By Times Staff
Friends and family convened at the Orient Heights Yacht Club for A Celebration of Life honoring longtime and popular East Boston resident and community leader Richie Dimeo.
Childhood friends, high school classmates, players and parents from the East Boston Girls Softball League (that was founded by Richie and Robyn DiMeo) joined in the memorial tribute to Mr. DiMeo at the event.
Mr. DiMeo’s daughter, Katie DiMeo, told the capacity crowd the positive influence that her father, Richie, had on his family and so many others through his kindness, friendship, and generosity and the contributions he made to East Boston.
“Thank you for this large and boisterous showing,” said Katie. “This is a testament to how many lives he touched, and how deep these connections went over a lifetime. He had deep friendships all across the board with so many of you. Some of the highlights in his life for me were that he worked in the DA’s office with so many of you for so long, again in his work as a private investigator, and the girls softball league in East Boston that he and my mom [Robyn] started – a lot of those girls went off to play in high school and college, and they coached and give back to their community. He really lived the life of giving back to his community, such as helping to open the Meridian House in East Boston that’s has been doing a lot in drug outreach and addiction counseling for many years. He meant even more, I think, to his kids, his grand-kids, and great-grandkids, and his adopted family than you guys could ever know. We knew him as a dad, as a granddad, and a great-granddad, and it’s so nice to touch base with all these different parts of his life. Thank you so much for being here.”
Suzanne Jardin worked in the Suffolk County DA’s office with Mr. DiMeo.
“I am an attorney today only because Richie made me do it,” related Jardin, a graduate of Stonehill College and New England School of Law. “I was an investigator, and I was going to night school and I told Richie, ‘I hate this.’ He said, ‘I don’t care, you’re going to finish this.’ I was married with three small children at the time, and Richie so helped me and everyone in that office do what we should do. I am now practicing as a criminal defense attorney, and I thank Richie for everything. He’s the best guy on the planet.”