Mr. Moscaritolo was attending art school when his father died in 1946. He left college to carry on the family restaurant that his father, an Italian immigrant, had started. Though he never returned to art school, he continued to sketch and write until his last days, said his daughter Ella of New York City.
“He was so artistic and poetic,’’ she said. “He could recite several soliloquies from Shakespeare’s tragedies. His favorite was ‘Hamlet.’ He loved reading and poetry, sketching and drawing caricatures. He was still doing this until a couple of months ago.’’
Mr. Moscaritolo, a philanthropist and a beloved resident of East Boston known to everyone as Nick, died Jan. 14 of congestive heart failure in the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers. He was 91 and had lived in East Boston since he was 10, when he emigrated with his family from Italy.
A handsome man, he looked like an artist, his daughter said, except perhaps for the golf cap he wore.
“Golf was his other passion,’’ she said, “but his family was his first.’’
“Dad’s passion was his family and the community,’’ said his son, Pat of East Boston, president and chief executive of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Like many immigrant families, the Moscaritolos worked hard to be able to give back in a variety of ways to the community that had welcomed them.
A former president of the Kiwanis Club of East Boston, to which he belonged for more than 60 years, Mr. Moscaritolo raised funds for the club’s college scholarships.
“I’m convinced that he got involved in so many youth organizations because he came from another country and had nothing when he arrived here, but was able to become successful,’’ his son told the East Boston Times-Free Press.
In 2009, when the Kiwanis Club honored Mr. Moscaritolo as Kiwanian of the Year, the Times-Free Press hailed him as representing “the very best that East Boston has to offer in the way of residents who care and who work hard to make this neighborhood a better place.’’
