Former county engineer dies

Staff report

BOARDMAN

Former Mahoning County engineer Richard A. Marsico passed away unexpectedly Saturday morning at St. Elizabeth Boardman Hospital.

He was 81.

Marsico served four terms in office, beginning in 1997 until he withdrew his re-election bid in 2012 after the Democratic Party endorsed Patrick Ginnetti by a 68 percent margin in the primary.

He endorsed Ginnetti, who was unopposed in the general election.

When Marsico first assumed office, the department had a staff of 177, which he reduced to 129 by June 1998. When he retired, it had 71 employees.

“It’s been a long, rewarding career. I’ve enjoyed my engineering career,” Marsico said.

Among his proudest accomplishments, he told The Vindicator when he retired in 2012, was the widening of South Avenue from two to five lanes between Presidential Drive and Western Reserve Road in 2002 and 2003 and the widening of Western Reserve Road between Hitchcock Road and U.S. Route 62.

The 2008 rehabilitation of the 1949-vintage Fallen Firefighters Memorial Bridge, formerly the Spring Common Bridge, in downtown Youngstown, was another major project that received five federal, state, local and historic preservation awards.

Other projects during his tenure were the replacements of the Center Street, Walton Avenue, Jacobs Road and Shields Road bridges and the U.S. Route 224 bridge over Yellow Creek.

Yet another accomplishment, Marsico told The Vindicator, was the county’s 2003 drainage and erosion-control manual, which requires developers to use erosion and flood control measures.

As Youngstown’s deputy director of public works between 1984 and 1997, Marsico said he was proud of a $65 million upgrade and expansion of the city’s sewage-treatment plant, widening and redesign of Federal Street and improvements to runways, taxiways, aprons and hangars at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.

In his earlier private engineering practice, Marsico worked on interstate highway-construction projects and on the development of the General Motors Complex in Lordstown and Warren area Packard Electric facilities. During that time, he was also village and city engineer in five communities.

He was inducted on May 24 into the Woodrow Wilson Hall of Fame 2015.

Marsico married Shirlee Eckerle on June 19, 1954. She died in 2005.

He married Patricia Depizzo-Como on July 27, 2007. She survives him.

Calling hours are Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m. and Thursday from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. at Fox Funeral Home, 4700 Market St., Youngstown. The funeral will take place at 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Dominic Church.