Dominic Del Corso has been around the world without ever leaving his Burlington home.
Del Corso, a former employee of Acorn Coffee Shop, befriended a generation of Elon University students and treasured a collection of postcards they mailed him from around the world.
Battling an advanced case of lung cancer, Del Corso is receiving treatment at a hospice center in Burlington and is not expected to survive much longer, according to Danelle Del Corso, his daughter.
Del Corso made friends with students as well as Acorn employees. He keeps two shoeboxes full of the postcards and letters he received from students throughout the years. He would ask students to send him postcards from their semesters abroad because he knew he would not get the chance to travel to those places himself.
He also has hundreds of Acorn meal slips and has kept in touch with students by having them write their contact information on the back, with notes that served as memory cues. One says, “Comes in by himself.” Another says, “Good looking. Good personality.”
Until entering hospice, he was battling lung cancer while caring for his wife Dorothy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Despite the adversity he faced in his personal life, co-workers said he always seemed more interested in other people’s problems than his own.
His diagnosis came in November 2011, according to his daughter Danelle Del Corso, but avoided carrying his worries to work.
“Dominic would never tell you his problems,” co-worker Jimmy Tykwinski said. “He would say he was good and everything was fine, and then listen while you told him all your problems.”
After living in the Pittsburgh area his whole life and running a restaurant there, he moved to Elon in 1996 and began working for Acorn. His charming presence at Acorn resonated among co-workers, students, professors and anyone else who was lucky enough to walk in the coffee shop during his shift. He chatted with students as he prepared their sandwiches and was the first to offer a helping hand to a co-worker in need.
“He was the first one here,” Tykwinski said. “For the delivery people, the milk man and the food service trucks, Dominic was probably the first face they saw in the morning.”
Between his first and second shifts, Del Corso would go home to care for his wife.
Despite his prior commitments, he was not the type to clock out right away.
“Dom would stay late to help,” said Brenda Turner, another co-worker. “He was always making sure there was soup and chili in the pot. He was just that type of person.”
Dominic Del Corso found his interactions with the Elon community to be rewarding for many reasons, but there was one reason in particular: He was fascinated by the students’ study abroad experiences.
“He wanted to travel more, but always had other responsibilities that held him back,” his daughter Danelle.
Dominic Del Corso may not have been able to travel as much as he had hoped, but he developed friendships with those who could. His collection consists of postcards from places all over the globe including Greece, Hong Kong, Africa, Spain, Germany and Vietnam.
“The postcards mean a lot because the students thought enough of me to send them,” Dominic Del Corso said.
He treasured the postcards.
“He would always bring up the postcards when we were talking,” Danielle Del Corso said. “He would talk about the students like I knew who they were.”
One postcard from an Elon student studying abroad in Belgium reads, “Seriously in need of some good old Acorn tuna salad sandwiches! Send food! Ha ha. They do have some very strange foods here!”
According to the postcards, Dominic Del Corso was a comforting presence on campus.
“I just wanted to thank you for brightening my day, every day. I loved coming into the coffee shop just to see your smiling face,” one student wrote in a letter to him. “You always made me feel so welcome and special. Take care of yourself and keep smiling.”
[box]The Pendulum is collecting postcards and sympathy cards for Dominic Del Corso, to be mailed to his daughter. They can be sent to:
7012 Campus Box Elon, NC 27244[/box]
Current students still value the time Dominic Del Corso spent getting to know the Elon community.
“You can't help but admire how friendly and patient he always is and how he goes out of his way to get to know his regulars,” junior Keely Youngblood said. “He contributes so much to the sense of community at Elon.”
Del Corso touched the lives of many people in the Elon community. What might be less obvious is how much he relied on them.
“For my dad, working at Acorn was an outlet,” Danelle Del Corso said. “For that moment in time, he did not have any serious responsibilities.”
Despite his personal struggles, he let others lean on him.
Glenn Scott, an associate professor of communications at Elon has known Del Corso since he began working at the university in the fall of 2004. Scott's wife, Misako Scott, worked with Dominic Del Corso at Acorn upon moving from Japan to the United States, and the two formed a bond immediately.
“So that was his struggle, to be an older man in his seventies trying to be upbeat and involved with us, trying to help his wife while he had cancer,” Glenn Scott said. “And the struggle now for the rest of us is to see him on the verge of death. It’s hard for us, hard to let him go.”