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Getting to Know Tim Mazzei

Supervisor candidate steps away from the issues for Q&A with the Sun

By ALISON SNYDER |STAFF WRITER
03/18/2009

The North Shore Sun:

A lot of your campaign has focused on how you're a "Brookhaven guy." If there was one thing you could do for fun in Brookhaven, what would it be?

Tim Mazzei: Go to the beach and just hang out. I like to swim in the ocean, I love to read on the beach. It's very relaxing to me.

NSS: What was the last book you read?

TM: I just finished a book two days ago called "The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944." It's about one of the campaigns of World War II: the Italian campaign. We left North Africa, went over to Sicily and then over to the mainland and ultimately took Rome in the summer of 1944 ... I was a history major in college and I really enjoy World War II history. I also love reading about U.S. presidents.

NSS: As a restaurant owner, do you enjoy cooking for yourself?

TM: Probably my favorite thing to make is sauce on Sunday. I have a recipe handed down from my grandmother to my mother to me. I just made a big pot of sauce two days ago and it will last me about a month. I freeze it, and every Sunday we have pasta. There was a Sunday about a month ago where we ran out of sauce I had made. I didn't have time that Sunday to make sauce because I was out campaigning. My wife and daughter were out for the day and they didn't know that. When they came home for dinner, my 8-year-old daughter actually cried because Daddy didn't have sauce on the stove on Sunday afternoon.

NSS: As a kid, did you ever imagine you would be running for supervisor when you grew up?

TM: No. I thought I was going to play Major League Baseball.

NSS: What's your favorite team?

TM:The New York Mets. I don't go to as many games as I would like, but I watch the games on TV all the time.

NSS:What's one thing about you our readers would be surprised to find out?

TM: I do 400 sit-ups every morning.

NSS: I just have to ask this because it's something people always comment on. How do you stay so tan?

TM: The Italian skin, I guess, stays tan a bit longer. Even when I'm not at the beach, I love to sit outside and I love to read outside -- even in the cold.

NSS: Do you have a hobby or something you like to do to relax?

TM: Spend time with my family. We like to go to the beach. Whenever I get a chance, I take my daughter to the beach and just have family time. I play golf also.

NSS: Who is your biggest inspiration?

TM: My father. He served in World War II and he got shot down. He was a tail gunner in the Army Air Corps and when he was shot down he was taken to a prisoner of war camp where he spent the better part of two years. I guess I always thought growing up, and maybe even more so now than a kid, but I always thought my father was never afraid of anything. I felt that after somebody spent two years in a prisoner of war camp, you can't be afraid of anything. Nothing can come your way that can't be overcome. There can't be an obstacle, nor could there be a problem you could not overcome. My father never bragged about serving, never bragged about spending that time in a prisoner of war camp. We grew up not even knowing much about what had taken place when he was there. Obviously I'm Italian, and we grew up eating pasta, particularly on Sundays and also other days, and we never ate potatoes. I grew up thinking, "We're Italian, we eat pasta, Italians don't eat potatoes." It wasn't until I was older I was told by my mother my father couldn't eat potatoes because he ate them every day for two years. That's the reason we never had potatoes growing up.

asnyder@northshoresun.com

Tim Mazzei is the Republican candidate in the March 31 special election for town supervisor. Sun reporter Alison Snyder caught up with him this week to ask a few questions outside the political spectrum. Get to know his opponent Mark Lesko in next week's Sun.