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“Stay off the couch and the recliner. That’s the position of the coffin; that’s dangerous.” — Mario Tribuzio, 95
For 60 years, a horde of gods, Buddhas, saints, mythical beasts, knights and lions have watched over the heavy traffic of Route 25A in Rocky Point.
Drivers drawn in by the mighty concrete statues find hundreds more scattered around the property: animals of every kind, children playing, birdbaths, tables, lighthouses.
They’re all handcrafted in the on-site workshop, where about 3,000 molds are kept, arranged like a gray-coated art gallery. The finished pieces decorate lawns and gardens across Long Island and have found homes as far away as Australia and Portugal.
“People come in and go, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe what I’m seeing,’” said Mario Tribuzio, who just turned 95.
He is the master artisan who has owned and operated Rocky Point Statuary since 1966.
And those visitors he quoted might just be describing Tribuzio himself.
With the help of a wooden cane and rollator walker, the nonagenarian gave a lively tour of his kingdom, mentally sharp and excited like a kid in his own toy store.
Along the way, he pointed out personal favorites: Mother Mary, one of the many religious statues he sells just about every day, and Neptune, a 6-foot-tall behemoth that requires two to three months to make the mold, plus another 24 to 36 hours to create the statue itself. He’s made about 24 of them over the years.
“It’s like a gym here … a good workout,” he said, before noting that his age has started to catch up with his work over the last couple of years. “I can’t pick up a bag of heavy cement no more … I was still good with that in my 80s.”
But Tribuzio’s version of slowing down is different from most.
He makes an effort to work every day, walking to the statuary from his home across the street. He supervises his two part-time employees, engages with customers and bounces between his workshop and paint studio. After some rest at night, he’s back at it in his workshop at home, going until he “can’t stand up anymore.”
“I’m just an ambitious man, I guess,” Tribuzio said as he drilled, chiseled and ripped off a latex mold to reveal a little statue of a girl sitting on a turtle.
“I tell people to keep acting 30 years old — it’ll bring you into your 90s,” he continued. “Stay off the couch and the recliner. That’s the position of the coffin; that’s dangerous. Keep creating, keep moving, keep the mind busy and your hands … it’s just incredible what the hands can do.”
Keep the hands busy
Tribuzio talks a lot about the creative power of one’s hands. And for good reason.
Since he was 25, he’s been classified as legally blind, starting with macular degeneration in one eye that, over time, spread to the other.
He said his pupils are “frozen open,” so he relies on peripheral vision when he works, the good eyes of others and his own hands.
“It’s hard to explain how I’ve done it,” he said. “Your hands become accurate. You don’t have to have vision.”
Tribuzio grew up in Gravesend, Brooklyn, where he recalled early memories of helping a neighbor build a concrete fence and planting tomatoes and basil in the family garden.
He was 14 when World War II ended and was drafted into the Army in 1952 during the Korean War. At night, while stationed in Austria, he’d carve tanks and jeeps out of soap “just to keep the hands busy.”
After the military, he discovered his eye problems and stopped driving. But he kept busy with a carpentry shop for a while, building doghouses and wishing wells.
In 1963, he moved his handiwork to Long Island, where he honed his mold-making skills and ultimately bought the property along Route 25A, developing his statue business around his home. Years later, he moved across the street and converted the old house into his full-time workshop.
His daughters, Marjorie Adams, 62, and Valerie Tribuzio, 59, fondly remembered always being surrounded by statue-making and involved in their father’s projects.
To them, it was normal.
“Cement is in our blood, and in our nostrils,” Valerie Tribuzio said with a laugh. “It’s very familiar. We didn’t realize how special it all was until later in life.”
A roadside landmark
The business was at its most profitable in the 1970s, when Tribuzio sold statues wholesale to garden centers.
His work, though, has continued to be in demand. Four of his popular seahorses have stood inside the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead since it opened in 2000, and loyal customers keep coming back.
Tribuzio said it’s common for people in their 20s to drive right by without stopping, only to finally visit a few decades later, when they’re more sentimental and often recognize a statue their parents had in the yard growing up.
One time, a woman started crying at the sight of a bagel mold he’d recently made.
“She told me she used to go into Brooklyn with her grandmother to have a lox bagel with cream cheese,” Tribuzio recalled. “She bought the bagel [here] to put on her grave … These are the kinds of stories I hear every day.”
It’s not just customers he’s left an impact on.
Saint Mario
Paul Clark, 55, who grew up in Sound Beach, was in his early 20s, out of work and “down to my last penny” when he was walking along Route 25A and decided to ask Tribuzio if he needed any help.
Despite already having plenty of employees, Tribuzio told Clark he could start the next day.
“I think he sensed in my eyes that I needed a job,” said Clark, who developed the skills that would lead to his eventual trade as an electrician while working with Tribuzio. “I never forgot that … I want to call him ‘Saint Mario’ because he’s a truly genuine person, top to bottom. He would help anyone, no matter who they are.”
It was May 2020, and Chris Knodel, 22, of Miller Place, was a bored high schooler antsy for something to do during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Tribuzio, he said, welcomed him and his brother “with open arms” and taught them how to make statues. Then he taught them how to make bread, sauce and pizza.
All these years later, Knodel still works there, carrying the heavy cement bags for the boss he now considers a “grandpa.” He even wrote an essay about Tribuzio and the statuary to get into St. Joseph’s University.
“I’m a sponge around Mario — he means the world to me and I love him to death,” Knodel said. “At 15, you’re just working to make extra money. I appreciate it so much more now, it’s such an art. It’s crazy how much I care now. Not only about Mario, but about the business.”
Knodel’s mother, Donna, had a similar bond with the statue maker back in 1990.
Working full time at Allstate during the day and going to law school at night, she rented an upstairs space in his house and ended up staying there for 12 years.
“I could barely survive and Mario was instrumental at that time,” the now-retired prosecutor said. “I’d come home from a long day and there’d be a plate of food waiting for me. He never raised my rent. He really helped me get set up in my career, and he’s done that for a lot of people.”
On Friday, Aug. 28, Tribuzio celebrated his 95th birthday with them and family members, including his second wife, Marie, 90, whom he knew as a kid in Brooklyn and reconnected with in the 1980s.
Across the street from the statuary, past a yard filled with more concrete artwork, they gathered in the cellar for homemade pizza.
Sitting under big “9” and “5” balloons, surrounded by love and stories, Tribuzio said he felt lucky.
He was also excited about starting a new project: repairing broken religious statues that people have been bringing in.
“We gotta start a hospital over there,” he joked. “Too many people are coming in with Mary, Jesus, little angels, and I can’t turn them down.”
“The statuary’s got to go on,” Tribuzio added. “I don’t know how but it’s got to go on.”
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