January 26, 1932 – April 8, 2025
Age 93
Visitation:
Thursday, April 10, 2025
3:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Funeral Mass:
Friday, April 11, 2025
10:45 am
St. Raymond R.C. Church
263 Atlantic Avenue
East Rockaway, New York
11518
Interment:
Holy Rood Cemetery
111 Old Country Road
Westbury, New York
11590
Anthony F.X. Generosa, a long-time parishioner at St. Raymond’s Church, passed away peacefully at home on April 8, 2025. He and his wife, Clare M. Generosa (Donahoe) moved to Lynbrook in 1964 where they raised their four children, Rita, Paul, Cecilia, and Dan. He was a wonderful husband and father. He coached his children’s sports teams, taught religious education at St. Raymond’s, and dispensed good, fatherly advice. Clare, the love of his life and his wife of 42 years, died in 1998. Tony grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn and was a devoted Dodger’s fan until Walter O’Malley stabbed him in the heart by moving the club to Los Angeles in 1957. He found new opportunities for elation and heartbreak with the Mets (and Jets and Islanders). He attended Brooklyn Prep and then earned a Bachelor’s degree from The College of The Holy Cross in 1953. He served two years in the Army Corps of Engineers during the Korean War era where he learned some colorful metaphors that were strategically deployed later in life – and sometimes used in conjunction with dispensing the aforesaid fatherly advice. While in the Army, he constructed pontoon bridges, a skill, that to the relief of many, he did not pursue in civilian life. Rather, he worked his way through Fordham Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1959. He practiced law for 60 years and founded a firm in Mineola, where he combined his love of the law with a strained relationship with office equipment. He genuinely enjoyed helping people and shared his knowledge and passion for the law with both clients and colleagues. He was actively involved in the New York State Bar Association and testified before the U.S. House of Representatives concerning oversight and regulation of the financial services industry.
Yet no matter how demanding his professional obligations were, he always put his family and faith above all else. Tony had a wonderful outlook on life and cherished his time with family and friends. With an infectious sense of curiosity, he was awestruck by the miracle of God’s creation and loved nature and astronomy. You were just as likely to find him on a dark Southold beach gazing at the stars as you were to find him filling backyard bird feeders with seeds and nuts. He was a true friend to animals and over the years tolerated his children’s five cats, two dogs, and an assortment of birds, fish, reptiles, rodents, and amphibians with grace, aplomb, and more than a little love.
An avid golfer, he treasured the early morning camaraderie of his weekend golfing buddies. We are grateful for his Sunday morning after-Mass pastry runs to Schaefer’s Bakery and his Sunday afternoon pregame antipasto platters from Valencia’s. We’ll miss his copious notes scribbled on yellow legal pads. We’ll miss him following along with the libretto as a Verdi opera boomed from his hi-fi. We’ll miss 1010 WINS and CBS 880 crackling through a tiny transistor radio and his ardent study of Hagstrom’s maps before road trips. We’ll miss him hunched down on the floor playing with his grandkids. We’ll even miss his house-rattling sneezes.
But most of all, we’ll miss his warm, gentle presence sitting by a roaring fire on a chilly autumn afternoon, available to chat, catch a ballgame, or just watch the fire dance in the hearth. He was a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He is survived by his four children, eleven grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, his beloved sister Helen, and his wife, Lynne, to whom he was married for 25 years.
He will be greatly missed by all.