SCARBOROUGH – He came to the United States in the 1920s, served his country during World War II and attended pharmaceutical school.

He operated a well-known pharmacy in South Portland, and ended his career as a successful financial consultant.

Aniello Tancredi, a longtime resident of Falmouth Foreside, died Sunday at the Gosnell Memorial Hospice House in Scarborough with his family at his side. He was 91.

“My father was a savvy businessman and quite steady throughout his life. He was a very upbeat person, even at the end of his life,” said his son, Robert John Tancredi of Scarborough, who followed his father by becoming a stockbroker.

Born in 1918 in Arpaia, Italy, a small town near Naples, Mr. Tancredi — who became known as Tan — came to the United States when he was 6. He was the youngest of eight children.

Tancredi said his grandfather, Pasquale, who was a shoemaker, had been living in the United States for a couple of years and made arrangements for his family to join him in East Boston.

Pasquale’s wife, Rosa, lived to be 99.

“He did well enough to be able to bring his family over from Italy,” Tancredi said.

Mr. Tancredi grew up in Medford, Mass., and graduated in 1936 from Boston English High School.

He graduated in 1943 from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, where he met his first wife, a woman from Bingham, Maine, named Constance Parlin Moore.

“My father broke the mold and married the daughter of a small-town pharmacist in Maine,” his son said.

They got married in 1944. She died two years later from rheumatic fever.

Mr. Tancredi would remarry two years later, but not before serving in the Navy during World War II.

His second wife, Mabel Gray McDow, died in 1999.

Mr. Tancredi’s military assignment took him to Eniwetok Island in the Pacific, but he never saw action there.

He was honorably discharged, moved to Maine in 1946 and took a job as a traveling salesman for Abbott Laboratories.

In 1964, Mr. Tancredi bought the Millcreek Pharmacy in South Portland.

“A lot of people still remember that he owned the pharmacy,” his son said.

But running a pharmacy didn’t turn out to be his strength. He got interested in the stock market and became a financial consultant with Francis I. Dupont, which eventually became Smith Barney.

Mr. Tancredi was a financial consultant for more than 30 years, before retiring in 2004.

“My father did quite well and handled a lot of clients,” his son said.

He was active in the community.

He was a past president and member of the Portland Club, a member of the Cumberland Club, and a past president of the Maine Chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

He lived on Falmouth Foreside for years, and later became a resident of the Village Crossings assisted-living facility in Cape Elizabeth.

 

Staff Writer Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

dhoey@pressherald.com