Dominic Charles Ippolito

April 21, 1929 - June 8, 2022

Dominic C. Ippolito, a Downey resident for the last sixty years of his life, passed away quietly at PIH Hospital after a short battle with advanced kidney disease on June 8, 2022. He was 93. Dominic and his identical twin George were born in 1929 in Cleveland, Ohio to Mary and Charles Ippolito who had immigrated to the United States from Palermo, Sicily in 1910. The twins were the youngest of seven children and six months after their birth, the stock market crashed, kicking off the Great Depression. Then without warning, their father died of consumption a few months later. To make ends meet, his older siblings began work at a very young age. Doing their part, he and George – who were inseparable growing up – found work at a spaghetti factory when they were 12. They went to high school at Cleveland’s East Tech, the same school Jesse Owens attended before winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In 1951, at the age of 21, he and George were drafted by the Army and spent two years in Germany during the Korean War. Once back in Ohio, Dominic found a job as an insurance adjuster, handling liability claims for a downtown Cleveland department store. It was there he met a secretary named Betty. They married in 1956 and gave birth to their first child, Dominic Jr., in 1959. Another boy, Victor, followed a year later. In 1961, Dominic faced the most important decision of his life. Shortly after buying a house in East Cleveland, he was recruited by Carl Warren & Co. who were scouring the country for insurance adjusters to staff their huge, new headquarters in Los Angeles. The thought of moving to California was exciting but it would be hard to leave his family in Cleveland, especially his twin brother George. In the end, they made an offer he couldn’t refuse – double his salary plus moving expenses – and it was California here we come! He went first, making the 2,500 trip (most of it on Route 66) in the family car while Betty and the two infants took the train two weeks later. They initially rented a house in La Mirada but soon found their dream home in north Downey which they bought in 1962 for $30,000. He & Betty would spend the rest of their lives in that house, celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary before she passed in 2017. Career-wise, he excelled at Carl Warren, quickly rising to Claims Manager before leaving in 1972 to open his own business on Lakewood Blvd - Downey Claims Service. Betty ran the office and it was just the two of them until he retired in 1997. When he wasn’t working, he was an accomplished musician, playing alto saxophone in as many as four bands at any given time. He capped his music career by playing in the L.A.P.D. Band until he was 80. He possessed a great sense of humor, was an incredible storyteller, and was friendly to - and well-liked by - anyone he met. He is survived by his three sons: Dominic Jr. of Downey; Victor (and his wife Belle) of Little Rock, AR; and Vito (and his wife Deena) of Las Vegas.