Obituary of Anton Joseph Campanella

Anton Joseph Campanella, a lifelong company man and former president of New Jersey Bell and Bell Atlantic, died peacefully at 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 10^th. He was 88 years old. Anton was a man who valued hard work, trust and integrity, and his life embodied the American Dream.

A first-generation Italian American, Anton was born on January 11^th, 1932 in Hackensack, New Jersey. He often talked of how his immigrant parents, Joseph Parisi Campanella and Lucille Mandara Campanella, lived in homes with dirt floors in Sicily before coming to America as children.

In 1940, during WWII, his father’s work as a residential home builder dried up due to the rationing of building supplies. Anton was eight years old when his parents moved the family from Millburn, NJ, to a farm in Chesterfield, NH. To put food on the table, the family raised animals and grew vegetables. They earned money by harvesting maple syrup from trees on their farm and selling it. Anton milked cows each morning and took care of a bull named Bunker, who he loved. Anton used to sled in the snow to a one-room schoolhouse in Chesterfield. He often told the story of how he once had to stand at the wood stove after touching his tongue to his frozen sled.  When he was older, he went to Brattleboro High School, just over the state line in Vermont. His sister Madeline recalled that as a teenager, Anton was outgoing, popular and a natural leader, so it was no surprise that he became president of his senior class.

Anton enrolled in Upsala College in East Orange, NJ in 1949. He paid for his first two years of college by selling pots and pans. Partway through his sophomore year, he enlisted in the Army and served in the Korean War. He finished college on the G.I. Bill and later served in the Army Reserves. During school, he was the national runner-up in the NCAA Table Tennis Championship Tournament. Anton also sang in the choir, where he met his wife, Sally, of Irvington, NJ. The couple got to know each other as they traveled and played cards on the bus to the Midwest for musical concerts. 

Anton and Sally married on April 15, 1956, a month before his graduation from Upsala College. Sally, who graduated the year before with a degree in Mathematics, supported her husband with her job as a math teacher for Summit High School while Anton finished earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.

Anton started his career at New Jersey Bell as a Traffic Management trainee, an entry-level position in 1956. He and Sally lived in East Orange, NJ, one block away from Anton’s parents. Sally and Anton’s first child, Christine, was born in 1958, followed quickly by the birth of three sons – Joel, Bruce and Brian. In 1960, Christine died tragically of Reyes Syndrome. After her death, the family moved to Springfield, NJ, where Sally devoted herself to raising their sons while Anton worked hard, rising through the ranks of his company. At the same time, he served as a deacon for the First Presbyterian Church in Springfield.

In 1972, Anton received a promotion to the position of Vice President Downstate, which required the family to move to Hopewell Township, to be near his office in Princeton, NJ. Two years later, he was promoted to Vice President of Marketing for New Jersey Bell, based out of Newark, NJ, but he chose to commute until all of his sons were in college. In 1982, he was promoted to Vice President of Marketing for AT&T, the parent company of New Jersey Bell, and Anton and Sally moved back to Mountainside, a town in northern New Jersey. At the breakup of AT&T in 1983, Anton was appointed president of New Jersey Bell, which became a subsidiary of Bell Atlantic. He became president of Bell Atlantic, the predecessor company of Verizon, in 1989 and served in this position until his retirement in 1992.

During his working years, Anton coached his sons’ Little League baseball teams and enjoyed playing golf at work and with his family. A competitive sportsman, he took up golf in his 20s and maintained a single-digit handicap. During his last years at his retirement community at Tide Pointe, he had weekly appointments at the pool table with his friends.

After his retirement from Bell Atlantic, Anton and Sally moved to Fripp Island, SC, and later Bluffton, SC, where they played golf and hosted dinners and card games with their friends. They purchased a second home in Vermont where they entertained family and visited with Anton’s sisters, Carmie and Madeline. He always returned from his visits to Vermont with gifts of maple syrup for his sons.

Anton served on a number of boards including Foster Wheeler, United Counties Trust Bank and Beaufort Memorial Hospital. Anton and Sally moved to a retirement community in Williamsburg, where Anton was the President of the Residents’ Council. The couple returned to South Carolina in 2017, and he lived his remaining years with his wife at Tide Pointe on Hilton Head Island.

In the final year of his life, Anton’s love of work and family coalesced as he repeatedly requested “meetings” with his sons. During each one, his main concern was how his wife Sally would be cared for after he was gone.

Anton is survived by Sally Campanella, his wife of 64 years, three sons -- Joel Campanella and his wife Ann of Huntersville, NC, Bruce Campanella and his wife Kitty of Seminole, FL, and Brian Campanella of Hilton Head Island, SC; his two sisters, Carmella Burbank and Madeline Jeffery; five nieces and nephews, Elise, Lucille, Beverly, Robin and Jonathan, and five grandchildren, Parker, Aaron, Sydney, Jillian and Payne.

A private service to celebrate Anton’s life will be held on the grounds of TidePointe on Hilton Head Island. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Beaufort Memorial Hospital in Beaufort, SC.