Alfonso M. DeCicco died in his Livingston home on December 21. He was 96 years old.
Mr. DeCicco was born in Newark in 1924. He was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, serving in the 376th Anti-Aircraft Artillery in the European Campaign throughout Normandy, France and Germany. He received the campaign’s Victory Medal and in 2003 was awarded the New Jersey Distinguished Service Medal and the Oak Leaf Cluster, a high-level decoration of the Purple Heart.
He lived for many years in West Orange, and spent summers in Long Branch, where he met his wife 75 years ago.
Benefitting from the G.I. Bill, he graduated from Seton Hall University in 1950, with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. He was vice president of sales at Chicago Title Insurance, from which he retired in the 1980s.
Mr. DeCicco also had a career at Rutgers University as assistant professor and fencing coach of the Newark campus beginning in 1956. He helped the men’s varsity fencing team improve from a record of 1-9 to an undefeated season in 1962. In 1961, his team won the only National Association Intercollegiate Athletic Championship in school history.
In 1959, he started the first women’s varsity fencing team at RutgersNewark, which had its first winning season in 1961. The women’s team was the first female varsity sport in the college’s history.
In 1960, he became golf coach at Rutgers-Newark and again went undefeated in 1962, placing fourth in the Eastern Intercollegiate Golf Championship at Montclair Golf Club in West Orange.
In 2008, he was the coach inductee of the Rutgers-Newark Athletic Hall of Fame and the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame in the same year for the sport of fencing, and was inducted again in 2018.
He was on the board of trustees of United Cerebral Palsy of North Jersey and was past president of its Parents’ Association.
Mr. DeCicco is survived by his wife of70 years, Claire (nee Caffera); his daughters, Annette DeCicco and her husband Lawrence Stanley, and Diane Brozyna and her husband, Garry F. Brozyna; his sister, Lucille DelGuercio; and three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren
Private burial took place at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, the family has suggested that donations may be made in Mr. DeCicco’s name to AtlanticHealth.org/donateavn.
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