New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
WHO WE LOST
BRANFORD — Anthony “Rags” Ragozzino was “strong as an ox” — still working at New Haven Terminal at age 78 — and “was a man who was larger than life, the rock of our family,” according to one of his three grown daughters.
An “old-fashioned Italian father and grandfather” with three daughters and five grandchildren whom “he absolutely adored,” Ragozzino was a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan who was buried in a UConn sweatshirt with his Red Sox jacket nearby, said his wife of 56 years, Marie Ragozzino
Throughout his life, “he didn’t take any bull,” Marie Ragozzino said.
On the day Connecticut exceeded 5,000 total coronavirus deaths, she still couldn’t believe he
was gone.
“It’s unfortunate — this... disease, it has no boundaries,” Marie Ragozzino said. “I’m devastated — but let me tell you, he was loved by so many people.”
She can’t believe how fast things changed.
“A little over two months ago, he had a full exam and he was in perfect health,” Marie Ragozzino said Monday from her Branford home.
Then, a few weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, Marie and Anthony both got sick within two days of each other: COVID-19.
“I had such a mild case — in fact, I took care of him,” she said. “I had a cough and a cold and a temperature for two days, and that was it. But he just got worse and worse and worse...”
Anthony Ragozzino went to Yale New Haven Hospital twice, including treatment in the Intensive Care Unit.
“He was fighting,” Marie Ragozzino said. “I’ll tell you, he was a fighter.”
But he then got a secondary infection, his wife said.
This past Saturday, he was buried.
“It can’t believe a week already went by” since he passed, Marie Ragozzino said Monday. “It’s unbelievable what’s going on.
One of their daughters, Donna Ricci of North Branford doesn’t want other families to go through what the Ragozzinos have.
“This is why we are so adamant about letting people know how this just imploded our family,” Ricci said. “People do not take it seriously and do not understand the importance of social distancing ... I am petrified about getting it.
“To have it happen to someone like him, who was strong ... who was working until a week before it took his life” is devastating, Ricci said.
“It just so horrible a disease and that is what we want people to know,” she said.
Ricci expected her father to be around “until he was elderly and much, much longer,” she said. “He was not a normal 78-year-old. He was strong as an ox, and he was strong-willed. He had more energy than all of us put together.
“For it to hit him so hard, it’s just baffling to us,” she said.
The Ragozzinos lived in New Haven’s Morris Cove section for 31 years before moving to Branford 19 years ago, Marie Ragozzino said.
Ragozzino said she buried her husband in a UConn sweatshirt, because their 19-year-old grandson, hockey player Mark D’Agostino, who currently plays for the Danbury Junior Hat Tricks, hopes eventually to play for UConn.
Another grandson, Kyle Ricci, was working parttime at New Haven Terminal with his grandfather while he also went to school, she said.
Since her husband’s passing, Marie Ragozzino’s family has stuck close to her — and family and friends from all over have stepped in to make sure she lacks for nothing.
“I have food in every refrigerator, every freezer,” that friends and loved ones dropped off, she said.
Still, as an Italian grandmother, she done plenty of cooking, herself.
“It just keeps me going,” Marie Ragozzino said.
In addition to his wife and Ricci and her husband, Glenn, he is survived by daughters Deanna (RJ) D’Agostino and Tonianne Ragozzino, and brother John Ragozzino. He also is survived by grandchildren Tara and Kyle Ricci and Jenna, Ava and Mark D’Agostino.