Billy DePetris, Bridgehampton Fixture, Dies At 85

Billy DePetris, a star athlete in the 1950s at Bridgehampton High School who shared his love of baseball with the generation that followed by serving as a volunteer coach and mentor, died on May 4 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease.

The son of a local restaurant owner, DePetris, known for his out-sized personality, ran the Village Restaurant and later Billy’s Triple Crown, both on Main Street in Bridgehampton, for many years.

DePetris, who was 85, died with family members at his side at the Quogue home of his daughter, Donna DePetris, with whom he had lived for several years.

Growing up in the 1950s, when Bridgehampton was still a small farming community, DePetris excelled in every sport he played at Bridgehampton High School. He was the quarterback and captain of the six-man football team; played forward on the basketball team, scoring more than 1,000 points during his career; and threw six no-hitters, including three in one week, as a star pitcher on a baseball team that included future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski.

Daniel Shedrick of Sag Harbor, who was four years behind DePetris in school, lived across the street from what was then the family’s Judrick Restaurant, owned by DePetris’s parents, in the space now occupied by Pierre’s. The boys’ mutual interest in sports brought them together.

“He could throw every pitch, curveball, fastball, slider — what we called a drop — with his knuckles,” Shedrick said. “It was really a feat.”

When Shedrick was not trying catch DePetris’s dancing pitches, the two often ignored the sour smell wafting from the garbage cans behind the family restaurant to shoot hoops at a makeshift basket.

“He was an incredible athlete,” recalled classmate Thomas Halsey, a Water Mill farmer. “I was not. I couldn’t wait to get home to get on the tractor. But that didn’t stop Billy from being nice to me.”

Halsey also recalled that DePetris was a prankster in high school who pushed the limits of what he could get away with.

When DePetris was inducted into the Bridgehampton School’s Hall of Fame in 2016, Halsey recounted a story of how DePetris threw a chalkboard eraser at a popular teacher, Larry Koncelik, whose back was turned. To DePetris’s surprise, the response was immediate, as the teacher wheeled around and threw a piece of chalk that hit him in the head.

While still in high school, DePetris played semi-pro baseball and was therefore ineligible his senior year. Although he was given a tryout by the then-New York Giants, he threw his arm out in training camp, dashing his dreams of being a Major Leaguer.

Instead, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, serving three years and forming a lifelong devotion to that branch of the service. Family members said his home on Flanders Road in Riverside was full of Marine memorabilia, and he had a life-sized statue of a Marine outside. His car, a silver sedan, was festooned with American flags and Marine decals.

After his time in the service, DePetris returned to Bridgehampton, going to work for the family restaurant. Later, he would change its name to the Village Restaurant when his father moved the Judrick to a location across the street from the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center.

The Village Restaurant later became Billy’s Triple Crown — named in honor of Yastzremski’s feat of having led Major League Baseball in batting average, runs batted in and home runs during the Boston Red Sox’s 1967 pennant-winning season. He later opened a second Billy’s Triple Crown in Kissimmee, Florida, in the early 1990s before returning to Bridgehampton.

Billy DePetris Jr. of Riverhead said his father had a strong work ethic and liked it when the restaurant was busy. “He worked better under pressure,” he said. “He liked it when they were four deep at the bar. He always pulled a rabbit out of his hat.”

Years after giving up his restaurants, DePetris worked as a cook at the Cormaria retreat house in Sag Harbor. Getting up in the middle of the night to drive from Flanders to Sag Harbor, he would stop at Cromer’s Market in Noyac along the way to pick up provisions before the store opened. “He had three alarms and two wristwatches to make sure he was never late,” his son said.

For a period in the late 1970s, DePetris transformed the Village Restaurant at night into Guglielmino’s, a bar and nightclub that had live entertainment.

“Everybody talks about the sports stuff, but I remember the jazz,” said Marina Van, the wife of the restaurateur Bobby Van and an old friend of DePetris. “That was a lot of fun for a few years.”

Friends described DePetris as a man who exuded self-confidence, often sporting a mustache that was at times waxed or full and bushy, as well as a gold chain or two. His wardrobe tended to match his personality: loud and bold.

But DePetris’s life was not always happy-go-lucky. He lost his mother to tuberculosis when he was a young child, and he and his second wife lost two newborn babies. In 1978, after his brother Rick DePetris, who ran a café next to the Village Restaurant, died in a car crash, he took over that business as well. When a second brother, Wayne DePetris, died at age 50 of a heart attack, DePetris became a father figure to both men’s children.

“He managed to be the glue that kept a huge family incredibly close,” said a nephew, Greg DePetris of Guilford, Connecticut. “If you talk to his grandkids, kids, his nieces or nephews, they will all tell you — the family never got too big for him to love them all equally.”

A generation of Bridgehampton kids, now adults, who played Little League or high school baseball for DePetris described him as a tough but fair coach who always had their best interest in mind.

“For me, coming from the South, he made me feel comfortable. He kind of looked after all the young players who played for him,” said Carl Johnson, who grew up to become a highly successful player on and coach of the Bridgehampton High School basketball team. “It didn’t matter what your walk of life, religion or background. Everybody got treated the same way.”

One way DePetris showed that, Johnson continued, was by inviting the players from his often championship Little League teams to come to the Village Restaurant after their games for a free meal of hamburgers, French fries, soda and ice cream.

Gene “Stumpy” Ward of New York also played Little League for DePetris. Besides teaching him how to pitch, he said DePetris gave him a job at his restaurant and taught him how to cook. “He always made sure I had two or three dollars in my pocket,” Ward said. “He was beyond extraordinary. He helped anyone and everybody.”

“My father was very tough, he was very highly disciplined, and he was respected, and we won,” said Billy DePetris Jr., who also played baseball on his father’s Lions Club-sponsored Little League teams. “But he would take care of kids any way he could, if it meant buying them clothing or spikes or just giving them rides home.”

His former players agreed DePetris certainly knew how to coach.

“He loved his kids, but he was no-nonsense. He wanted us to take the game seriously,” said the Reverend Michael Jackson of Bridgehampton. “If, as a kid, you didn’t like baseball, by the time he got done with you, you loved the game.”

“I played for Billy from Little League through high school, and I ended up getting a scholarship to Florida A&M,” said Amos Wyche of Ballston Lake. “He was the best of the best. There’s never going to be another like him.”

DePetris was born William DePetris on December 3, 1936, in Greenport to Enrico DePetris and the former Mary Cecelia Scholtz. After his mother’s death, he and his brother Rick were raised by relatives until their father remarried and moved to Bridgehampton.

DePetris and the former Vada Couch were married in 1959. The marriage ended in divorce. A second marriage, to Joann Brockway, also ended in divorce.

Besides his daughter and son, DePetris is survived by another daughter, Sheila DePetris of Riverhead; 12 grandchildren; 25 great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild. His first wife and two children by his second marriage, Tina Marie DePetris and William DePetris II, predeceased him.

Visitation will be at the Brockett Funeral Home in Southampton from 6 to 9 p.m. on June 8, with a funeral Mass at Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Church at 11 a.m. on June 9. DePetris was cremated, and his ashes will be buried at Calverton National Cemetery following the funeral Mass.

Although a date has yet to be set, the Bridgehampton School District is expected to host a celebration of DePetris’s life as well.