Joseph T. Gatti, of Monmouth Beach and New York, loving husband to Kathleen Holahan and devoted father to Joseph D. Gatti, lost a brief battle to virulent cancer of unknown origin at New York Hospital on February 13, 2023. Joe faced his death bravely and with his trademark sense of humor. He was surrounded by his wife and family at his death.
In addition to his wife and son, Joe is survived by his brother and sister-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. David Gatti (Connie), his brother, Paul McGraw, his brothers- and sisters-in-law, Phil and Joanne Holahan, Dee and Steve Bulvanoski, and Maureen and Tim Saling, ten nieces and nephews, and thirteen great nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his brothers, Steven Ressler and Robert Rosenberg.
Joe will be remembered always for his kindness and generosity but most of all his quick wit, which lent difficult situations humor and often got him out of trouble with his wife.
He was a graduate of Saint Francis Prep in Brooklyn, The College of William and Mary, and Saint John’s University School of Law. He was commissioned into the United States Army Chemical Corps (something he never understood as he had to test into the Corps and neither liked nor was particularly good at Chemistry) and rose to the rank of First Lieutenant.
Joe was an attorney representing child care agencies in the City of New York including Cardinal Hayes, McMahon Services for Children, its successor agency, Good Shepherd Services, the Catholic Guardian Society, and its successor agency, Catholic Guardian Services
It was at Catholic Guardian Society that Joe met his wife Kathleen, in the courtroom of Judge Judy. He advised Judge Judy not to take the job in television as there was no security. He said no one ever asked him for career advice again.
Joe was President of the Catholic Lawyers Guild of the Archdiocese of New York and a member of the Board of Directors of the Mastro Montessori Academy.
He was a champion of the rights of both children and biological parents. He represented the biological father in a landmark New York State Court of Appeals case that gave biological fathers broad rights, at the time the most sweeping in the nation.
Joe did all of these things while fighting a thirty-year battle with various cancers and heart disease, always with a smile and always with a sense of humor
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Saturday, February 18, at 10:30 am at the Church of the Precious Blood, 72 Riverdale Ave., Monmouth Beach, NJ. The family requests no flowers and instead respectfully requests that donations in Joe’s memory be made to Catholic Guardian Services, 1011 First Ave., NY, NY 10022. Thompson Memorial Home, Red Bank, has been entrusted with the arrangements.
