Mr. Rossi was born on a farm off Beldens Rd on February 14, 1920. His family moved to DeWitt St. a few years later, where he grew up as proud Southsider and graduated from Wilbur H. Lynch High School in 1939. He served his country as a Technical Sergeant, Marine Air Corp Navigator Bombardier on a bomber crew that flew multiple perilous missions in the Southwest Pacific Theater during WWII from January 1944 to November 1945. He participated in the Consolidation of the Northern Solomon Islands. Mr. Rossi then came back to Amsterdam, got a job as a carpenter at Schenectady GE and met and married an Albany hairdresser named Louise Corapi.