Blue‘legend’
Retiring receptionist gets loving sendoff
LONG BEFORE there was such a thing as neighborhood policing, Marie Gambardella was bridging the gap between cops and community in Brooklyn.
For 47 years, she manned the receptionist desk at the 76th Precinct — greeting everyone with a smile — and on Wednesday she got a walkout worthy of a queen.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s overwhelming,” the 88-year-old Gambardella told the Daily News, as hundreds of cops and colleagues flooded the Union St. block outside the Carroll Gardens stationhouse to say goodbye to the longtime legend.
“Police officers I worked with in the ’70s and ’80s, they’re all here. The captains are here,” she said. “And I got to see the commissioner.”
Police Commissioner James O'Neill and First Deputy Ben Tucker came with gifts in hand for Gambardella, who is the second-oldest NYPD employee — just three months younger than the administrative aide who holds first place.
Gambardella was one of 27 civilians hired by the NYPD in July 1971 to work as receptionists at stationhouses around the city. The idea was to make precincts more welcoming to the communities around them. Officials wanted people to be greeted by a familiar face from the neighborhood rather than an intimidating police officer in uniform, Assistant Chief Patrick Conry said.
And Gambardella was the perfect person for the job, said Capt. Megan O’Malley, the commanding officer of the 76th Precinct.
“Always with a smile and never with a question that it couldn’t be done or wouldn’t be done to the best of everyone’s ability,” O’Malley said.
“This is definitely the advent of neighborhood policing,” she added. “Marie was the original liaison.”
Gambardella — who had taken some time off — was lured to the 76th Precinct on Wednesday by O’Malley, who told her there was a civilian appreciation luncheon that afternoon.
But when the retiring receptionist arrived, she found out the party was all for her.
Sporting a party hat that said “the legend has retired” and holding a bouquet, Gambardella, a grandmother to 11, recalled her first days on the job.
The precinct became Gambardella’s “second home,” she said, especially after her husband died in 1996. “It was my family. They’ve seen my through good times, bad times.”
During her nearly five decades behind the desk, Gambardella watched the neighborhood change, witnessed crime spike then fall again, and saw generations of cops come and go. In 2011, she was the matron of honor at the wedding of two cops who met on the job.
As Gambardella emerged from the precinct doors for her official walkout, she was greeted by a booming bagpipe serenade and a roar of applause.
Flashing her silver volunteer badge, Gambardella said she’ll still visit her second home three days a week.
“Nowhere else,” she said, beaming at the clapping crowd.