DiPasquale was born in Kettering to Joanne, now deceased, and Cosmo DiPasquale. His Sicilian grandmother came to Dayton via Ellis Island and Buffalo, N.Y. After she settled in, his grandmother returned to Italy to bring DiPasquale’s great-grandmother to Kettering.
DiPasquale met his future wife, Toni Smith, in the fifth-grade at St. Albert the Great School in Kettering. They attended Alter High School, where DiPasquale ran track and played football before graduating in 1966. He also worked at his Uncle Tony’s Centerville restaurant, called Antonio’s Restaurant that featured the recipes of DiPasqaule’s grandmother.
DiPasquale attended Xavier University at the same time that Toni studied at the University of Dayton. The couple wed in 1972, while DiPasquale was studying dentistry at The Ohio State University. After DiPasquale graduated in 1974, he joined the Air Force and was sent to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina where he practiced for two years before being discharged.
The couple returned to Centerville where DiPasquale set up his family dental practice and they raised their two children. Vincent DiPasquale, a Centerville High School graduate, lives in Denver where he works as a music producer. He is married to Juliana, an oral surgeon who was raised in Ipanema, a neighborhood in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Gina DiPasquale Graham also graduated from Centerville High School, and followed in her brother’s footsteps when she attended The College of Charleston in South Carolina where she met her Scottish husband, Ben, who was there on a soccer scholarship. They currently live in Chicago with their two children, Danny and Dylan.
DiPasquale became interested in racing sports cars after attending a 2001 three-day training session at Mid-Ohio Race School Course in Lexington, Ohio.
“I just wanted to have fun, but I quickly learned that attention to detail was very important and that’s something I do every day in the dental office,” said DiPasquale, whose racecar can be seen at http://www.godrd.com .
“Racing at 150 miles per hour is always exciting, but the day my car caught fire and I was caught on camera ejecting upside down from the burning cockpit I realized that my experience handling emergencies in the office was carrying over to the race course. As soon as I hit the ground, I began rolling around to extinguish the fire on my back.”
After 35 years as a dentist, DiPasquale decided not to retire, but instead renovated and expanded his office to include state-of-the art equipment including a sedation room where an anesthesiologist works with DiPasquale and his patients, so that in-depth dental procedures can be completed with minimal pain in the shortest period of time.
Contact this columnist at (937) 432-9054 or jjbaer@aol.com.
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