CAPT Joseph Azzolina Memorial Bridge: To honor former State Senator and Navy Captain By MURIEL J. SMITH Posted:06/16/10
Click on picture to Zoom
Highlands - State Senator Sean T. Kean, District 11, State Senator Joseph Kyrillos, 13th District, and Senator Jennifer Beck introduced a bill into the Senate Friday designating the Route 36 Bridge across the Shrewsbury River the CAPT Joseph Azzolina Memorial Bridge. Co-sponsor Senator Robert W. Singer, 30th District, in introducing the legislation, joined the primary sponsors.
The bill now goes to the Transportation Committee before final action both in the Senate and the Assembly. In the Assembly, Assembly members Mary Pat Angelini, District 11 and Declan O'Scanlon, Jr., 12th district, are the primary co-sponsors of A2938, the companion bill to the Senate S2073.
The bills will enable the newly constructed bridge to honor the former State Senator, Assemblyman and Navy Captain near where, as a teenager, he served as a lifeguard on the Highlands beach on the Shrewsbury River just south of the bridge. Azzolina, who died April 15, was raised in Highlands where his parents operated a grocery store on Miller St. in 1928. Their second store, the Food Basket, on Bay Avenue, Highlands, was the forerunner of the Food Circus Food Market grocery chain Azzolina started and brought to its present compliment of ten supermarkets.
"The family feels honored the legislators want to name the bridge for our father," said John Azzolina, "our mother, Lynn, is also deeply moved by the gesture."
Family members noted the bridge has special meaning for the family and for the former Navy captain. The senior Azzolina's, the late John and Angelina Azzolina, prepared and served Italian specialties for many of the workers who constructed the original bridge on the site in 1932. And, besides serving as a lifeguard at the Bridge Beach, if Azzolina himself was like every other teenager in the borough, he jumped off the top of the bridge at least once, the traditional rite of passage for Highlands teenagers.
