What I learned from Joe Verrilli - 1931 - 2020

Health Department headquarters
125 Worth Street

I first met Joe Verrilli on February 21, 1985, at 125 Worth Street near City Hall.  I had applied to become a records manager for the New York City Health Department's Office of General Services. 

After an initial interview with his director of office services, cherubic, tough-as-nails, white-haired Natalie Smith, I was brought in to meet Assistant Commissioner Joseph Verrilli.

He was smallish, authoritative, and spoke with a discernable Italian accent.

I am forever grateful that he took a chance on me.  Trying to see me through Joe's eyes: I was a husky, 31-year-old yarmulke-wearing Orthodox Jew and a graduate student in political science at NYU.

I had already been at the Health Department for nearly a dozen years working my way through college at the Bureau of Lead Poisoning Control.

Within days of taking me on, I was his acting director of materials management in addition to the records manager job. I was in well over my head, staying late just to keep up with the paperwork that I did not understand. Procurement orders. Service Orders. There was no email just tray loads of intra-departmental correspondence.

I was not even sure how many offices and divisions reported to Joe.

One evening shortly after I came on board, the intercom buzzed, and Joe called me in. I feared I had disappointed him.

Most of the headquarters staff had left for the day.

Joe was sitting in his well-appointed office with Joe Nici, director of transportation. Mr. Nici looked like Joe DiMaggio and was always dressed elegantly in a suit. He never took a liking to me but treated me cordially.

There was a bottle of scotch on the table, and Joe invited me to have a drink.

Me, Joe V, and Mr. Joe Nici. 

I could not admit that I did not drink whiskey because I did not want to disappoint Joe V or lose face in front of Mr. Nici.

After that (after work hours) first drink, Joe took me under his wings. Gave me as much responsibility as I wanted. Accommodated me so that I could leave early on Fridays before the Jewish Sabbath and so that on regular weekdays I could take on some college teaching at night without giving up my day job.

Over the years, I learned many things from Joe Verrilli. How to be a mensch and how to be a man.

He had pulled himself up by dint of persistence, an excellent analytical brain, and plenty of emotional intelligence.

He knew no English when he arrived in the US – joined the army – got himself a college education, and fulfilled the American dream.

He was a proud Italian to the core but also American to the core. He was a thinking Catholic. He did not like hypocrisy.  It hurt him more when an Italian person disappointed him than if someone else did.

He had a soft spot for Jews but was not uncritical. 

As an assistant commissioner, Joe was responsible for keeping the health department (literally) running. We had 50-plus sites, dozens of cars and trucks, generated thousands of documents (many sensitive), rented thousands of square feet of office space, had to move lab samples and inter-office mail around the five boroughs, spent over a million dollars in metered postage, on telephones, needed desks and chairs (for 5,000 workers) and paper, toner …you name it.

How did I first hear about AIDS (HIV)? It was when one single manager was hired to focus on this new, troubling, and confusing malady. He would be assigned to the communicable disease bureau and would require a desk, chair, telephone, and file cabinet. And of course, a plan for what to do with the records he'd generate.

Once, I recall Joe calling me in to meet a smart-assed (Jewish) director of Information Systems (computers). This youngish fellow wanted Joe to buy new-fangled technology -- facsimile machines and distribute them around the department's citywide locations.

When hotshot left, JV asked me what I thought. I said facsimile machines were a flash in the pan technology and that there would never be a good use for them; that the legal division would never accept faxed lab results, that we had a fine-tuned messenger service, and not to buy any.

Thankfully, Joe did not take my advice.

He knew the names of all the carpenters and engineers and laborers and architects and clerks and even the elevator operators (who did not work for our agency and whose jobs were being phased out). He knew if a workers' troubles made it hard for them to do their jobs. And he offered a concerned ear disguised (when it had to be) as a manly hard slap on the shoulder.

His ways were old-fashioned – the kind of management style that would be frowned upon today – personal and humane.  He made a special effort to employ mentally disabled people – not because some EEO bureaucrat gave him a quota but because it was the right thing to do. He would provide a safe workplace for employees unwanted by other departmental offices and allow them to work to their full potential.

If I merited being called in late on an afternoon to his office for a hand-press-machine espresso (plus a drop of Anisette) to talk over the next day's schedule – I felt on top of the world. Joe, Natalie and me.

Joe was my very own Italian godfather. Thanks to him, I met Natalie Smith, who became my confidante and agony aunt. And whom I dearly loved and miss.

Joe taught me to appreciate red wine (an appreciation for the hard stuff would come later). We'd go out to lunch together always to a strictly vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown out of respect to my eating only kosher food (vegetarian is inherently kosher in my book). We'd wash lunch down with a bottle of Chianti, one of us would bring.

Through my previous boss Tom Kaiser and later Joe, I, who grew up in a cloistered, strictly Orthodox Jewish ghetto on the Lower East Side, met people very different from me. I developed friendships with ex-nuns, a former Catholic priest, and Asians, African-Americans, people of color, and Italian and Irish working-class men (mechanics, movers, and chauffeurs) and even Egyptians. We were a multicultural medley on Foley Square.

He had many proteges and wanted them all to succeed. He advanced women of color, perhaps a single-mom who needed time and encouragement to complete her information systems studies. He'd love it when they'd move on to leadership roles.

He was a family man. He was proud of his wife Martha, a senior school teacher and his brainy son Ralph and clever apple-of-his-eye daughter Donna and – eventually their spouses – once he got over the fact that his son-in-law to-be would not be Italian. He loved them so much. And the grandchildren.

He was. to reiterate, a man of his time. Not politically correct. He broke down barriers. He made friends with people outside his comfort zone – which was a continuing lesson to me.

If not for Joe, I would not have been able to finish my Ph.D. He gave me time and emotional support.

When I was running to the hospital to check on my dear mother on three-hour lunch breaks – he never made me feel guilty. He showed only compassion.

I learned how to deal with people, how to get things done, how to be self-effacing, and authoritative at the same time. Don't brag. Do.

The last time I was in NY in November 2017 – he made it a point to come downtown to join the old crowd in Chinatown for a meal – at a vegetarian restaurant – where else?

I will miss him. May his memory be for a blessing.