DeSanto played key role in Freehold's comeback
BY DICK METZGAR
Staff Writer

FREEHOLD - Donald J. DeSanto was one of the early movers and shakers who became an important part of the renaissance that began to take place in Freehold Borough in the late 1970s.

DeSanto, his wife, Loretta, and daughters Dolores, Jennifer and Marisa moved to the borough from Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1977, and it did not take him long to become heavily involved in the well-being of his new hometown.

DeSanto, 64, died at CentraState Medical Center, Freehold Township, on Sept. 20 following a long illness.

DeSanto became a charter member of the borough's Economic Development Committee (EDC) when it was appointed in 1984 to act in an advisory capacity to then-Mayor John McGackin and the Borough Council. He served as one of the body's early chairmen.

Perhaps no other body helped shape the future of the town's business district more than the early EDC, which brought in various experts to discuss possible improvements to the downtown area.

DeSanto was a member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment in the mid-1980s. That board has the responsibility to maintain the integrity of a town's zoning laws as it considers development applications that seek variances from those laws.

It was a brainstorm by DeSanto that led to the rededication of the Battle of Monmouth Monument at Monument and Court streets on Nov. 22, 1984.

DeSanto recalled that 206 years earlier in June 1778 this pivotal battle during the Revolutionary War between the Colonial army and British troops took place in parts of modern-day Freehold Township and Manalapan. DeSanto approached local leaders with a request for officials to do something special in honor of that milestone during the fight for independence.

The rededication of the Battle of Monmouth Monument turned out to be a gala event highlighted by the burial of a time capsule, which is to be opened in 2084.

By profession, DeSanto was an educator, but he was much more than that, he was a scholar of the first magnitude. DeSanto was the founder and executive director of the Rugby School, Wall Township, a private school for children from kindergarten through 12th grade.

According to the school's Internet Web site, the school is designed to prepare its students to become productive members of society. To achieve this goal the school has implemented an educational program that is designed to meet students' needs and maximize their talents.

DeSanto, a school psychologist and certified school administrator, founded the school in 1977. The school has an enrollment of about 120 students.

Jayne Carr, of Englishtown, a member of the Englishtown Borough Council and executive director of the Freehold Center Partnership, Freehold Borough, recalled working for DeSanto at the Rugby School in 1979.

"I was just out of college and working at Foodtown in Freehold when I met the DeSantos in 1979," Carr said. "I went to work for Don at his school as an art therapist. Don was very good with children. He was very intelligent and he was a gentle soul. He was generally a very kind man."

Although DeSanto was a member of the Freehold Borough Republican Party, he was very much an independent thinker when it came to politics.

During the early 1980s when the county seat's renaissance was gathering steam under the leadership of McGackin, a Democrat, and later under Mayor Michael Wilson, also a Democrat, DeSanto supported the Democrats wholeheartedly.

Later when he differed with the Democrats' running of the borough, he returned to his Republican roots. At one point his wife made an unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Borough Council.

"I got to know Don very well in the last 10 years," said Marc Le Vine, a current Democratic member of the Borough Council who was a Republican member of the governing body in the early 1990s. "He was a very simple man in his manner, but he was freethinking, a rebel of sorts. I recall that the Rugby School was his real passion. He was a real scholar."