‘He’s the life of the party,’ according to senior care workers
Sarah Rubinstein
Alamogordo News
With a lifetime spanning 100 years, Alamogordo’s John DiRisio says the best decision he ever made was moving to the area for a job at White Sands Missile Range. After living in Alamogordo since 1953, DiRisio celebrated his 100th birthday at The Aristocrat Assisted Living Center with cake and friends on Dec. 2.
After serving in World War II, DiRisio moved to Alamogordo to work as an electronics technician at WSMR, a position he held for 30 years.
“That is the best move I ever made, I wouldn’t trade it,” he said.
However, it wasn’t the job that excited him as much as the woman he met at a nightclub.
DiRisio noticed Floread Bell from across the room and could sense that something wasn’t right. She looked uncomfortable as a drunk patron kept pestering her, so DiRisio broke up the scene and the two were together for more than 60 years.
DiRisio said Floread was very different from him. While DiRisio grew up in New York, she grew up in the Sacramento Mountains.
“She’d wear overalls and (be) barefoot; she looked like a hillbilly girl,” he joked.
When they got together, she already had two teenaged sons. In addition to the family, together, they had a son, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
“We never had an argument; we never had a fight. We never had any questions,” he said. “We got along just fine.”
DiRisio, who grew up in Fairport, NY, was deployed on D-Day in 1944 as a radio operator on a freighter going across the Atlantic in a convoy, heading to Iran to unload armaments for the Russians. At only 18 and as a “young high school kid,” he worked as an assistant radio operator, getting his license before leaving.
“I was a radio operator but the funny thing about it is you couldn’t transmit it because it was a secret,” he said. “So, all I had to do was listen to the radio and report to the captain what I heard.”
After serving as a merchant marine, DiRisio joined the Army, living in Honolulu, Hawaii, for a year. While he never saw any combat, he remembers seeing U-boats.
“The guys down below (in the freighter) would pound on the funnel, and it sounded like trouble, like depth charges going off after a U-boat but they were just fooling around,” he said.
DiRisio doesn’t remember too much from his childhood. He was the youngest of ten children in a full house. His mother died when he was born and his father never remarried.
“We had a 10-kid family and some of my relatives would come over from the old country, Italy, and they’d stay with us for a little while,” he said.
DiRisio said he is proud of his grandson Jerrett Perry, executive director of the Alamogordo Chamber of Commerce.
“He’s a great guy and he’s well-known,” he said.
DiRisio has been living at The Aristocrat for six years. He plays chess every day on his computer.
“I enjoy beating people if I beat them, but I don’t beat very many people because these guys, they’re all over the world,” he said.
Kenna Paige, activities director at The Aristocrat, said that John is a wonderful person and has a “beautiful competitive spirit” when involved in activities like cornhole and bowling.
“He’s the life of the party,” she said.
DiRisio also loves listening to Western music and artists like Robert Wells and he still drives, going to Walmart occasionally and church every Sunday. His first car was a 1931 Essex that was given to him by a cousin.
Now, DiRisio said family is the most important thing to him.
“They’re the only thing I have,” he said.
