A Lifetime, A Legacy: Gerry Deery
Gerry Deery with his mom, Rosemary, at his sister Mary Beth’s wedding.
The Monichetti family, a close-knit famiglia with history deeply woven into the fabric of Sea Isle City, recently lost one of their own. Gerry Deery died at age 33.
Gerry’s family tree remains rooted on his mother’s side in Sea Isle’s back-bay area. His great-grandparents, Dewey and Rosina Monachetti, arrived there from Ischia, an Italian island long linked with fishing, after passing through Ellis Island in 1911 (when an immigration worker listed their surname as Monichetti), as Gerry’s uncle Mike Monichetti tells it.
Mike Monichetti, who owns Mike’s Seafood & Dock Restaurant, and Gerry’s mother, Rosemary Deery, are siblings. Their parents, Mike and Mary Monichetti, knew a lot about edible sea creatures. Mary was formerly Mary Sannino of Sannino’s Fish Market, once a well-established business in South Philly and on 43rd Street in Sea Isle.
The deceased’s parents, Rosemary and Gerry Deery, raised their children Mike, Mary Beth, Chrissy and Gerry in Delaware, with summertimes full of work and family fun in Sea Isle. Today, son Mike Deery continues to work shifts with his uncle at Mike’s Seafood. One of Gerry’s sisters, Mary Beth Libro, and her husband John Libro own and operate Giovanni’s Deli.
Mary Beth fondly recalls summers spent living at her maternal grandmother Mary’s house in the early 1990s. Grandmom’s house was then connected to the Mike’s Seafood store, Mary Beth explains. Their Uncle Mike needed help at the new Dock Restaurant. So, her mom and dad, Rosemary and Gerry, packed up their children for Grandmom’s so they could all pitch in and work at the restaurant during the summer season. “We had more fun in those years, working all day in the restaurant and sleeping above the fish store at night,” says Mary Beth.
When he came of age, Gerry joined his older siblings as part of Mike’s Seafood & Dock Restaurant’s staff, Mary Beth says. Gerry worked as a busboy for four summers, a server during his mid-teens and finished his more than 10 years at Mike’s as a food prep person in the kitchen.
Gerry’s Uncle Mike notes how his hard-working nephew began at the restaurant as a busboy “on the bottom as one does in most businesses, especially a family business, and worked his way up.” Not only that, “Gerry honed his cooking skills under Mike’s Seafood and Dock Restaurant’s Chef Joseph LaRosa and became an outstanding cook in his own right,” Mike adds.
When Gerry wasn’t working by LaRosa’s side at the restaurant, he was in Grandmom Mary’s kitchen learning her style of cooking, his mother Rosemary recalls.
Those culinary skills came in handy for family gatherings.
Uncle Mike remembers Gerry as always in the kitchen “whipping up dishes that were superb” for family gatherings and preparing delicious traditional Italian dishes for their holiday feasts. “With Italians, you eat together, you work together!” Monichetti notes.
Gerry did all that, and more, despite his type 1 juvenile diabetes, diagnosed at age 2.
Early on, his diabetes set Gerry apart, Mary Beth says. Her brother was that child who had to be extremely careful about what he ate at birthday parties; he was that adult who had to be well aware of his alcohol intake, she adds. “Gerry was wise and smart about his diabetes” thanks to their parents who did everything possible to give him a sense of normalcy, Mary Beth adds.
During childhood, their dad Gerry rose early every morning to make Gerry’s breakfast to ensure that his son maintained safe blood-sugar levels, Mary Beth recalls. Dad or Mom administered Gerry’s insulin injections in the morning and in the evening. When Gerry was in kindergarten and first grade, and Mary Beth in fifth and sixth grades, Mary Beth left class early to administer Gerry’s daily insulin checks before lunchtime until he could do it himself, she says.
“We managed Gerry’s diabetes as a family,” his mom Rosemary says. When it came to keeping Gerry healthy, his sister Chrissy and older brother Mikey always helped out, too.
Diabetes or not, her younger brother was a happy and active child, one who treasured his VHS tape of “The Wizard of Oz” so much so that it required replacement, says Mary Beth. As an adult, Gerry had a soft spot in his heart for the children in the family, both his sister and his uncle note. “He always made a fuss over his nieces and nephews,” Uncle Mike says.
Thanks to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation – a nonprofit organization held in high esteem by the Deerys – Gerry attended JDRF-sponsored summer camps first as a camper and later as a camp counselor. A friend from those camping days was among many at Gerry’s funeral who told family members how Gerry discreetly went about the business of being thoughtful, empathetic and compassionate with them when they were in need, says his mom.
“Gerry was a very, very good listener,” his mother muses. “He had a gentle spirit.”
Rosemary was deeply moved by a revelation about kindness done by her sensitive son on another student’s behalf during their days at St. Mark’s High School in Wilmington, Del. “I was the outcast!” the young woman said to Rosemary. “Gerry was my first friend there.”
This account and others more than suggested that Gerry generously shared with others the familial love and faith-based values that helped to shape him.
Moreover, words mattered a lot to Gerry. A habit of penning his thoughts on any scrap of paper in sight went hand in hand with his passion for reading the written word. Gerry’s favorite books included works by American novelist John Updike and British literature, Mary Beth notes. “Our basement is filled with Gerry’s books,” mom Rosemary says, books that include classics, poetry and more. Fittingly, Gerry worked at a Borders bookstore in Wilmington while in college and later held administrative positions at local universities.
He spent the last couple of years of his life living alone in Center City Philadelphia and loving it.
In the end, Gerry “went low” [as in a diabetic low signaling low blood sugar] and “died peacefully in his sleep,” his father Gerry says.
“Gerry had 20 lows in his lifetime,” adds the man who long safeguarded his diabetic son with carefully selected and prepared daily breakfasts. As a boy, Gerry would sometimes say that he had a “tingling,” which indicated a diabetic low, and family members would address it immediately, his dad explains.
“The older you are, the harder it is to recognize a diabetic low,” he adds. “Gerry knew the risk.”
As the Deerys and Monichettis grapple with their heartache, Gerry’s Uncle Mike voices a high note of gratitude to his nephew.
“Gerry was instrumental in making Mike’s Seafood & Dock Restaurant what it is today,” says its owner. “His spirit will live here at Mike’s forever.”
