Joseph Balducci, An Everyday Man Who Found Poetry in the Vernacular of Sports, Dies at 92.

Joseph A. Balducci, handsome, rugged and charismatic, remained a man of stories and good humor until his final days. He died peacefully in his sleep at home in Port Orange on December 8. He was 92.

Born in 1928, the son of an Italian immigrant father and French-Canadian mother, he was orphaned into the care of his maternal grandmother at the age of three. The loss of his mother to illness was a wound that projected into adulthood. It fueled a passion for children whom he would happily entertain with games and stories. In turn, he was adored by his daughters and a host of nieces and nephews who vied for his attention and called him "Daddy Joe", the pet-name his two girls had adopted as toddlers.

At the age of 18, he enlisted in the Navy and served as an Aviation Boatswain Mate aboard the warship USS Antietam. It was 1946, too late to serve actively in World War II. Even so, the aircraft carrier's occupation duties would take Mr. Balducci to the Far East with occasional visits to Japan, the Philippines, Okinawa and other global ports of call. He returned from service to the home of his sister in Fitchburg, MA having seen the world and bearing tattoos on his arms and chest including the caricature of a ship-hand swabbing the deck captioned, "Never Again".

Soon after returning from service, Mr. Balducci met and married his sister's best friend, Rachel LeBlanc. She was his enduring sweetheart and under his attentive coaching, became a champion athlete in her own right.

Mr. Balducci embraced competitive sports from the time of his youth and excelled in any one he tried. An electrician by trade, he committed all his spare time to deer hunting and amateur athletic competition. He played semi-professional football, baseball and competed in gymnastics at an elite level. Mr. Balducci shared his passion for golf with his wife up to her death in 1993 but continued to play until slowed by Parkinson's Disease.

His loss is mourned by his daughters, Debera (Balducci) Wood of New Smyrna Beach, FL and Roxanne Balducci of Port Orange, FL. Mr. Balducci is also survived by three sisters and a brother, Rita Quinn (Fitchburg, MA), Cecilia Hawkins (Leominster, MA), Violet Pero (Staten Island, NY), and George Balducci (Boise, Idaho).

A funeral mass will be held at 8:30am on Friday, December 18, 2020 at Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church in Port Orange, Florida.