WEST BRIGHTON — A slain NYPD police officer was remembered as a hero 54 years after his death on Oct. 22, as his family gathered with police officers and military veterans to rededicate the headstone at his gravesite.
The new headstone at St. Peter’s Cemetery for Patrolman Rocco Laurie acknowledges his service in the NYPD and as a U.S. Marine.
Previously, the headstone listed only Laurie’s name, his birth year (1948), and the year he died (1972).
Laurie was 23 years old when he and his partner, Patrolman Gregory Foster, 22, were shot to death by members of the Black Liberation Army while on patrol in the East Village on Jan. 27, 1972. The suspects walked past them and then turned around and opened fire on the two officers, shooting them multiple times in the back.
The Black Liberation Army took credit for the slayings, but no suspects were ever convicted.
Msgr. David Cassato, an NYPD chaplain and retired priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, blessed the headstone at the ceremony, which Laurie’s widow, Adelaide Laurie, and Gregory Foster Jr., the son of Patrolman Foster, attended.
“We are here today to honor Rocco, who in his short life, achieved so much,” Adelaide Laurie, 78, said in her remarks.
“Those accomplishments will be remembered forever, etched in the monument. Rocco was a patriot and a hero.”
She credited Louis DeMarco, a retired NYPD officer, with the idea of redoing the headstone.
“I was going to leave well enough alone, but I spoke to Lou and thought about what he said,” she told The Tablet. “And I thought about how once I’m gone, no one will know who he was and what he stood for.”
DeMarco, who organizes the Wreaths Across America project, which places Christmas wreaths on veterans’ graves, visited Laurie’s gravesite a few years ago and was dismayed.
“It had … nothing about him being a police officer or a Marine, or that he died in the line of duty. It really bothered me,” he said.
DeMarco met Adelaide Laurie at a reception and approached her with the idea of changing the headstone.
“I said to her, ‘People walk past your husband’s gravesite and have no idea who he was,’ ” he told The Tablet.
DeMarco met Rocco Laurie at the Police Academy in the 1960s.
“I was graduating. He was a new guy coming in,” he recalled. “He somehow found me and asked me some questions. I never realized until years later that it was Rocco.”
A champion shot putter at Port Richmond High School, Rocco Laurie joined the U.S. Marines at the height of the Vietnam War. After returning home, he joined the NYPD and served for two years before he was killed.
Rocco and Adelaide Laurie were childhood friends and started dating after high school.
“He was my first boyfriend, and I was his first girlfriend,” she said.
After Rocco returned home from Vietnam, he and Adelaide were married in May of 1970 at Blessed Sacrament Church.
When he joined the NYPD in 1970, he was assigned to the Ninth Precinct.
“He became a police officer because he wanted to make a difference,” she told the Tablet. “I know that he would have moved up the ranks of the Police Department if he had lived. He loved the job so much.”
His funeral took place at the same church where he and Adelaide were married. She still lives in the house they shared.
“We moved here in August of 1971, and he was killed in January of 1972, so he was only here for a short time,” she said.
“This is a very emotional day for me. But it’s something that he deserves. And I’m glad that I’m still here to do it for him,”she added.
DeMarco said he is pleased that Laurie will be properly remembered.
“From now on, when people pass his gravesite, they’ll see the contributions he made in his short life,” he said. “He had a whole story, and he never got to live it out.”