Joe Clines, of Commack, active Catholic and former New York Telephone manager, dies at 93

Two of his sisters became nuns, and Commack’s Joe Clines as a youth attended a religious prep school, genuinely considering the priesthood. He instead raised a family and spent a career in management, but an echo of the calling remained and he became a lifelong lector at his Long Island Catholic churches.

"His community service was in the form of being a lector in his parishes," said his son, Peter J. Clines, an attorney and former legal counsel to the Nassau County Legislature. "Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Centerport, St. Francis of Assisi in Greenlawn and then at Christ the King in Commack. He was also on the parish council at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs for a time."

As a boy, recalled his lifelong friend Harry Mooney, of Locust Valley, "We were in the altar society together, as altar boys" at St. Michael Church on Jerome Street in Brooklyn, where Clines grew up. "They had a big yard on the side of their house," a three-family home in the Cypress Hills neighborhood, said Mooney, who would grow up to marry one of Joe Clines’ sisters, "and I used to play there almost every day."

Clines died of natural causes on Dec. 27, age 93, at the Melville assisted-living facility Brandywine. He and his wife, Betty, had lived in Commack since 1992, after first moving to Greenlawn in 1967.

"My uncle Joe, two things I remember in particular," said his niece, Anne Triece, of Garden City. "Once when I was young, we were on a Sunday drive" with other family members "and our car broke down. And he's like the cavalry. You could just depend on him. He showed up, took us back to his house, got the tow truck." And when she was 4, Triece accidentally locked herself in a bathroom of his family home. "And he was so calm. He said, ‘Don't worry. We'll get you out.’ And sure enough, he took the hinges off the door and I got out."

Joseph Edward Clines was born Feb. 20, 1932, in Brooklyn, the fourth of seven children of steel-company salesperson James Henry "Harry" Clines and homemaker Angela M. Seifert Clines. He attended the now-defunct St. Michael School and went on to the prep school Glenclyffe, run by the Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order in upstate Garrison until closing in 1974.

After graduating in 1950, he attended St. John’s University, in Queens, graduating in 1954 with a history degree, serving as editor of the student newspaper The Torch and participating in the college’s Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC).

He went on become a first lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps’ 3rd Battalion, serving on a U.S. Navy ship in the Caribbean. There, said his son, he and fellow first lieutenant Daniel Ellsberg, the future military analyst behind the 1971 Pentagon Papers expose, "used to have long political and philosophical conversations on the troop ship at night."

Honorably discharged in 1960 with a National Defense Service Medal, Clines then spent decades with New York Telephone, primarily managing the utility’s pension fund investments.

He married Elizabeth "Betty" Joan Jackson in 1956 and they had three children.

A member of the Marine Corps League, an organization of veterans and their supporters, Clines often marched in Memorial Day parades on Long Island. And "my father was a huge Dodgers fan and it was a kind of a blow to him when they abandoned Brooklyn," said his son. Joe Clines shifted his devotion to the Mets when that Major League Baseball team formed a few years later.

But his greatest devotion would always be to the church, his son said. "His Catholic Christian faith was the focus of his life. I think that is what he'd want to be remembered for."

In addition to son Peter, of Farmingdale, Joe Clines is survived by his wife, Betty, who moved recently to Brandywine in Melville; another son, Timothy, of Sayre, Pennsylvania, and a daughter, Mary Clines Greco, of Sea Cliff; his sister Virginia Clines, of Glen Cove; and three grandchildren.  

He was predeceased by siblings Mary Clines Gallagher; Sister Margaret Clines; Angela Clines Mooney; Eleanor Ruth Clines (Sister Mary James Clines); and Harold Clines.

Visitation was held Friday at the M.A. Connell Funeral Home in Huntington Station, followed on Saturday by a Mass at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Commack and burial at Pinelawn Memorial Park, Pinelawn.