By Nathan Duke
Northeast Queens community activists paid homage last week to a longtime Bayside High School teacher, whom they believed to have the longest tenure ever at the school, after he died in mid-January at age 84.
Dominick Alaggia, who had lived in Whitestone for much of his life before moving to Great Neck, L.I., spent a total of 47 years at Bayside High School, first attending the school for four years as a student and then teaching social studies and later working as a guidance counselor.
His friends said he changed the lives of numerous generations of students and was known for his civic-minded community work. Alaggia had long been a member of the Flushing Rotary Club and helped found a local chapter of Manhasset, L.I.-based Gift of Life, a group that helps fund open heart surgery for impoverished children from other nations.
“Dom’s life was about service above self,” said Frank Macchio, of the Flushing Rotary Club, who knew Alaggia for more than 20 years. “He had a unique ability to find synergies among people and groups and put them together for maximum benefit.”
Friends said Alaggia, who got around in a wheelchair, had been sick for some time. But the former teacher died from “complications of old age,” Macchio said.
On Saturday morning, friends and family attended a service at Doyle B. Schaffer funeral home on Little Neck Parkway and Alaggia was buried at All Saints Cemetery in Great Neck.
Alaggia, who was born in 1925, attended Bayside High School from 1939 to 1943 before serving in the Army during World War II. In 1947, he returned to the high school as a social studies teacher and eventually became a guidance counselor, retiring in 1990.
“I’m pretty sure there was no one else who spent that much time at the school,” said Frank Skala, a member of Community Board 11 and president of the East Bayside Homeowners Association as well as a former teacher at Bayside’s IS 25. “He was a grand old teacher of the school. He was Mr. Chips. Some people make a lasting impression on the community and he was one of them. It’s the end of an era.”
Skala said he presented an award to Alaggia from the school’s alumni association at least 10 years ago.
Upon retiring, Alaggia helped to form the Little Neck chapter of Gift of Life, which pays to bring poor children from around the world to the United States for open heart surgery. Alaggia’s branch specifically helped children from the Dominican Republic.
“Dom had an effect on people,” said Pat Coulaz, director of Little Neck’s Gift of Life. “He was quiet, but did wonderful things.”
Alaggia is survived by his wife, Annette, who is a teacher in Whitestone, Macchio said.
“He really stuck his neck out and got involved in students’ lives,” Macchio said. “He helped them to have a productive life and he did the same thing for children with the Gift of Life. He had three or four lives.”
Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e-mail at nduke@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
