Richie DiMeo, founding father of East Boston Ladies Softball League and the Meridian Home
By Cary Shuman
East Boston is mourning the lack of Richie DiMeo, whose excellent contributions to the group had been identified far and vast as a founding father of the Meridian Home and the East Boston Ladies Softball League.
Mr. DiMeo had been residing in Revere and spending his winters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the place he had a condominium.
Opening Day program of the
East Boston Ladies Softball
League. Additionally pictured is his
spouse, Robyn DiMeo.
Richie, as we identified to household and mates, grew up within the Lexington Avenue neighborhood and attended native colleges.
His daughter, Katie DiMeo, associated how her father confronted some challenges in his early maturity, however he was in a position to flip his life round and that of so many others by means of his noble volunteer work in drug training at the highschool and in youth packages all through East Boston.
“My father was a pioneer in reaching out to assist folks earlier than packages like DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Training) existed,” Katie mentioned proudly. “His work developed into opening a midway home (the Meridian Home now below the auspices of North Suffolk Group Companies).
‘A present for reaching folks’
Tony Schepici recalled the difficult occasions that he and Richie encountered earlier than they joined forces and secured the funding to open the Meridian Home.
“Years in the past, Richie and I battled some drug points, and other people within the neighborhood had been on the lookout for folks to start out up a drug program,” mentioned Schepici. “They noticed that Richie and I had been doing the correct factor in our lives, and we began the entire program.”
Schepici mentioned he was honored to talk at a celebration of life for his lifelong buddy, Richie DiMeo, Tuesday on the Orient Heights Yacht Membership, and that he needed to share the heartfelt remarks that comply with:
“I met Richie once I was about 16 years previous. From that second on, he was part of my life. As we grew older, there was an thought to create a drug program run by former addicts, and that’s how the Meridian Home was born.
“Richie, a couple of others, and I began with only a small storefront. Ultimately, it expanded and have become the Meridian Home. Richie had a present for reaching folks. He took on the function for talking engagements. He used to go all the faculties and go to the scholars and inform them concerning the risks of habit.
“He didn’t simply inform them what to not do, he confirmed them and gave them an actual trustworthy take a look at the risks of habit.
“Richie was the most effective folks I’ve ever identified. And it was on the Meridian Home the place he met the love of his life, Robyn. Richie was not only a chief, he was a mentor. He was a real buddy, the most effective mates I ever had. I’ll at all times love him.”
Mr. DiMeo continued his necessary work in the neighborhood when he joined the Suffolk County District Legal professional’s Workplace because the chief murder investigator. He labored in that place for 25 years.
A league of their very own
Richie DiMeo and his spouse, Robyn, are credited with founding the East Boston Ladies Softball League. They did all of it for the league – registering gamers, deciding on the coaches, distributing the brand new uniforms, scheduling the video games, assigning the umpires, holding fundraisers, and operating the concession stand.
Most significantly, Richie and Robyn DiMeo gave East Boston ladies their very own aggressive league, welcoming the gamers and their households every evening to Festa Subject, the place the DiMeos ensured that it will a enjoyable and protected surroundings for all.
The league grew so shortly that Richie and Robyn needed to kind senior and junior divisions to accommodate the various gamers – some even past the Eastie borders – who needed to play of their well-organized league.
A daughter excels
on the sphere
Maybe nobody can higher articulate what the league meant to Eastie youngsters than Richie and Robyn’s DiMeo’s daughter, Katie DiMeo.
“I keep in mind that first season in 2001, they had been standing exterior Burger King and giving out fliers to attempt to get sufficient sign-ups for 4 groups that first 12 months,” recalled Katie. “The subsequent 12 months, there have been 13 groups after folks noticed what an incredible league it was and the way laborious my dad and mom had labored to get it going. My mom was at all times an enormous ladies’s empowerment particular person, at all times pushing for equality in that means. When she felt the necessity for it, she jumped, and my dad had all that baseball expertise in teaching when my older brothers performed. My mom did all of the grant writing and fundraising, and my father knew baseball and softball in and out – they had been a extremely nice workforce.”
Katie, who was 10 years previous on the time, grew to become a dominant pitcher within the league, so expert that she would turn into a beginning pitcher for the Boston Latin Faculty varsity workforce as a seventh grader.
Different gifted gamers reminiscent of Krysten Hunt, McKenzie Powers, Nicole McCormack, Danielle Sutera, Kristina Burri, Gianna Polichetti, Katrina DiMarzo, and Monica Cioffi developed their expertise within the league on their technique to competing and excelling in highschool and a few even on the school stage.
An Eastie workforce, led by the excellent pitching of center schooler Katie DiMeo and coached by Richie DiMeo and John DiMarzo, extremely received the Mayor’s Cup Event competing in opposition to highschool groups.
Katie DiMeo mentioned she was getting ready her remarks for Tuesday’s celebration of life occasion for her father, as was her sister, Carli DiMeo, an impressive professor of occupational remedy.
Richie and Robyn DiMeo helped construct a league and a legacy in East Boston. They had been grateful to every participant, coach, dad or mum, and resident for his or her assist of the EBGSL group.
However as anybody who was related to the league within the early 2000s will let you know, Richie and Robyn DiMeo had been the undisputed MVPs in East Boston.
A tribute to Richard DiMeo
from Rep. Adrian Madaro
Rep. Adrian Madaro, who grew taking part in sports activities in East Boston and went on to graduate from Boston Latin Faculty, Tufts and Suffolk Regulation Faculty, supplied a wonderful tribute to Mr. DiMeo, lauding his stellar, lifelong contributions to the neighborhood.
“Richard DiMeo left an indelible mark on East Boston,” mentioned Madaro. “He was identified for at all times being able to roll up his sleeves to assist our group. His contributions to ladies’ softball helped create useful alternatives for younger folks in our neighborhood, and his assist for folks in restoration will stay on by means of his dedication to the Meridian Home, a residential remedy program for substance abuse dysfunction. My deepest sympathies exit to his household and family members throughout this tough time.”
