Hall of Fame
God bless you, John Marshall College, wherever your spirit walks these days. Strange sentiments on the day in which Dick Serratelli joins the first class of inductees to be ushered into the Rutgers-Newark Athletic Hall of Fame. But they’re not without meaning. If Dick Serratelli hadn’t enrolled at John Marshall College in Jersey City… if John Marshall College hadn’t gone out of business… and if Serratelli had not been attracted by the combination of an R-N degree and a Rutgers Newark varsity letter, then all of us would be a little poorer for it.
When Serratelli transferred to Rutgers-Newark, New Jersey gained a budding lawyer and Hank Bodner’s athletic program found a springtime centerfielder for baseball and the muscle needed to shut down the middle in the complicated zone defense that Bodner’s basketball team played.
As a centerfielder, he never once committed an error during his entire career, hit over .300 and led the team in home runs each season. In basketball he was an excellent rebounder and shot well from the corner but it was as the focal point in Bodner’s defense that his teammates best remember him. The combination received its just due at the end of his senior (’51) season when he received the school’s athlete of the year award.
Upon graduation, Serratelli, who was a member of R-N’s Glove and Stick Fraternity (and recipient of the Fraternity Council’s intramural athlete of the year award in ’50) moved on to Rutgers Law, from which he was graduated in 1954.
He was formerly a municipal judge in Parsippany and is currently Hearing Judge for the Waterfront Commission. He resides in Parsippany today.
