George Scarpulla, he helped to resurrect Socity Hill

GEORGE SCARPULLA was one of the pioneers who braved the crumbling and shuttered neighborhood called Society Hill in the early '70s and transformed it into an urban miracle.

But that was only one of George's accomplishments. He was an engineer whose work took him from the South Pacific to the Arctic Circle and many places in between.

He worked as site manager on the "cruiser in a cornfield," a replica of a Navy ship that attracts considerable curiosity in a field in Moorestown, N.J., used to test radar equipment for the Navy's Aegis program.

George was also a "people person" who had a genuine interest in others and liked to draw out their life stories, including those of the doctors and nurses who took care of him in the hospital.

Ignatius William Scarpulla, who was called Iggy in his youth but who adopted the name George in later years, a 30-year employee of RCA in Moorestown, an Army Air Corps veteran and a devoted family man, died Sept. 24 of leukemia. He was living in Oro Valley, Ariz.

George was born in the Bronx, N.Y., a son of Sicilian immigrants. He was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1946, and served as a weather observer.

He later graduated from Manhattan College and earned a master's degree in civil engineering from Fordham.

While at Manhattan, he was president of Il Circolo Dante Alighieri, a campus organization focused on the study of Italian arts and culture. It was at a Sunday-afternoon tea dance held by the club that he met his future wife, Rosemarie Scalese. They married in 1951.

He and Rosemarie were among the first families to move into Society Hill in 1971. They took a chance on the purchase of a shell of a townhouse at 3rd and Spruce streets, which they restored and lived in for many years.

They restored four Society Hill townhhouses to Colonial-era accuracy, all of which were certified by the Philadelphia Historical Commission.

As a structural and professional engineer, George worked in New York before he joined RCA in 1958. In the mid-'60s, he moved his family of seven to Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific for a two-year stay.

He worked on the construction and maintenance of housing domes for radar used in anti-ballistic missile testing. Further testing occurred under his supervision in Naples, Fla.; White Sands, N.M.; Colorado Springs, Colo.; and the Arctic Circle in Alaska.

George took various family members back to Kwajalein twice more in the following two decades for shorter stays.

"That special time left an indelible mark on his family," said his daughter, Madelyn Scarpulla. "It was a testament to George's mettle and lifelong willingness to try new things and disregard his comfort zone for the betterment of the individual, the family, his work and development of new ideas."

He retired from RCA in 1988.

George and his wife were active at Old Saint Joseph's Church, where George served on the advisory board responsible for architectural restoration work on the 280-year-old church.

He was actively involved with the Society Hill Civic Association.

His wife died in 2006. Besides his daughter, he is survived by a son, John; two other daughters, Marie and Clare; a brother, Carmine; a sister, Rose, and a granddaughter, Marlena.

Services: Funeral Mass 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at Old Saint Joseph's Church, 321 Willings Alley, followed by burial with military honors at Calvary Cemetery, West Conshohocken.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Old Saint Joseph's Historic Preservation Corp. at Philadelphia 19106.