My father, Philip Foglia, passed away today due to complications from COVID-19.

I'll write something longer and more personal in the days ahead, but I wanted to share a bit about him today.

During his ordeal with the virus, he was on a ventilator for 28 days. The incredible medical team at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia gave him exceptional care, and he was well enough to be taken off the ventilator last week. But we knew that complications were still possible.

Today, he experienced heart failure and died. He was 69.

But the details of my father’s death seem unimportant next to his life’s staggering list of accomplishments. After earning a law degree through night school, he embarked on a 40-year legal career...

that included stints as a local prosecutor, federal prosecutor, defense attorney, and president of a non-profit. In August 2019, he retired from the Office of the New York Inspector General as Chief of Investigations and Special Deputy Inspector General.

My father prosecuted mobsters, drug dealers, and corrupt politicians. He won record-setting civil settlements for people in great need. He ran one of the country’s largest affordable housing organizations. More than that, he was a community lawyer.

His kitchen table was the neighborhood’s unofficial legal center, where he patiently answered questions, reviewed contracts, and helped neighbors navigate the legal system.

My father was a civic-minded New Yorker through and through. The son of an NYPD detective, he lived in the Bronx his entire life. He was the pro bono Legal Counsel for the Bronx Special Olympics for two decades.

He was appointed to various panels and committees by Mayors Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg. He co-founded the Child Reach Foundation, which has given out tens of thousands of dollars in grant money to law enforcement families who have children with special needs.

He also ran for office, first as a Democrat, and then years later as a Republican. He recently published a series of editorials calling for a decrease in partisanship and an increase in compromise.

He revered the Founding Fathers and spent much of his free time studying and writing about the American Revolution.

My father was particularly proud of his Italian-American identity. He was the Chief Legal Counsel for the Italian American Defense and Higher Education Fund and a founding Board Member of the Italian American Museum.

His childhood experiences growing up on Belmont Avenue – the Bronx’s Little Italy – inspired the film A Bronx Tale. Chazz Palminteri, the film’s star and writer, was one of my father’s closest friends.

In 2019, he and my father lobbied for and secured the construction of a statue of Mother Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, to be built in Manhattan's Battery Park.

My father had many friendships that lasted more than fifty years. Even in his 60s, his closest friends remained his childhood friends. He was a profoundly decent, patient, and even-tempered man — always measured, thoughtful, and generous.

Friends and acquaintances tended to use the same phrase to describe him: “a true gentleman.”

He was an exceptional father and loving husband for 44 years. His demanding career never left us wanting for attention. He was a little league coach for the better part of two decades. We spent countless hours together in movie theaters and at Yankee Stadium.

He absolutely loved the Yankees.

We are heartbroken by this painful loss, but we take solace in his tremendous and enduring legacy.