The Last Of The Great New York Strongmen

“He was one of the last links to the old strongman days of Coney Island. Coney Island was the training ground for strongmen. He was one of the best.”

There’s something about the story of Joe Rollino that seems to resonate with everyone I’ve spoken to this morning. The 104-year-old Rollino died yesterday after being struck by an automobile while on his morning walk. Rollino-”a longtime member of the Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongmen”-was considered one of the strongest men who ever lived, and swam in the frozen waters of the Atlantic well into his golden years. On his 103rd birthday, he bent a quarter with his teeth. And there’s more.

Mr. Scarcella, like many of those who knew Mr. Rollino, has a Joe Rollino story, or several Joe Rollino stories. And though some of them can be neither confirmed nor refuted, they get told and retold and told again, because they are too good not to. Mr. Scarcella heard that one winter in the 1950s, Mr. Rollino recovered the bodies of two people who drowned in Prospect Park, because the police did not have the necessary protective equipment and it was too cold for anyone else to jump in and bring them to the surface.

Still active at 104, it took a minivan to bring him down.