Obituary

Dante George Bonardi

August 4, 1933 – February 26, 2025

Dante was born at Englewood Hospital, NJ, like nearly everyone we knew in Bergen County. He was blessed with a name to conjure with. Named after the great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, he was the Golden Boy – the handsome younger son of his Italian immigrant father, Joseph, and his mother Anna, who did beadwork on bridal gowns during the Great Depression to help keep her family fed while his father lent his wiry strength to help re-build America through the WPA. We measured his affections by the bristles on our grandfather’s chin – “Kiss your grandpa!” We obeyed, unquestioningly; always, the command to love, as he had loved his grandfather Cosimo before. There in the house his father built, he and his brother Joe, and his sisters Dorinda and Annette learned what love meant in the Bonardi family.

Dante used to joke that “his modesty was exceeded only by his greatness”. (Or was it the other way ‘round?) It hardly matters – looking back at his life of 91 years, it remains true either way. He was the self-styled ‘Great Bonardo’; the ‘Big Lunch Tie’ who did not suffer fools (or ‘jerky bananas’ as he liked to call them) gladly. In the course of his long life, he went from eating foraged backyard dandelion greens and squeezing the yellow flavor capsule in a bag of Depression Era margarine to lunching at Lutece on Nabisco’s dime. He would jet across the country on business trips, which held for us, his children, the promise of exotic trinkets and souvenirs from his travels. He was always coming home. From the time that we were old enough to cross the street alone, we would walk down to the bus stop in Harrington Park to greet him as he stepped off the Red and Tan line Number 20 bus, and walk him home again. And, toward the end of his life, when he’d had his fill of hospitals that could do no more for him, all he wanted was to come home again, and leave this life surrounded by those of us who loved him most.

He was head-turningly handsome in his youth – voted Best Looking in the Cliffside Park HS Class of ’51. Above his Yearbook photo it’s noted that he ‘is seen with Ray, Vic, and John’ friendships that he retained throughout his entire life. He cherished artistic ambitions, while at the same time acknowledging the practical necessity of making his way in the post-war boom of the 1950’s. To that end, he earned a college degree in Business Administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he’d met his first wife Joan. By 1956 his business ambitions were interrupted by the US draft board, when he was called up for Basic Training at Ft Benning, Georgia, where he distinguished himself as a Sharpshooter, Private First Class. By 1957 he was father to daughter Diane, and, having fulfilled his debt to Uncle Sam, escaped the Georgia heat back to NJ, where he and Joan welcomed Denise in 1959, and Ann Marie in 1961 into their young family.

It was during the 1960’s that Dante embarked in earnest on his advertising career, working first for Gerber Baby Foods before landing the job at Nabisco in NYC. New York was glamorous in those days, and he delighted in now being able to afford tickets to the Broadway shows that marked every special occasion. He assembled an enviable collection of Playbills -he’d saved every single playbill from every play he ever saw – from back in the days when Hirschfeld was still illustrating the occasional Playbill cover. He also kept his family in cookies for 25 years, toting home cardboard carrier boxes every Friday night full of packs of Oreos, Fig Newtons, Chips Ahoy, Triscuits, Nutter Butters, and more. Having long outgrown the Gerber Baby Foods, as far as we, his children, were concerned, he had the best job in the world.

By 1966 he’d bought his first home in Harrington Park, where he panelled the walls and finished the attic into a fourth bedroom. It was there, in that attic room, that he kept a box of some of his earliest drawings in a cubby hole behind a tiny door, including an astonishing portrait of John the Baptist, and another of a Roman Centurion – testament to the artistic talent that never left his hands. And though he drew and painted less and less during those years, he threw himself into his advertising career at Nabisco with such energy, creativity, and expertise that he was made Nabisco’s Director of Broadcast Advertising, responsible for campaigns that ultimately garnered him a Clio Award, the advertising world’s highest accolade. Throughout his professional life, and long after his retirement, the man who understood that every second counts in a 60 second ‘spot’ was generous with his knowledge and advice to whomever sought to learn from him. And when he eventually closed that chapter of his professional life, he volunteered his time to read and record the news for the visually impaired, then turned to his watercolours and picked up his paintbrush again. Once he finally had the time and leisure to pursue his artistic ambitions, he became an award-winning professional watercolorist, exhibiting at the New Jersey Watercolor Society, the Somerset Art Association, Ocean County College and other venues.

By 1980 Dan and Joan had divorced, and he moved out of the family home in Harrington Park. His subsequent marriage to Pat in 1985 proved to be a manifold blessing in his life. First in Westfield, then briefly in Leesburg and in Haven Beach, where they spent many a happy Summer by the sea, he became a loving stepfather to her five children – Tracey, Kevin, Kim, David and Amy. He settled comfortably into his role as Pater Familias; welcomed sons and daughters-in-law and an even dozen grandchildren, and grieved for the loss of Pat’s younger son, David, in 2009. Throughout the 40 long years of their marriage, Dante and Pat exemplified the virtues of the marriage vows, remaining faithful to one another in sickness and in health. They had travelled throughout Europe together while they both were sound and lively, and later, when sickness struck, always boomeranged back to the comforts of home, to heal and be made whole again, if only to share the thrill of a televised tennis match, or the triumph and despair that is the lot of a lifelong Yankees fan.

The home he leaves behind still resonates with his legacy, and the work of his talented hands-the paintings, the framed photos of his ever-expanding family, the Bonardi family motto ‘Never too full’, and his enduring respect and affection for the family recipes-the lasagne, eggplant parmigiana, Sunday gravy, braciole, and meatballs. He knew how to tell a joke and make you laugh, made shadow puppets with his hands that transformed into flying birds and butterflies, into horses and talking heads. He could make you believe he’d split his thumb in half, then bring it back together again, as if by magic. And though there was no ready magic to heal his failing heart, the strength of his love for his family endured. Even beyond what old age had robbed of his recall, towards the end of his life, he almost never hung up the phone without remembering to say, ‘I love you’.

Dante is survived by his widow Pat, his sister Annette (Andrew) Merlo; his daughters Diane (Mark) Davies, Denise Bonardi, and Ann Marie (Salvatore Marras) Bonardi; his stepchildren Tracey (Donald) Dryden, Kevin (Kalyanee) Simons, Kim (David Michael) Simons, Amy(Matt) Simons; and his grandchildren Joseph, Michael, James, Olivia, Luke, Catherine, Marcelo, Tess, Nora, Dash, Logan, and Veronica.

The family have asked for contributions to https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/donate in lieu of flowers. There will be a memorial dinner in his honor TBA at a later date.