Rocco R. Bene; headed S. Phila. real estate board
Philip Buffone started playing Pop Warner football when he was 13. Rocco R. Bene was 14 and on the same South Philadelphia team.
Philip Buffone started playing Pop Warner football when he was 13. Rocco R. Bene was 14 and on the same South Philadelphia team.
"He has been my best friend for 65 years," Buffone said from his home in The Villages, Fla., where Mr. Bene bought a house down the street four years ago.
They played for the former Chadmoore Club, at Chadwick and Moore Streets near 17th Street, "an athletic sports club that changed all our lives," Buffone said.
The club lasted for three generations, he said. "Guys started it in the '40s, we picked it up in the '50s, and a younger generation grew it in the '60s."
Through the decades after Chadmoore closed, for those like them who hung out at 17th and Mifflin Street, Buffone said, "we still belonged to the club.
On Friday, Nov. 13, Mr. Bene, 79, of Voorhees, who in the 1980s was president of the South Philadelphia Real Estate Board, died of complications from cancer at home.
For 53 years, Mr. Bene operated the Rocco Bene Agency at 13th and Bigler Streets, which offered insurance and real estate services, his wife, Johanna, said. He sold it in 2015, she said.
Mr. Bene grew up near 24th Street and Snyder Avenue, his wife said, and graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1954.
He enlisted in the Air Force Reserve, she said, and served in units in the Philadelphia region from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Buffone, who served monthly Reserve duty with Mr. Bene, said they were in a communications unit at the Willow Grove Naval Air Station, where Mr. Bene was a personnel clerk.
After attending classes to become an insurance and real estate salesman, his wife said, Mr. Bene worked for the DiSipio Agency, a South Broad Street firm owned by a relative, until opening his own agency.
Mr. Bene was a collector of Lionel model railroad trains, she said, and "had a big train room," with extensive settings, at their Voorhees home.
When he finally decided to divest himself of his railroad holdings, she said, what was carted away was "a huge truckload."
He was a member of the Order Sons of Italy in America and the Medford Village Country Club.
Besides his wife, Mr. Bene is survived by son Rocco J.; daughters Kirby Forbes, Valerie Wagner, and Desiree; a brother and a sister; six grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
A visitation is set from 10:30 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Nov. 18, at St. Andrew the Apostle Church, 27 Kresson Gibbsboro Rd., Gibbsboro, before a noon Funeral Mass there. Interment will be private.
Donations may be sent to www.lighthousehospice.net.
Condolences may be offered to the family at www.bradleyfhmarlton.com.
610-313-8134@WNaedele