Remembering Coach Jack Palmese

By Katie McFadden

“You learn more from losing than you do from winning.” “It doesn’t cost anything to be nice.” “I’m not here for a long time, I’m here for a good time.” Those were a few of the phrases that friends say Jack Palmese lived by, and some of the wisdom he instilled in hundreds of kids across generations spanning 31 years as a coach. On November 18, Palmese died at age 48, leaving the Broad Channel and Rockaway communities mourning. But if the turnout by fellow DSNY members lining the street outside St. Camillus for services on Saturday, November 22, young athletes in jerseys filling pews inside along with many family members and friends, and tributes filling the fences of the courts and gyms where he inspired many said anything, it’s that Coach Jack left behind a legacy.

Jack Palmese was a lifelong Broad Channel resident who loved his community. Born to Sharonann and Patsy, Jack was one half of the well-known Palmese twins, with he and his brother Patrick being dubbed the Patjacks by some, following right behind their older sister, Sharon. The Palmese crew grew with Sharon marrying Matt and bringing young Matthew into the world and Patrick marrying Kim, who had Kaitlyn and Patrick. For Jack, family was everything. “He was family first. He was that old school Italian that lived close to mom and dad and when mom and dad called, or his siblings, he picked up and he was there whenever they needed him. He did that for everybody, but not until he helped his family first,” longtime friend Craig “Miltey” Boyle said, adding that Jack didn’t make it far from his parents or siblings, buying a house a few doors down on East 9th Road.

And when his nephews and niece came into his life, they were all Jack Palmese would talk about. “He coached every one of those kids and he always had a gleam in his eye when he talked about them,” Boyle said. “He was always bragging about all three of them. You couldn’t get far in a conversation without him mentioning one of them and what they were up to.”

After family, Palmese cared deeply for the friends he considered family, of which there were many. His longtime best friend, Byron Ahlemeyer, had the difficult task of saying Jack’s eulogy on Saturday. “I didn’t lose a friend; I lost a brother. Not a brother by blood, but by the bond we shared,” Ahlemeyer said. “I can talk about Jack’s friends, we’d be here a lot longer than we’re already going to be, but he had friends across the entire gamut of life. He was friends with everybody.”

Although he had no kids of his own, many acknowledged the ways Jack dedicated much of his life to hundreds of kids, some who grew up to have kids of their own, and then went on to know Coach Jack also. Around 7th grade, Jack Palmese began to fall in love with basketball. And it was through the late Chuck Wilson that he learned about coaching. “He loved the game of basketball and 31 years ago, a man by the name of Chuck Wilson introduced Jack to coaching and it was all over from there. Jack fell in love with coaching,” Ahlemeyer said. “He was phenomenal at it. He loved doing it and even though the last couple of years he said he was going to give it up and said this is going to be my last year, he coached five teams after that, then he coached three teams after that. He never walked away from it.”

For several decades, with basketball as his primary sport, still playing himself for the Graybeards, Jack Palmese coached kids through CYO at St. Camillus and at the courts at 17th Road Park in Broad Channel, primarily for the Broad Channel Athletic Club Shamrocks Summer Shootout. As the funeral procession passed by 17th Road Park on Saturday morning, Jack passed tributes on the fence with his name in Shamrock green, with many of his players in St. Camillus jerseys paying their respects, on the way to St. Camillus for the funeral service, where “JACK” decorated the parking lot fence.

Another friend of Jack’s who knew him from the BCAC and St. Camillus, Brad Palisi, spoke about “everyone’s favorite coach” and the ways he went above and beyond. “He and his brother, Pat, are always giving of their time. He never had kids, but he was always there to make sure kids had a ride to practice or home. He had some kids on his team who didn’t come from money, and he took them to buy sneakers because other kids were making fun of them. He never mentioned it to anybody,” Palisi said. “I knew because one of the kids came into the gym saying Coach Jack bought him sneakers.”

Jack Palmese was always there to help coach, even in instances where he wasn’t an official coach. “His first passion was basketball, but the season would end, and his brother Pat’s kids played a lot of other sports, so if Pat was coaching, whatever it was, baseball, soccer, football, Jack was there to help him. You’d see him any given afternoon in the spring in the dugout for baseball or out on the field. He always helped out with sports,” Palisi said.

And he brought his coaching methods to other joys in his life, like dart nights with friends. “Jack was an uber competitive person, but he would also put himself behind you to make you better. I was on a dart team where I was always the worst shooter, but Captain Jack would always play me instead of himself,” Boyle said. “I knew he was the better player, but that didn’t matter to him. He wanted to give everyone their playing time. Even when I saw him play basketball when he was younger, he was a big passer. He was point guard and he’d share the ball and really made everyone better.”

Jack Palmese was a man of not only inner, but physical strength. After going to McClancy High School and Queens College, Palmese went on to work for 20 years moving furniture for Tufano’s Moving & Storage, often teaching young men he coached in basketball, how to do the same. “He got a lot of young guys work when they were too young to have real jobs, and he beat his own body up doing it,” Boyle said. But it was good training for when he joined the Department of Sanitation in 2016, where he was working locally with Q14 garage. “When he got the job in sanitation, he took a lot of pride in it,” Boyle continued. And that respect was paid back, as shown during his funeral, where Boyle said DSNY helped direct traffic, their Emerald Society Pipe Band played, and even guys working their shifts came into the church in uniform to pay their respects for a few moments. “It was really touching,” Boyle said.

The outpour of support reflects the ways Jack Palmese touched so many throughout his short life. As Ahlemeyer said during the eulogy, “I see the word legacy here. One thing Jack often said— “legends never die. It’s often said you only live once. Jack lived every day. He died once but legends never die. No one’s going to miss him more than his family. We’ll share in that grief and eventually we’ll learn to live with it, but we’ll never forget him.”