Letter to the Editor: Greco has Character for WW Council

By Always Westwood Team on Oct. 11, 2021

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Dear Editor,

As a Westwood resident for fourteen years, I have known Anthony Greco for close to nine years now. In that time, we have both been involved in many volunteer activities here in in the town of Westwood. I want to share a few of the many experiences we’ve had together, which will showcase the character and many attributes Anthony has, which would make him an ideal candidate for the Westwood Town Council.

I first met Anthony in the Fall of 2013 when our sons played flag football together, and he and I were both volunteer coaches. As head coach, Anthony recruited a lot of families in town to play for the team and made sure that each boy’s first organized football experience was a memorable one. As we continued to coach football together through the years and became more involved in the organization, Anthony eventually became president of Westwood Youth Football, and I became a member of his Board of Trustees. Under Anthony’s leadership, we continued to improve the organization, whether it was making sure that the boy’s had the best equipment to keep them safe or ensuring that all coaches were vetted and trained properly. Under his tenure as president, he brokered a strategic partnership with Hackensack Meridian Pascack Valley Medical Center, which provided a new scoreboard for the organization, as well as assisted in properly training and certifying each coach in CPR. That partnership between the hospital and the Westwood Football organization continues to this day, and Westwood football and all their young players continue to benefit from this valuable relationship. The saying goes, you always want to leave something better than when you found it, and Anthony did that as president of Westwood Youth Football.

Anthony and I set out on a new endeavor in early 2015, to create a men’s softball league for Westwood. With this idea, Anthony’s thought was to try and bring more people together and have a way for residents of Westwood to meet and enjoy some friendly competition. As the commissioner of this new league, Anthony spoke with different establishments in and out of town to help sponsor each of the teams, which all of them gladly did. As a result of his hard work in making an idea we discussed over dinner a reality, in May of that year the Westwood Men’s Softball league was born. Build it, and they will come. They did, and still continue to do. Seven years later, the softball league has not only continued, but has since expanded from the original six teams with nearly a hundred men from Westwood and surrounding towns enjoying softball games at Westvale Park during the summer.

In January of 2019, Anthony coordinated a meeting between Vito Trause, a local resident and a former World War II POW, and Westwood Boy Scout Troop 350. Vito shared with the scouts the stories of what he endured in his five months of captivity in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. As a former scout, Anthony remembered when Vito spoke to him and his troop when he was a boy, and the impact it had on him at a young age.  He wanted Vito to share his stories with a new generation of scouts, so they can appreciate the sacrifices made by the men and women of the greatest generation, and to understand that freedom is never free. This meeting had a lasting impact on Anthony’s two sons as well as my own, prompting the three of them to write a letter to the Westwood’s mayor recommending that he be honored with a street named after him. These heartfelt letters help plant the seed of what would later become a coordinating effort between Westwood and Washington Township to dedicate a portion of Ridgewood Road in his honor, so future generations can be reminded of his selfless service and legacy.

In closing, in seeing what Anthony Greco’s accomplishments in town for the years I’ve known him, I am confident he will bring that same energy, focus and passion to the Westwood Town Council. I hope these three examples of  leadership, organization and reverence, in addition to his overall love and appreciation of Westwood, show but a few of the many qualities Anthony will bring to the Town Council.

Sincerely,

Tim McDevitt, Westwood Resident