A legendary, 104-year-old former Coney Island strongman survived shrapnel wounds from World War II, bent a quarter with his bare hands on his last birthday and still walked more than three miles each day — only to be killed crossing a street in Brooklyn yesterday.
“There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do,” Pete Spanakos, a former boxer, said of tragic pal Joseph Rollino. “And he gets hit by a car? What an irony.”
The amazing Rollino, who lived in Bay Ridge with his niece, was walking across Bay Ridge Parkway near 13th Avenue at 6:48 a.m. to buy a newspaper at a bagel shop when he was struck by a 1999 Ford Minivan. The female driver was not at fault but was cited for having a defective horn, cops said.
Rollino, who friends said never lost his mental sharpness, died hours later in Lutheran Hospital.
His death stunned neighbors like Sam Shulter, who recalled that Rollino — who at his peak weighed just 155 pounds and stood 5-foot-4 — “had hands like bricks.
“He would walk to the grocery store every day and then carry the groceries home on his pinkies,” Shulter said.
One of 14 children, Rollino was born on May 19, 1905. He got his start in the strength game at age 10, when Warren Lincoln Travis — the most famous strongman of that time — saw him lift a 250-pound dumbbell five times in a row, according to an article in Iron Man magazine.
Rollino — who reportedly never ate meat, smoked or drank during his long life — toured with Travis for decades, boasting at the time that he was “the Strongest Man in the World” for such feats as lifting a carousel with 14 people on it.
He became a boxer — nicknamed “Kid Dundee” — after seeing Jack Dempsey knock out Jess Willard in 1919.
Rollino joined the Army in 1939 at age 34 and saw combat in the Pacific Theater during World War II, winning three Purple Hearts for shrapnel wounds to his neck and legs and an injury that left a metal plate in his shoulder. He also was awarded the Silver and the Bronze star.
Spanakos said that when he once asked him what he did to earn the Silver Star, Rollino explained that during one battle, with badly injured men all around him, “he put two guys under one arm . . . [and] two guys under the other arm and he just dragged them [to safety].”
In later years, he routinely swam in the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of winter, worked on the docks and regaled people with jaw-dropping stories of feats of strength and celebrity friendships.
“On his 104th birthday, I gave Joe a quarter, and you know what he did? He bent it with his fingers. And he apologized and said when he was younger, he’d bend a dime,” Spanakos said.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona