Centerport insurance broker Ernie Fazio pushed visionary projects that reached beyond the shores of Long Island, both literally and figuratively, while devoting his life to its business community and public utilities. Sometimes a gadfly, sometimes an entrepreneur, he was always unforgettable.
“Larger than life. He was one of a kind.” said former Long Islander Bob Yeager, a retired commercial-airline pilot now living in New Orleans. Fazio was a friend from Yeager’s 1970s stint selling insurance, and they remained close. “He was just a happy guy without a mean bone in his body — kind, gentle, easygoing.”
But not without expansive opinions about energy and transportation. Decades ago, he championed such technologies as wind power and magnetic levitation trains. He advocated for a bridge between Long Island and Connecticut.
His pulpits included LIMBA — originally Long Island Mid-Suffolk Business Action and now Long Island Metro Business Action — where he served as longtime chairman. He additionally wrote letters-to-the-editor, hosted a weekly local radio show and was vocal at public meetings of the Long Island Lighting Co.
“All the things he was advocating for will probably come to pass,” said his elder son Glenn Fazio, of Huntington, though “not in his lifetime.”
Ernie Fazio died March 13 en route from Huntington Hospital to South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore and its Level 1 trauma center. The cause was a burst aorta, said his wife, Marguerite Moore. He was 85.
Liberal businessman
He kept a fiery attitude to the end, a liberal businessman who posted well-thought-out opposition to the current administration even in right-wing social-media groups. “He just felt like people are afraid to say anything,” his son said. “And his attitude was, ‘What are they going to do to me? I’m about to die anyway!’ ”
Ernest Michael Fazio was born Dec. 29, 1940, per New York City records (his birth year, however, is sometimes given as 1939). Raised in Howard Beach, Queens, he was the fifth of six children of Thomas John Fazio Sr., a carpenter whose projects included helping to build Levittown, and homemaker Theresa Greco Fazio, an Italian immigrant. His father died when he was 17.
Following high school and service in the U.S. Coast Guard, Fazio worked as a lineman for the telephone company AT&T. There, he became a regional steward for the Communications Workers of America at age 24, his family said. “I was pretty impressed with that,” said Glenn Fazio. “I think the union liked what he had to say … and how he presented it.”
Those traits served him well throughout his life, from operating an entrepreneurial business selling construction materials to working as an insurance broker for companies before forming Ernest M. Fazio Associates. He had married Jane Helen Simonovich in 1969 and moved shortly after to Centerport to start a family.
Jane died in 2007 and Fazio remarried in 2014. “He was energetic, intelligent, creative, reliable and a loving husband,” Moore said.
LI business supporter
As a voice for Long Island businesses, Fazio headed LIMBA and spearheaded seminars and workshops. In the 1980s and ‘90s, he hosted the weekly radio shows “A World of Ideas with Ernie Fazio” and “Earnestly Speaking” on WHPC, WLIX and later JVC Broadcasting for, his family said, a combined 20 years. He worked on Long Island Association committees on transportation, infrastructure and reducing teenage driving deaths.
He was among the contributors to the 2013 book “Maglev America” by Brookhaven National Laboratory physicists James Powell and Gordon Danby, the inventors of superconducting maglev technology. And he founded the company Long Island Future Energy, which in 1999 received a $50,000 grant from the Long Island Power Authority to build a prototype energy-efficient house at the laboratory.
Among his accolades was the 1995 Front Page Award from Long Island Business News.
He was an avid beachgoer, owning a summer home on Fire Island for a time, and in the 1970s he performed in community theater.
Glenn Fazio said his cousin, at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Ernie Fazio, “told me he didn’t agree with my dad on a lot of stuff but that he really enjoyed his company and he thought dad was great at bringing all kinds of different people together. And I thought that was a good way to sum him up. He was good at bringing people together.”
In addition to his wife and son, Glenn, he is survived by another son, Andrew Fazio, of Waterboro, Maine; a sister, Jean Fazio Smoker, of Merrick; and four grandchildren.
He was cremated at Moloney’s Lake Funeral Home & Cremation Center, in Lake Ronkonkoma. A celebration of life will be held on April 9 at Windows on the Lake in that hamlet.
