Sabatino D'Auria, teacher

Though Sabatino J. D'Auria did not see combat during his military service in Korea in the 1950s, his experience there wasn't painless.

As an Air Force munitions specialist, he was sometimes sent as an armed guard on railroad shipments of supplies.

Often on nighttime trips on flatbed railcars, wife Lillian said, "it was lonely and scary. You never knew where you were" until the train stopped.

"He spent two winters there," she said. "It was so cold."

On Thursday, June 18, Mr. D'Auria, 83, known as "Sam," who retired this month from the Gloucester County Institute of Technology, where he had taught classes in heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning since the late 1970s, died of cancer at his Voorhees home.

In 2003, his wife said, Mr. D'Auria "went back to Korea on the 50th anniversary of the cease-fire."

"It didn't cost him anything, only the air flight to California," she said. From there, he and other veterans flew "at no charge, as a gift of the Korean government," to the South Korean capital, Seoul.

South Korean authorities "treated him royally," as they did returning veterans from elsewhere, such as Australia and Britain.

Born in South Philadelphia, Mr. D'Auria grew up near 33d and Wharton Streets in the Grays Ferry neighborhood and graduated from South Philadelphia High School.

"His father and uncles had a bindery business in the city," his wife said, and after Mr. D'Auria returned and married in 1957, "he went to work there. But it was not his cup of tea."

So, while keeping his job at his family's firm, "he went to Temple University and learned the heating and air-conditioning business, three nights a week, more than a year."

Mr. D'Auria was a draftsman for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) firms, then sold air-conditioning units for the Philadelphia Gas Works and in 1978 opened what is now D'Auria Air Conditioning & Heating in Pennsauken, now owned and operated by a son, Dominic.

In the 1960s, he taught HVAC courses at a vocational-technical school in Camden County and, since the late 1970s, two nights a week at the Gloucester County school.

Besides his wife and son, Mr. D'Auria is survived by son Paul, daughter Terry, a sister, and four grandchildren.

A viewing was set from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, June 25, at the Healey Funeral Home, 9 White Horse Pike, Haddon Heights, before a 10 a.m. Funeral Mass Friday, June 26, at the Church of St. Andrew the Apostle, 27 Kresson-Gibbsboro Rd., Gibbsboro, with interment in Brig. Gen. William C. Doyle Memorial Cemetery, Wrightstown.

Donations may be sent to www.samaritannj.org.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.healeyfuneralhomes.com.