David Mario Gigante was born to immigrant parents in Brooklyn, NY, on January 17, 1925. The son of a barber, he earned a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from CCNY and a Master’s from Columbia University. He worked his way to upper management at Con Edison over the course of a 40-year career, serving as chief engineer. He designed and oversaw construction of the power substations—many still in use today—that keep the electrical grid of New York City humming. As head of Con Ed’s records department, he opened the Con Ed Conservation Museum on 14th Street in Manhattan, and played a key role in preserving Thomas Edison’s early equipment through a donation to the Smithsonian Institute.
David was a beloved son, brother, husband, father and grandfather whose defining characteristic was family devotion. As part of a tightknit family presided over by his father Giovanni and the family matriarch Vincenza, both emigrants from Naples, he, along with his sister Josephine, came of age in Brooklyn, NY during the Great Depression. The family owned a barber shop in Greenwich Village, summered at a vacation home in Breezy Point, Brooklyn, and went to the movies every weekend, always together. The family was rocked by tragedy when Josephine died in her twenties of a poorly understood “blood condition” later identified as diabetes. David contracted the disease, a rare form of adult-onset Type 1 diabetes, shortly thereafter, but through a healthy lifestyle he was able to live for another 50 years with the debilitating illness.
Along the way, he married and had three children. He worked hard to ensure a secure lifestyle for them, fostering the close family bonds he knew from his youth. His life involved teaching his children baseball in Manhasset, piling up fruit from farm stands in the Hamptons, visiting the grandparents on holidays in Brooklyn, speeding the motorboat dubbed the Little Giant around the bay, and playing old Italian card games around the kitchen table on summer evenings. He sacrificed and saved so his children could attend college and start their own careers unburdened by debt.
David is survived by his wife of 52 years, Frances, his steadfast companion and helpmate. His children (Joanne Thalheimer, Denise Gigante and John Gigante) and grandchildren (Julian, Jessica, Bryce, Cole, Max and Capri) will honor his legacy of persistence, dedication, hard work, passion, humor, and love of family.
