Ted Rydzewski

Ted came to Sea Cliff High from St. Boniface where the sisters kept his high spirits in check. “The sisters made you concentrate on what you were doing. Once I got to high school that went out the window.” But he had learned how to learn and he had few troubles with teachers. One day when he got carried away with being “a hotshot senior” and was teasing underclassmen, “Mr. Matthews picked me up by shirt and pinned me against the blackboard and said you don’t treat people that way.” He still respects our former Marine English and Latin teacher. “After that I became a good little boy.” Fair was fair and unfair was unfair. When Norman Ross, coaching soccer, once kicked a ball at him by surprise and caught him hard in the groin, Ted reared back and kicked the ball right back at Ross. Probably wearing his famous broad grin.

In his senior year, with the option to choose a couple of subjects of his liking, he joined one or two other boys in the Home Economics class. It wasn’t the girls, he says. He decided maybe he should learn to cook. After graduation he ran deliveries to the big estates for Begatti’s deli in Glen Cove. Then he and a friend decided to push up their draft selection and joined the Army. After 6 months in Georgia, he shipped out to the motor pool in Schweinfurt, Germany. The Army classified him as a mechanic “but I didn’t know the first thing about mechanics.” He won a transfer to the stock room. He and a few friends stayed out of the usual GI hangouts and found “off the wall places” including a dog kennel where they used to help the owners, bringing them coffee and cigarettes. In return their German friends took them around the region.

Free from the Army and working again for Begatti’s, Ted accepted a blind date for the 1960’s New Year’s Eve Glenwood Fire Department party arranged for him by his sister-in-law Audrey Maass. On Valentine’s Day 1961 he was engaged to Mary Jo and they married in 1962. Their first son Teddy was born in ’64, Tommy three years later and their daughter after another three years. In 1972, after Mary Jo’s father was killed in a work accident, they moved to her family house in Locust Valley. Ted left Begatti’s for a job in Photocircuits that Jim LeFebvre helped him get, then he moved to Grumman Aircraft where he worked for the next 32 years, moving up from the stockroom to warehouse manager at the Green River plant. He enjoyed Grumman’s well known generosity to its employees, but when Grumman merged with Northrup in 1994, Ted foresaw the reduction in management personnel and took early retirement. He retired to a job with the Town of Oyster Bay.

At Grumman’s Ted worked for many years, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and he learned another important lesson. When his kids were 6 or 7 and started playing T ball, he realized he had missed most of their early years. When they grew up he told them “When you get the chance, enjoy your kids when they’re small.” He says, “I think they’re better parents than I was.”

In 1982 a minor tendon injury while bowling almost killed him. His orthopedic doc sent him home with a crutch but soon he had phlebitis, then chest pains so bad he couldn’t breathe. “They thought I was having a heart attack.” The pulmonary embolism had been caused by blood clots moving to his lungs from his leg and he was in and out of the hospital for 42 days. He has also beaten prostate cancer after surgery in 2002, and with a re-do on his hip replacement he is playing golf again. He continues to work part time with the Town of Oyster Bay in the mail room and is still a member of the Locust Valley volunteer fire department that he joined 36 years ago. All three of his children have finished college and are in the middle of successful career--Tommy as a mechanical engineer, Teddy as a corporate accountant, and his daughter as national vice president of Arbonne Products. “The best investment I ever did was sending my kids to college.” He’s a proud father and grandfather of seven.