsy played league softball, was an avid youth hockey booster, and also a volunteer fireman in Fall Creek. He and his friend Irv Dermer regularly put on a chicken BBQ at the corner of State and Meadow St, and the pair also had a booth at the Ithaca Festival for many years where, with the help of their families, they sold Italian Sausage, fried dough and cotton candy to thousands of festival-goers.

Patsy is survived by his wife, Sue Cannavino, his daughter Michelle Cannavino of Concord NC, his daughter Tonia Cannavino-Contino of Las Vegas NV, his son Patsy Michael Cannavino III of Seattle, Washington; his grandchildren John Caito, Aminah Kousa, Hassan Kousa, Susan Kousa, Marcus Dreitzler, and his great grandson Savino Haviland. In addition to his parents he was also predeceased by his son, Joseph Anthony Cannavino, born in 1960, who died in childbirth and his sisters, Jane (Rosevink) and Patricia (Parker).

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated by Fr. Augustine Chumo on Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 10 am at the Immaculate Conception Church. Friends may call on Tuesday, October 30, 2018 from 4 to 6 pm at the Bangs Funeral Home.

EULOGY GIVEN AT PATSY'S FUNERAL MASS

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining with us to celebrate Patsy’s life. By the time I met Patsy, he’d already raised his 0wn children, helped raise his grandchildren, retired from one career and started another, and I was in the un-enviable position of being introduced to him as a suitor for his daughter Michelle.

He set a very high bar, not because of what he said but because of the example he set. When Michelle and I met, she had just purchased a ramshackle farmhouse and was in the process of fixing it up…with Patsy’s help. He was back working full time in a suit and tie job after retiring from prudential, and both he and Sue were living in the house with Shelly and the kids, so he would work a full day and come home to uncertain plumbing, un-reliable electric, plaster dust, and everything else you would associate with living in the middle of a renovation project, take off his jacket, roll up his sleeves, grab a paint roller, hang sheetrock..or whatever else needed to be done, wake up the next morning, put his suite back on and head out for another full day at the office. This was on top of helping the kids get to their sporting activities, cooking Sunday dinner, and calling on his many friends to arrange for them to do work on the house he couldn’t do himself.

As I soon learned, he’d been helping his family this way for years…all the while holding down a highly stressful full time job. This was an intimidating act to follow.

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

He married Sue, his wife of 59 years, as soon as he finished high school. He’d fallen in love with her at first sight. They had their first child less than a year later who tragically died in childbirth. While Sue was still in the hospital, and with the help of the Bangs family and Sue’s parents, he made the funeral arrangements for his first born son. He was 19 years old. Imagine the strength it took to do that.

Even more amazing is that Michelle and I have been married 20 years and the first time I heard this story was last week after his passing. Patsy never said a thing about it, and I think this is true of many other things he accomplished in his life. He was completely selfless and devoted himself to providing for his family, for whatever they needed, without misgivings or complaint and without calling attention to himself.

In a world where standards of decency and behavior are often violated faster than they can be lowered, Patsy held the line.

FOR BETTER FOR WORSE

He did many things to earn a living. He sold cars and insurance, worked in the financial services industry, as a butcher at grand union, a draftsman at Lockheed Martin Aircraft in Connecticut, and at Ithaca Rock Salt, 1000 ft underground running a hundred pound hammer drill horizontally into salt veins. He had to lift and hold the drill up to get holes started for the explosive charges. That also takes a strong man.

He ran a chicken BBQ weekends on Meadow St, owned a bar on State St, and often had a booth at the Ithaca Festival. He involved his family, sometimes over their objections, in the operation those last two.

People talk about working in a salt mine to provide sustenance for their families. Well he did that, and the rest of it as well.

One of Patsy’s regrets was that he never had the opportunity to attend college, but he didn’t let his lack of education hold him back. He studied for and passed his series 7 securities exam to earn the same license Wall Street stockbrokers need to begin trading. It’s 6 hrs long and incredibly difficult to get through.

He took that test because he needed to sell investments as part of his job, and frequently out-performed the well-educated bankers who ran the place.

FOR RICHER, FOR POORER

When Patsy was in charge, he didn’t drive from the back but lead from the front. At Prudential he occasionally gave agents some of his accounts so they could make their quota for the month and feed their families when they returned home.

On top of all of this, he coached pop warner football, boosted youth hockey, played league softball, and spent time as a volunteer fireman.

Occasionally Patsy’s devotion to his family took a comic turn.

As many of you know, he loved a deal. When he found an outfitters in Elmira that was selling flood damaged merchandise at a steep discount, he decided it was time for his family to go camping and took it upon himself to buy more tents, lanterns, stoves, cots, and sleeping bags than he could fit in their car, forgetting for once that the family had to come too. He didn’t let that stop him though….off they went….3 kids, a dog, patsy and sue with their gear stowed in the trunk and packed on a rack Patsy had to install on the roof of the car to make room for passengers inside.

