Torrington Hall of Fame Spotlight: Emil Renzullo

TORRINGTON — The Torrington High School Athletic Hall of Fame Committee, inducting its 27th class at the end of this month, does a great job finding people who start with Hall of Fame credentials in high school, then keep adding to them.

Torrington’s Emil Renzullo is a great example among this year’s five selections.

The athletic accomplishments are there: He was second team All-NVL senior cornerback on the 1975 Torrington High School football team that posted a 9-2 record as NVL Champions, then played for Division I West Texas State before a knee injury ended his football career.

But, perhaps more importantly, football laid part of the foundation for a bigger, unspoken part of this month’s award: All-Star in Life.

“At THS, I played with at least a dozen guys who stuck together under coaches Bob Frost and Bruce Kazenetz,” Renzullo says. “They taught us an unbelievable work ethic; other guys quit because they couldn’t stand how hard we had to work.

“The coaches taught us, ‘If you have an obstacle, move on.’

“The stuff we learned on that field, we took it to life; sometimes you have to have that kind of intensity.”

The other part of Renzullo’s foundation came from his own nature and the education to feed it. After his knee injury at West Texas State, Renzullo came back to Northwestern Connecticut Community College for an associate’s degree in psychology and sociology, putting it to use for 15 years in a group home for people with special needs.

Then, as if it were part of a plan, four years after he and his wife Colleen had a daughter, Stephanie, the family welcomed a special needs person of their own.

“What I used to work in became part of my life,” smiles Renzullo, starting the story of Emil Jr. — “Moe” — a miraculous child who kept inspiring miracles even after his death.

Moe was born with intestinal problems requiring multiple operations and lengthy hospital stays for the first five years of his life. The fact that he had Down syndrome should have been another obstacle but wasn’t.

Renzullo’s football coaches would be proud to know his family — and Moe — wouldn’t let it be.

“The things (Moe) taught me in 12 years …” Renzullo muses. ”He was high functioning — just a year behind in school because of the year he spent in hospitals — and he was a happy, happy person. He made friends with all the kids at Southwest Elementary School. He made friends with the teachers, who sometimes took him home to lunch.”

Still, the old football work ethic applied for the Renzullo family.

By Moe’s sixth birthday, they’d run out of summer options for him until they met veteran LARC (Litchfield Autism Resource Center) day-camp director Katherine MarchandBeyer, whose summer program on 165 wooded acres in Torrington served children with developmental needs.

A week at the camp for Moe turned into two weeks, then the whole summer for seven glorious years. Moe’s personality infected fellow campers and counselors just as it did students and teachers at Southwest School.

In return, the camp infected Moe to a point where he begged Renzullo to take him to the closed gates in winter just to say hello.

Then, in 2010, at age 12, leukemia was an obstacle Renzullo, his family nor Moe could break through. When Moe died, Camp LARC was renamed Camp Moe.

Once again, Renzullo and his family moved on

with an intensity reminiscent of that championship football year at THS.

Working with the Northwest Community Foundation, they set up Miles for Moe, an effort whose chief beneficiary was Camp Moe’s campership fund. Starting with a 5K run on the Camp Moe grounds, Miles for Moe raised $25,000 in its first year, then expanded it to the Harvest Fest 5K complete with a silent auction and donations from individuals and businesses across the Northwest Corner.

Ultimately, Miles for Moe raised nearly $200,000 over the years.

When Marchand-Beyer retired as camp director in 2019, Stephanie Renzullo was selected to take her place. Who better to understand the fulfilled needs that unlock the joy in kids much like her beloved brother?

COVID and money troubles led Camp Moe to close temporarily in 2022. The Northwest CT YMCA stepped in to buy the camp; by then, Stephanie and the Renzullos had moved on.

Meanwhile, Renzullo, who had risen to regional director in charge of 18 Department of Social Services special needs facilities across Litchfield County, found his perfect niche, running a program called 24/7 Dad.

Chosen from 30 nominees for a facilitator position under Torrington’s Family Strides, Inc. and the National Fatherhood Initiative, Renzullo works with fathers across all social strata — many of whom are delinquent in child support payments — in a 13-week program.

The program has a manual, but Renzullo doesn’t need it.

“I tried it, but I was boring,” he says.

He has his own experience, his own foundations, to convince his classes — sometimes in courtmandated one-on-one situations — that “there’s nothing more important than your child — nothing.”

It’s the same as that 1975 championship: There’s a lofty goal that sometimes requires an unbelievable amount of hard work — and the right coach — to reach.

This time, Renzullo gets firstteam honors.

Peter Wallace/For Hearst Connecticut Media Torrington Hall of Famer Emil Renzullo has had more reason than many to apply the hard lessons of his Torrington High School football championship experience to the rest of his life.