After retiring from the waterfront in 1980, he worked as a court officer for the next 11 years. At Christmas, various lawyers around City Hall would drop by and, in the spirit of the season and the spirit of City Hall, try to squeeze a sawbuck or twenty into his palm. George would push it back at them with a smile and a ``Keep it. Take your wife out to dinner.''
``Dinner on $20,'' his son, George J. III, said incredulously, while recounting the story. ``You're not buying anyone dinner for $20. But that was my dad. He was a McDonald's guy.''
He was also a guy who didn't sail through life on a four-lane highway.
Born and raised in South Philadelphia, his father died when he was 4. By age 15, with the Depression crushing the family economically, he quit school and went into the Civilian Conservation Corps. He worked on what is now Skyline Drive in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, building roads and cutting trees.
In 1943, he married his sweetheart, Anna Maria Santagata. He was already showing that he was his own man by crossing ethnic lines in a day and time when marriage outside the culture could get you ex-communicated from Mom's Sunday dinners or maybe not picked up in the first-round draft for the neighborhood bowling team.
Within months, he was drafted into the Army and sent to Alaska. After the war, he returned to his job on the dock. Along the way he picked up the high school diploma he had to pass on earlier.
He always reminded his kids of the importance of education. He didn't really have to say much, though. They saw him come in all their lives from another day on the dock and it was plain that manual labor wasn't the way to go.
His son became a lawyer in Center City and his daughter, Ann Marie Badey Raffa, got a master's degree and teaches school.
