Robert James Spinna Sr. Of North Salem And Southampton Dies January 25

Robert J. Spinna, a retired civil engineering professor and a longtime resident of North Salem and Southampton, died on January 25. The cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest as a consequence of COVID-19. He was 92.

He was born on March 21, 1929, in Brooklyn, and was a child of the Great Depression who suffered poverty and great hardship as a child. He graduated from Brooklyn Preparatory School, a Jesuit high school located in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. He went on to receive his undergraduate and graduate degrees in civil engineering from Villanova University and Columbia University, respectively. He worked as a “sandhog,” operating a jackhammer on tunnel construction projects to support himself and his mother during graduate school, and was injured twice as a result of collapses on construction projects.

Spinna was a beloved teacher and advisor of undergraduate and graduate engineering students at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, for 41 years. He served as chairman of Manhattan College’s civil engineering department during the 1980s. He also taught at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, where he started the civil engineering department, The Cooper Union in New York City, and City College of New York. He prided himself on being able to teach a wide range of subjects beyond his geotechnical engineering specialties of soil mechanics, reinforced concrete design and foundation design.

Spinna was also a licensed professional engineer in the states of New York and New Jersey and maintained an active consulting business for decades. His practice involved structural and foundation design, commercial building inspections and expert witness testimony. As a nationally renowned expert in his field, he was often called upon to serve as an expert witness in litigation involving building collapses and other disputes related to his areas of expertise.

Spinna married Rose Marie (Di Carlo) Spinna on June 14, 1959, at St. Anthony of Padua Church in the Bronx. The wedding was followed by a reception at the Grand Ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. After starting their family in the mid-1960s in Crestwood, New York, the Spinnas moved to North Salem, New York, in 1971. In North Salem, they dedicated themselves to raising their family and also to public service. Spinna served for many years as the chairman of the Board of Assessment Review for the Town of North Salem and also briefly as the Town Supervisor. After living in North Salem for 28 years, Spinna and his wife retired to Southampton, where his son and daughter-in-law had already established a residence. He was a consummate family man who loved his wife, children and grandchildren above all else, his family said. In his later years, he loved hosting, cooking for and visiting with his grandchildren and discussing family history, investments, their educations and their sports endeavors.

Throughout his long life, Spinna was fiercely independent and extraordinarily competent in wide range of areas. When a car required a repair, he would fix it himself. When his house needed an extra room, he would add the room himself, doing all the work required by himself, from carpentry to electrical wiring to plumbing to millwork to drainage to roofing. At his home in North Salem, he added a bedroom, an office, a cedar closet, a kitchen extension, a patio, an exterior staircase, a retaining wall, a garage closet and a “shed” the size of a barn. He loved to collect tools and assorted equipment, including tractors, chainsaws, wood chippers and even a concrete mixer.

His family used to joke that he never saw a tree that he didn’t want to cut down, and he certainly did use his chainsaws to cut down a lot of trees for use in his wood burning fireplaces. But he planted far more trees and shrubs on his properties in North Salem and Southampton than he cut down. He also planted vegetable gardens, berry bushes and fruit and nut trees on an epic scale in North Salem. He was an excellent cook and his harvests never went to waste: Bob and Rose Spinna always had an industrial scale freezer so that tomato sauce made with homegrown tomatoes was a year round feature of Spinna cuisine.

Spinna was predeceased by his wife Rose. He is survived by his son Robert J. Spinna Jr.; daughters Rosemarie C. Kirchner and Christine S. Keenan; daughter-in-law Emily C. Spinna; sons-in-law Albert Kirchner and Michael Keenan; and grandchildren Rose A. Spinna, Eliza Spinna, Sara Spinna, Robert J. Spinna III, Abigail Kirchner, Albert Kirchner IV, Blake Kirchner, Eloise Kirchner, Carsen Kirchner, Samantha Keenan and Michael Keenan.

The family requests that donations, in lieu of flowers, be made to Columbia University Medical Center to support its Taub Institute for Research on Diseases of the Aging Brain. Please make an online gift in memory of Robert Spinna at: medicine.givenow.columbia.edu/?alloc=10584.