Goodbye dad

Paul J. McPolin, 82, a former US Navy submariner and 40-year union steamfitter foreman who worked on such iconic projects as the World Trade Center and the Navy Homeport, died Feb. 19 in his Staten Island home after a long illness.

He was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where he lived with his mother and eight siblings. His father Michael, a native of County Down, Northern Ireland, was in and out of their lives. As a young boy, Paul helped support the struggling family by working in Maresca’s fruit and vegetable market. He remained lifelong friends with the Marescas.

He was a promising student at Grady Technical High School in Brooklyn, but dropped out to join the Navy as a 17-year-old, intent on sending most of his paycheck to his mother every month. He kept $9 for himself.

He was admitted to the Navy’s elite submarine corps and rose to the rank of third-class petty officer, serving four years on diesel and nuclear subs — the USS Sabalo and USS Halibut – out of Pearl Harbor and San Francisco during the height of the Cold War. He would later regale his sons with stories of patrolling the Pacific, including how the sailors would bathe in the ocean while riflemen stood on deck watching for sharks. He wore his dolphin insignias – the symbol of the Silent Service – proudly.

During his time in the stifling, close quarters of attack submarines, he contracted tuberculosis — and a third of one of his lungs had to be surgically removed. His lung problems would remain an issue for the rest of his life, even after he developed, and defeated, lung cancer late in life. The US government sent him a $67 disability check every month for his trouble. And he never complained.

Upon his return to civilian life, he married his neighborhood sweetheart, the former Evangeline Monroig, in 1965. It was a rare wedding that merged a first-generation Irish-American with one of the first Puerto Rican families to settle in South Brooklyn. Not only did the “West Side Story” not break out at the nuptials, people still remember the affair as one of the most joyous they ever attended.?

Their 59-year union, which they celebrated just six days before his death, produced three sons, Paul Michael, the Sunday editor of the New York Post; Raymond, a New York City Fire Department captain; and Gregory, an attorney.?

His sons learned their work ethic from their father, who was a member of Steamfitters Local 638 for more than four decades. He specialized in installing complex sprinkler and fire suppression systems. The work often meant hoisting heavy pipe up ladders all day?long in skyscrapers without walls in the dead of winter. He did this job well into his 70s. There is an ongoing family debate whether he called in sick once in his career, or never.

One day, a passing Regis Philbin stopped and offered to help Paul and his partner as they struggled to install a siamese standpipe connection in a midtown Manhattan sidewalk. After one failed turn with the giant wrench, a crestfallen Philbin wished the laughing hard hats good luck and went on his way.

Paul was active in his kids’ lives, coaching Little League and coordinating Cub Scout trips. He was a doting grandfather to his eight grandchildren, always ready to bake a batch of banana pancakes.?

After their wedding, the young family moved to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where they lived in a four-story walkup on 40th Street owned by Evangeline’s parents, Juana and Ramon Monroig, and where Evangeline’s older sister Elba Fernandez also lived with her young family. The entire clan later moved to Great Kills, Staten Island, where they bought a triplex on Armstrong Avenue to fit all three loud and fun-loving generations. The grandparents and sister Midgie lived on the lower level, the McPolins were in the middle, and the Fernandezes lived on top.

Paul and his brother in-law Louis Fernandez became as close as blood brothers, and cousins Evangeline and Lisa Fernandez were sisters to the McPolin boys. The extended family moved freely among the three households; doors and refrigerators were always open. The cousins lovingly called Uncle Paul “Uncle Holey,” for his penchant for wearing ragged T-shirts.

Paul was a master joke teller who could bring you to tears, especially his tall tale about seeing a detached human foot topple out of the back of a moving ambulance on the Belt Parkway.

“What did you do?” his stunned listeners would ask.

“I called a toe truck,” he’d deadpan.

He also would gift a broken toaster every Christmas to his nephew Jeff, who would then gift it back the following Christmas.?

Paul had a special relationship with his nieces and nephews, especially Peter John, a decorated NYPD sergeant who tragically died in a car accident several years ago.

Paul and Evangeline were very close to Paul’s brother Peter and his wife Mary Alice, who lived only a mile away. They vacationed together, raised their kids together, and played cards together. Their weekly games of canasta were loud enough to raise the dead. Evangeline and Peter had the same card-playing philosophy: take no prisoners.

Paul was a talented billiards player, which came in handy when he joined the Oddfellows Lodge in Tottenville. He was elected president but hated the job because it meant leaning on fellow members to pay their late dues, including his own family.

After retiring, Paul moved into a duplex in Annadale owned by his son Ray, and he maintained a second home in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he was vice president of the condo association and a regular in the weekly poker game. The couple had many friends there and were socially active. They were known to dance at the local Irish pub, to the delight of the bartenders and the other patrons, who sat on bar stools, decidedly not dancing.

Paul was a connoisseur of perfect Manhattans.

He loved doing the New York Post’s daily sudoku, word games, and playing scrabble, which is considered bloodsport in the McPolin clan.

Paul was a champion napper – he could sleep at any time, anywhere. In fact, his daughter-in-law Ann Marie once spotted him sleeping while standing in a bank line.?

He was a Jets fan and season ticket-holder who attended games with his sons, nephews and their friends. Everyone called him “Yucca” at these games for some unknown reason, and he was so popular his fellow tailgaters often made up chants in his honor, to the tune of an Eminem song. They would belt out these odd odes to Yucca – with lyrics that cannot be repeated in polite company – in the middle of Met Life Stadium.

In the last months of his life, when he was hooked up to an oxygen tank and not very mobile, his sons and grandchildren would go to his house on Sundays to watch Jet games. Sometimes the Jets even won. The last such gathering was Super Bowl Sunday, and Paul was delighted that his granddaughter Colleen and grandson Manny won the family pool.

Originally a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, he became a Mets fan for many years, before wisely deciding that rooting for the Yankees would make his life easier. His sons remain despairing Mets fans.

He is predeceased by seven siblings, “Sissy” Campitelli, Danny McPolin, Maury Doyle, Barbara Gallagher, Michael McPolin, Peter McPolin, and David McPolin.?

He is survived, in addition to his wife and three sons, by eight grandchildren, Kathleen, Colleen, Connor, Claire, Patrick, Emma, Manuel and Luna McPolin; his sister, Joanne Amitrano; and three daughters-in-law he loved as his own, Maura, Ann Marie and Kirstin McPolin.

His wake was last Thursday, followed by Manhattans in his honor at Joyce’s Tavern.?The funeral was last Friday from John Vincent Scalia Home for Funerals, Eltingville, with a mass at St. Thomas Church. Burial followed at Resurrection Cemetery, where an FDNY engine company saluted the passing hearse under an immense, elevated American flag. A Navy bugler played taps at the gravesite and a Navy officer presented the grateful widow with a folded flag in appreciation for his loyal service to the nation.

And now his watch is ended, we shall never see his like again.