Joseph Chille with his wife in undated photo Longtime Copiague resident and family historian Joseph J. Chille died April 17, 2009. He was 83.

"When he died, much of our family history went with him," said his son Christopher of Copiague. "He was a great storyteller."

Born in Brooklyn, Mr. Chille lived in Long Island City, Queens before moving to Copiague in 1969. He lived on Gateway Drive with his family for 40 years.

During his 28-year career in the U.S Navy, he fought in WWII and was stationed in the South Pacific and was on active duty during the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was awarded two Presidential unit citations for his bravery.

He also worked for 20 years for the Internal Revenue Service and following his retirement spent his time building remote control airplanes from scratch. One of them, a B-17 dubbed "the reluctant gremlin" was donated to TheMarch Field Air Museum in Riverside, California during the 1990s.

In addition to his son Christopher and his wife Anna, Mr. Chille leaves behind his other children: Roselle Greese and her husband Henry of Ridge, New York and Joseph Jr. and his wife Elizabeth of Middle Island, New York. His brothers, Peter of Texas and Tony of Pennsylvania and his grandchildren, Joey, Christina, Lisa, Daniel, Lauren and Marissa and great grandchild Kaylee also survive him. He was predeceased by his sisters, who died together in a car accident in 2005, Nancy and Catherine, and his wife of 52 years, Rose who died in 2002.

He reposed in the D'Andrea Brothers Funeral Home, Copiague, on April 20 and 21, 2009. A Funeral Mass was said on April 22, 2009 at Our Lady of Assumption R.C. Church in Copiague. Interment followed in National Cemetery at Calverton with military honors.