Lifetime Achievement
Hoboken’s Dick Carroll has been serving the PBA for more
than 70 years…and he’s still going
Story and photos by Amber Ramundo
Could Dick Carroll be the oldest living PBA member?
Consideration of this query called for a trip to Hoboken’s City
Hall to meet the esteemed retired member of Hoboken Local 2.
Climbing the stairs and entering the landmark building, all it
takes is a simple drop of the well-known name to be nodded
around the corner to a door marked “Credit Union” on an old
name plate.
Carroll waits patiently but stands eagerly upon entry. Artifacts
of his career in law enforcement are displayed purposefully on
his desk – newspaper clippings yellowed and hardened from
decades of storage. Even before taking a seat across from the
man who could very well be the Einstein or da Vinci of the NJ
State PBA, he’s pointing to headlines that display a decorated
career of service while speaking of union leaders that only a PBA
old-timer would know personally.
Sitting across from the 93-year-old wonder, it’s difficult to
keep up with his recollection of the past and a lifetime of service
that set the foundation for PBA policies that still exist today.
“Remember this?” Carroll begins. “This is me at one of the
conventions when I was pension trustee for 12 years.”
He says this while pointing to his picture on the front page of
the October 1976 cover of “New Jersey’s Finest,” then the official
publication of the NJ State PBA. From when he is shown in the
photo on the page presenting at the NJSPBA Convention in Las
Vegas, he was speaking from 28 years of experience as an officer,
State Delegate and board member that began with joining Local
2 in 1948. A glance up from the page shows the same man, more
than four decades later, bolstered by 71 years of service and still
going.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 40
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