Richard Ferriolo (2015)
When Richard Ferriolo was six, his parents, Adeline and Joseph Ferriolo, moved from Manhattan’s East Side to the Acra, Greene County area. Several years later, they moved to Lampman Hill (McCafferty Rd), and Richard has called Greenville home ever since.
He was born in 1929, the youngest of three children.
He graduated from GCS in 1948, having played basketball; Richard takes pride in being an excellent history student (as well as a capable student when need be).
He received an accounting degree from Albany Business College, and worked for Union Carbide and then NYS as an auditor, retiring in 1992.
He married Alice Hopkins in 1955, and had children Tracy (m. Brad Boomhower; ch. Bradley and Elizabeth) and Tom.
It is, however, for his other accomplishments that GLHG salutes Richard.
Richard, with able help from his wife and daughter, initiated A History of the Greenville Central School District (2003), a compendium of facts, history, and stories that serves as the single best source about the school.
Another document Richard spearheaded is the two volume Veterans’ Books of Honor, a listing of the community members, whether originating from or living in the Greenville area, who served our country in the various wars. (Richard is a Korean War vet.)
Most recently, Richard instigated the restoration, and possible educational use, of the Potter Hollow Schoolhouse, now property of the Greenville Central School District. This schoolhouse is the most authentic of the district’s former one-room schoolhouses still extant.
In these three efforts, it cannot be underestimated the value of Richard’s persistence in seeing these projects to fruition.
Richard also served as a school board member from 1973-1988, taking pride that his efforts, along with his fellow board members, benefited hundreds of students.
Richard has also served the Greenville community as a lifelong member of the St. Johns Roman Catholic Church (an usher for many years), member of the Greenville Fire Company in his earlier days, a person interested in preserving our local history, and as a community member who was interested in the goings-on and politics of the time, always with the best interests of the community and student in mind. “Super Fan” (an affectionate nickname given Richard by his granddaughter’s GCS teammates) was “there” for so many of Greenville’s events, every-day as well as momentous.
And Richard takes pride in his forty-plus years of being a Red Cross blood donor, every eight weeks, of a special blood type.
Thank you, Richard Ferriolo, for a friendship and caring that has spanned all these decades.
- by Don Teator, Greenville Town Historian