Philip J. Domenico, 94

Philip J. Domenico of Pompey, 94, died Nov. 28, 2017. Born in Rome, N.Y., he was the eldest of the five sons born to Phil and Lucy Domenico. He was educated in the local public schools and, a year or so after graduation, left for the Second World War where he served in the Ninth Air Force, attached to Patton’s Third Army and participated in the battles for Normandy, Northern France, The Bulge, The Rhineland, and the invasion of Southern Germany as well as the Air Offensive over Europe. After the conclusion of the European War, his squadron was in the Mediterranean, en route directly from Germany to Okinawa in preparation for the invasion of Japan, when the Pacific War ended and they were rerouted home. He then completed his college education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Electrical Engineering) and, later, the Cornell Business School.
In his last year at Rensselaer he decided he didn’t want to be an engineer. So, since he wanted to live in Manhattan, he took a few actuarial exams, passed them, and was offered a job in the actuarial department of Mutual of New York (MONY) on Wall Street. He had been there only a short while when Tom Watson, CEO and founder of IBM and a member of Mutual’s Board of Trustees, gave the company one of IBM’s first stored program computers. Mutual’s management, not knowing what to do with it but anxious not to displease a trustee, finally figured an RPI engineering graduate should know something about it and assigned him the task of making it work. They were wrong. He knew absolutely nothing about computers. His major was communications. But, as he put it, through a brilliant combination of bluff, bluster and bravado he pulled it off and, from that point on, installed, programmed and managed some of the earliest computers used in American business as the company undertook the job of automating all of its manual operations. This took almost 10 years and was not completed until the early 1960s with the advent of the giant main frames. It was during this same period that he also met and married Jane Wissbach, an actuarial department co-worker, fathered four daughters, and moved to Long Island. After this, in 1965 and 1966, he was responsible for the planning and management of the move of MONY’s Data Processing Operations from Broadway and 55th Street in Manhattan to the former MONY (now AXA-Equitable) Building in Syracuse where he managed both the New York and Syracuse operations as Vice President until his retirement. After his retirement he did some consulting and then participated in his wife’s Early American Antique business.
He was a member of the American Society of Actuaries, the Board of Advisors for the Salvation Army, the Metropolitan Development Association, the Zoning Board of Appeals for the town of Pompey, and various national and local data processing and insurance associations.
He leaves as survivors his beloved wife of 65 years, Jane W. Domenico and four daughters – Nina Domenico of Cambridge, MA, Lisa (Dan) Fuller of Portland, ME, Carrie (Dan) O’Connell of Centennial, CO, and Dorcas (George) Shaffer of Reston, VA, as well as three grandchildren, Daniel and Philip O’Connell and Carly Shaffer.
There will be no calling hours. A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10, at Christ Church in Manlius. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Hospice of Central New York.
For a guest book, please visit scheppfamily.com.