SOUTH PHILLY: Rocky Digs Deep To Find Roots

by Maria Merlino

If you Google “Rocky DeGregorio Pacifico Ford,” www.dealerrater.com comes up first. The page has more than 200 five-star ratings for this salesman. No negatives!

PACIFICO FORD Sales Executive Rocky DeGregorio and Pastor of St. Rita of Cascia Church & Shrine Father Joe Genito take a moment to pose for a picture together at recent event. Photo by Maria Merlino

Buying a car can be hazardous to your mental health, but DeGregorio has a certain knack that puts people at ease, saves them money and instinctively knows what it takes to hook up the right auto to the right person.

“Pacifico is a great place,” he says. “All my customers are like family. I’ve sold to multiple generations.”

The phones have been ringing off the hook and sales are smashing.

“The place is packed! We’re selling cars. After the holiday, everything goes crazy,” he said.

He is a man of faith and his story is unique. A self-described “workaholic,” DeGregorio and two of his siblings were born in Austria. But he isn’t Austrian.

“I need to take you back to the beginning,” he said. “My father, Rocco Sr., was born at 7th & Carpenter Streets in the 1930s.”

After childbirth, his mother died and it affected his grandfather so greatly that he couldn’t cope with a newborn and he placed his baby son, Rocco Sr., in the St. Vincent DePaul Orphanage. The Brothers and the priests took care of him until he was 18 years old.

During that time, Rocco Sr. was visited by a little girl, Catherine (now 92), who would visit her older brother in the orphanage. Rocco Sr. was even asked to come back home, but he refused. At that point, he was happy where he was and didn’t want to leave.

When WWII started, Rocco Sr. was drafted and wound up in Austria where he met a family of Italians that had escaped Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Formerly owners of a villa, they had lost everything – except for a beautiful daughter who caught his eye at a USO (United Service Organizations Inc. – a nonprofit organization that provides programs, services and live entertainment to United States troops) show. And they married.

Two girls and a boy later, the Army sent him to France. Another little girl was born afterward.

With all that traveling, DeGregorio picked up some foreign languages.

“As a child, I spoke German, Italian and French and my mother spoke five languages. But when the family moved to South Philadelphia, I was enrolled in Epiphany of Our Lord School and quickly learned English. Unfortunately, my other language skills were lost because other kids made fun of me,” he said.

After graduating Bishop Neumann, he enlisted in the Marines.

“It was the Vietnam era. I was stationed at Camp Lejeune (in Jacksonville, N.C.) and expected to be deployed there. But there was an Amphibious Tractor Battalion that had just returned and they were stuck there and I stayed down South until I was discharged,” he said.

He married Donna, had a daughter, Diana, who is now a chemical engineer in California and Lori, a La Salle graduate. Both have given him and his wife grandchildren: Gianluca, 1, and Ava, 8 and little brother Logan, 6.

When his mother died six years ago, DeGregorio, who had urged her without avail to take a trip back to Austria, decided to go make the pilgrimage himself.

“When I got there, I walked the streets of my birth, five or six miles a day. I had a Google map that I used to find the cemetery where my mother’s family was buried. I hit a couple of dead ends but as faith would have it, I met European bicyclists that had been to Philly and spoke a little English. They helped me navigate to where I needed to go.

“When I finally found the gravesite, I was shocked that there were no names. That’s when I walked to the main house there. The caretaker told me that if money isn’t given to maintain the graves, then other people can be buried there. You lose your spot,” he said.

And what happened to the bodies?

“The coffins are removed and the remaining bones are placed beneath the new caskets. This bothered me so much! I went back the next day and collected dirt and stones from around gravesite. When I got home, I distributed the earth to my siblings. I kept some and visited my mom and dad’s grave. I scattered a line of the dirt all around their burial mount and said a prayer. This was in the winter.

“When I went back in the spring, I was amazed at what I saw. I beautiful blue flower was growing right where I placed the dirt. This was sign to me. I wanted to go back to my roots and it did happen. A small bit of life from the old days had rooted with my family,” he said.

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