Ernest J. Chiovini was born in Rensselaer on August 18, 1921 and departed this Earth on September 10, 2016. His parents were Michael and Mildred (Grasso) Chiovini. In 1939, Ernie graduated from CBA in Albany, with a confident, can-do, let’s-see-what-the-world-has-to-offer-attitude. In 1941 Ernest married Carolyn Hoffman and lived in Schodack Landing. During WWII, he was a member of the Army Air Corps stationed in Burma, after which he moved his young family to San Francisco where he worked in his uncle’s floor laying and building maintenance business. After returning to Schodack years later he became a welder at Winthrop Stearns, was postmaster at Schodack Landing, and finally started his own successful E & J Building Maintenance business, with his brother John and from which he retired. He was a member of an airplane club in the Capital District and with them built an ultralight plane. During this time, he also took flying lessons. He was a member of the American Legion, the DAV, and a charter member of the Schodack Landing Fire Company. Always an athletic man, he began downhill skiing in his 60s and was a member of the Over 70 Ski Club. He enjoyed hunting, ice skating, rollerblading, bicycle riding, building and flying (and repairing) model airplanes, camping, sailing, gardening, and working in his shop—where he could fix anything. Ernest was predeceased by his wife of 72 years in 2014; his siblings Marjorie Hawrylciw, John and Rocco as well as a brother- and two sisters- in-law. Surviving are two brothers-in-law Raymond Ennis and Michael Hawrylciw; four daughters, Diane (John) Zoller, Susan (Edward) Secovnie, Karyn Trossbach (Ben Mastrototaro), and Anita (Ken) Broughton; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
