- Date Of Death: July 26, 2022
- State: Connecticut
Richard Edmund Ponganis, age 83, of Stratford, beloved husband of the late Lillian Kubik Muttick Ponganis, passed away peacefully on July 26, 2022, at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in West Haven after several weeks of cancer treatment from the compassionate staff there. Richie was known to many as a “tinkerer”; he could repair just about anything mechanical. In 1958, he graduated from Bullard-Havens Technical High School, Bridgeport, as a machinist and tool and die maker. He served in the Navy from 1959 to 1962, where he served on the “Tin Can,” USS Forest Sherman Destroyer 931. After returning to Stratford, he worked at several local tool and die shops and later joined Remington Arms, also in Bridgeport, working in maintenance and repair. Decades later, he retired from the company. While at Remington, he met his wife Lillian, the love of his life, and enjoyed 33 years of traveling and going to tag sales with her until she passed away in 2017. As an avid Star Trek fan, hunter, and snowmobiler, he shared these loves with his stepchildren, nieces, and nephews. He was the first in the neighborhood to own video games, starting with Atari’s Pong, but also enjoyed growing corn at the family farmhouse in Tunkhannock, PA, near where he was born. After retirement, he often took discarded lawn mowers from the curb, repaired them, and then sold them – recycling before it was popular. Richie is survived by one son, Edmund Coogan, three stepchildren, Lillian Ainsworth, Lynn Muttick, and George S. Muttick, and their children and grandchildren, two loving siblings, Joyce Pietrowski and her husband Alfred, of Milford and George Ponganis and his wife Susan, of Stratford, many nieces and nephews lovingly called him “Uncle Richie.
