Joseph Lombardi, brother of Vince

Sunday, January 13, 2002

By EVONNE COUTROS
Staff Writer

LODI -- Joseph J. Lombardi, a salesman of fitness equipment and sporting goods for more than three decades and a leader in numerous sports and community organizations, died Saturday. He was 74.

Mr. Lombardi was coached by his brother, Vince, when he played as a guard on the football team at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood. Mr. Lombardi often said his brother was harder on him than on most of his teammates.

"My father was 17 years younger than Vince," said Mr. Lombardi's only son, William Joseph Lombardi, 45. "He was the youngest of the five children. When my father reached high school, Vince was a coach and teacher at St. Cecilia's. He was harder on my father because it was family."

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Bergen County, Joseph Lombardi did not relish being the youngest of the three Lombardi brothers.

"He didn't like it," said William Lombardi.

The 1947 graduate of St. Cecilia's found that everywhere he went, so did big brother Vince.

"My father played high school football for four years, then got a scholarship to Fordham University," William said. "Then Vince got the coaching job at Fordham."

Mr. Lombardi transferred to St. Bonaventure in New York State, and was drafted into the Army in 1949 and stationed in Alaska during the Korean War. After his discharge in 1953, Mr. Lombardi began a long career in sporting goods and physical-fitness equipment.

Mr. Lombardi worked as a lead salesman with Rawlings, then joined Diversified Products, which was based in Alabama, where he worked for more than three decades as the company's Northeast representative. Just before his retirement, he was a salesman for Safe Play International, based in Texas.

"He was a born salesman," William Lombardi said. "And he had a love of sports. He was open, gregarious, and a homebody. Family was important to him."

One of Mr. Lombardi's vivid memories was of his brother Vince benching him for most of the game when he was a senior and co-captain of the St. Cecilia team.

It was Thanksgiving and Joseph Lombardi's last game of the season, against St. Cecilia's top rival, Englewood. Vince Lombardi was St. Cecilia's head coach and even then ruled with an iron fist.

As the youngest child in the family, Joseph Lombardi had been told by their mother, Matilda, to wax and scrub the kitchen and basement floors. In doing so, Joseph missed his 10 p.m curfew by 10 minutes wringing out the rags. That's when his brother Vince walked in the house and saw red.

"I didn't start the next day, and didn't get in till the last quarter," recalled Joseph Lombardi in a 1997 interview with The Record. "I violated curfew, and it didn't matter who you were."

Not even their mother had a say.

"Oh, no, nobody would intercede against Vince," Joseph Lombardi recalled. But William Lombardi said his father did not hold a grudge against Vince.

"In fact, my father and my uncle got closer as they grew up," he said.

Mr. Lombardi was co-founder of the Bergen County chapter of the National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame and former director of the Vince Lombardi Awards for the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation, and was active in the Leukemia Society of America. He was a member of the Italian-American Club of Lodi.

Mr. Lombardi was predeceased by his wife, the former Elizabeth Costanza; his brother Vince; and a sister, Claire Brandshagen. In addition to his son, William, of Boston, Mr. Lombardi is survived by four daughters, Beth Ann Lopez of Garnerville, N.Y.; Jo Ellen Lombardi and Gina Robinson, both of Warwick, N.Y., and Mary Lombardi of Lodi. He also is survived by a brother, Harold Lombardi of California; a sister, Madeline Werner of Texas, and four grandchildren.

Visiting will be Monday from 7 to 9 p.m. and Tuesday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at the Santangelo Funeral Home, 300 Main St., Lodi. A Mass will be said at 9 a.m. Wednesday at St. Joseph R.C. Church in Lodi.