Dr. Angelo Battista Massaro

Dr. Angelo Battista Massaro was Chuck’s uncle by marriage on the maternal Wildermuth side — the husband of Debra (Wildermuth) Massaro, Terrie’s younger sister and Chuck’s aunt. The 2016 Kendall Funeral Home obituary is the primary source for the biographical detail that follows.

The Italian-Tampa childhood

He was born 7 November 1935 in Tampa, Florida — the son of Italian immigrants Gian Battista Massaro and Adelina Cacciatore Massaro. The Battista name forms the bridge: his given name was his father’s, in the Southern Italian patronymic pattern, and would have been used in the family to mark the Italian inheritance through three names in a row (Gian Battista → Angelo Battista → his own son Giancarlo, the Giancarlo name itself an Italian compound). He had two brothers, John and Luigi, both of whom predeceased him, and a sister, Lily Fazio, who survived him.

The family ran White Rose Dairy — their own farm just outside Tampa — and Angelo grew up living and working on it through his teen years. He went to Hillsborough High School in Tampa, class of 1953, in the Tampa-Italian neighborhood. The Hillsborough Terriers were the school mascot; the class of 1953 is the standard fit for a Tampa-born November 1935 birth.

The University of Florida and the medical track

He went on to the University of Florida, where he was a member of ROTC and graduated in 1957. He continued at the University of Miami School of Medicine — the path to a medical degree in Florida that was the natural one for an in-state Italian-American family of the period. He did his internship and surgical residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, the city’s largest teaching hospital and the standard surgical-training pipeline of the postwar Southeast.

Bunker Hill Air Force Base, Indiana — Vietnam-era General Surgeon

After medical school he served as a General Surgeon at Bunker Hill Air Force Base in Indiana during the Vietnam era. Bunker Hill (later renamed Grissom Air Reserve Base) was a strategic-bomber facility in Peru, Indiana, and the Air Force’s response to the doctor draft of the mid-to-late 1960s was to assign newly-licensed surgeons to its bases. Angelo’s term there was the parallel-track answer to Charlie Eesley’s 1969–1971 ground tour in Vietnam — the same draft, the same war, the same year-cohort of young American men, two different uniforms.

Florida Hospital, Orlando — three decades of surgery

His main career was at Florida Hospital in Orlando, where he practiced as a General Surgeon for nearly three decades. He served the hospital in three formal roles: Chief of Staff, Chief of the Surgical Department, and educator with the family practice residency program. The Orlando connection is the geographic resonance with Robert Earl Wildermuth’s own Orlando retirement — both branches of this side of the family had a presence in central Florida in the 1980s and 1990s.

Two marriages, six children

He was married twice. His first wife, Ellie Diez-Massaro, is the mother of his four eldest sons:

• Michael Massaro (married Angie)
• Mark Massaro (life-partner Sean)
• Timothy Massaro
• Christopher Massaro

His second wife, Debra Wildermuth Massaro — Chuck’s aunt — married him in approximately 1988 (the obituary says they were married 28 years at his death). With Debbie he had two children:

• Giancarlo “Gian Carlo” Massaro (married Cara) — named in Terrie Lee Bain’s 2017 obituary as Chuck’s first cousin on the maternal side.
• Briana Massaro Lockett — also named in Terrie’s obituary; the Briana Massaro Lockett page on this site already carries her later married name and a brief biographical sketch.

He had three grandchildren: Nicholas, Olivia, and Camille.

Giles County, Virginia — the retirement years

Following his retirement from Florida Hospital, he and Debbie relocated to Giles County, Virginia, in the New River Valley region of southwestern Virginia near the West Virginia line. They brought their two children — Giancarlo and Briana — and built what the obituary describes as their “southern plantation style dream home,” which Angelo himself remodeled.

In Giles County he gave ten years of his retirement to volunteering at the New River Valley free clinic — using the surgical and clinical skills of his Florida-Hospital career to serve patients who couldn’t afford the standard medical economy. He was active in the Eggleston Ruritan Club and in Holy Family Catholic Church in Pearisburg, where he was an RCIA Leader — the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, the program by which adult converts are guided into the Catholic Church. The community-medicine work and the lay-Catholic leadership are the two complementary registers of his retirement life.

His interests were reading, antique collecting, traveling with the family, and cooking — the last of which is the Italian-Tampa register surviving into Virginia. He was active and loved being outdoors. The closing line of the obituary: “As a man full of wisdom and unconditional love, Angelo will be sorely missed by friends and loved ones. But it was the simple things in life; his family, friends, and cooking that brought him the most happiness.”

Death and inurnment

He died at home on 29 March 2016 in Giles County, age 80. A memorial service was held 2 April 2016 at Holy Family Catholic Church in Pearisburg, Virginia, the church where he had been an RCIA Leader. His inurnment was later held in Tampa, Florida, next to his parents — Gian Battista and Adelina — closing the geographic arc that had taken him from White Rose Dairy in the Italian-Tampa neighborhood of his childhood to Indiana, Miami, Orlando, and Giles County, and home.

Memorial contributions went to Holy Family Catholic Church and Young Life New River Valley. The Kendall Funeral Home in Pembroke, Virginia handled the arrangements.

He predeceased his sister-in-law Terrie Lee Bain by fourteen months; Terrie’s obituary in May 2017 names Debbie as her sister and Angelo as already-deceased.

Photographs

Three photographs of Angelo are in the archive, from Chuck’s keeping (July 2026). The holiday-dinner group is now fully identified; in the poolside and multi-generation portraits Angelo is identified with confidence and the rest of the group is left open for the family to confirm.

Angelo and Debbie, poolside in Florida, c. late 1980s. A patio-and-pool snapshot — a silver-haired Angelo in a navy polo and khakis, seated on a lounge chair beside a smiling blonde woman almost certainly his wife Debbie (Debra Wildermuth) Massaro, in a cream blouse and tan skirt. The brick-edged pool and lush greenery read as their Orlando, Florida home in the years around their marriage (c. 1988).

A family holiday dinner, c. late 1980s. A family holiday dinner on Terrie’s Wildermuth side — a Christmas centerpiece on the table, the family gathered around it. Present are young Chuck with his parents, Charlie and Terrie; Terrie’s uncle Norman Graham Wolfe at the left; her sister Sandra “Sandy” Wildermuth in the middle; Betty Jean (Davis) Wolfe — Dorothy Davis Wildermuth’s sister; and her sister Debbie Wildermuth Massaro with Angelo at the right.

Multi-generation family portrait, early 1990s. A formal group portrait of roughly ten people across two rows; Angelo is seated at center. The rest of the group — likely including Debbie and other family — is for the family to identify.

Source: Dr. Angelo Battista Massaro obituary, Kendall Funeral Home, March 2016. Memorial service held 2 April 2016 at Holy Family Catholic Church in Pearisburg, Virginia. Photographs from Chuck’s keeping, July 2026.