Keep in mind that when Patsy bought a tent for camping, he didn’t go for the modest two- person job, but the family model, big as a living room, which he set up rain or shine….and it frequently rained. When it did rain, Patsy carried gamely on, fixing breakfast for everyone with an improvised shelter over the cookstove.

As a respite from the somewhat fraught and occasionally uncomfortable camping trips they enjoyed earlier, Patsy and sue found a cottage at Black Lake where they could vacation with their kids. It was overgrown and run down with no plumbing or electric..once again a deal… but they bought it and the kids learned to use an outhouse and get water from a hand-pumped well. This was before Patsy pulled the porches off the place, hauled it 100’ uphill from the shoreline, and put additions on to more than double the size. He added plumbing, heat and insulation so they could enjoy it 3 seasons of the year. He and his father and law, with some help from the Amish, accomplished all this while Patsy worked a full week in Ithaca and came up on weekends to lay block, set framing, and raise walls.

For years Black Lake was a home away from home for his grandchildren Aminah, John, Marcus, Susan and Hassie, where he taught them to fish and the value of hard work, for they got to experience the transformation Patsy made to the place. It makes an impression when you can point to something and say “I built this” and let them know that dedication and hard work will produce results.

Patsy also enjoyed travelling for vacations however, and Florida was a frequent destination for the family. He wouldn’t deprive his kids of anything, so they had to visit every cavern, reptile house, alligator farm, fruit stand and roadside attraction between Ithaca and Key Biscayne. He did however say no when Shelly found a Spider Monkey somewhere she wanted to buy and bring home as a pet.

Imagine going on vacation with three teenagers and a spider monkey together in a car….

I think Patsy might even have considered it for a minute because no was hard for him where his family was concerned.

On one occasion in Florida, Sue and the kids got horribly sunburned and were bed-ridden with blisters and sun poisoning. For some reason they had a craving for hot soup, which Patsy agreed to go find for them. I can’t understand why they would want soup, and apparently Patsy couldn’t either because he returned several hours later with a huge bag of un-cooked shrimp, which he seemed to think would do just as well.

Patsy was as devoted to his grandchildren as he was to his own kids, and made sure John got to all his Pop Warner football games, took Aminah and Susan to play basketball at South Seneca and up to Barton Hall to practice jump shots, and his grandson Hassie to wrestling matches when he was on a travel team.

Patsy also carried on his family’s tradition of a Sunday dinner, starting the sauce in the morning, and getting the meatballs in the oven before the football games started

When his children were young and the family was living in Fall Creek, Patsy would walk Shelly, Tonia and Patsy Michael to attend football games at the high school and then return home to make Pizza and watch movies.

IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

Some of you may know Patsy had a near fatal automobile accident in 2002, but god works in amazing ways and, as a result of the accident, doctors discovered aortic aneurisms that would have probably killed him within a year had they not been found and treated. He was hospitalized for 3 months and, on top of everything else, suffered a heart attack during his recovery. He fought back from all that and, despite an arm permanently weakened by the accident, managed to install French doors at his daughter Tonia’s cottage a year later.

Patsy also had polycystic Kidney Disease, which eventually required him to receive Kidney Dialysis. That’s 3 days a week, 5 hours a day, hooked up to a machine that cleaned his blood and kept him alive. He endured this without complaint and wouldn’t quit even when things got incredibly difficult, because he said it wasn’t up to him to decide when it was time to go. That is strength.

As Patsy’s health failed, he and Sue moved to North Carolina to be nearer family, and we all imagined that when the time came he would pass with family at his bedside, but it turned out he was in the hospital without us when he left. He had just finished explaining to his nurse that his grandson would be visiting that afternoon to share some of the fishing flies he’d recently tied when he took a final breath and gently slipped away.

We were all shocked he had no family with him, but realized this was perhaps gods way of showing mercy because it allowed him to let go without having to struggle once again be the strong one for of the rest of us, to shoulder and fight through the burden of his own discomfort out of concern for how his absence might affect our well being.

He has laid all that down now, is free and I’m sure at peace after a job well done. I hope he is taking comfort in all that he achieved, and knows that we are all here to celebrate the example he set for the rest of us.

We live in a country where all too often wealth and power are venerated, but we are here today to remember someone who found real value in simply doing good things for those closest to him, often at the expense of his own comfort and convenience, without complaint, and expecting nothing in return.

Although Patsy took his obligation to his family seriously, and accepted it without question, it wasn’t only a matter of duty, but of love, un-conditional love, for his wife, his children, and his grandchildren.

Patsy’s legacy is that we should all work hard, and love, cherish and support those closest to us, and this is something we should all aspire to. It is very simple to say but very difficult to achieve, and Patsy did it…always with charm, humor and a smile.

UNTIL DEATH US DO PART.

May god bless him.

Visitation Tuesday October 30, 2018 from 4 to 6 pm at Bangs Funeral Home.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018 10:00 AM

Immaculate Conception Church 113 N. Geneva St. Ithaca, NY 14850

Visitation Tuesday October 30, 2018 from 4 to 6 pm at Bangs Funeral Home.