College awards DiCuccio for his service
Dr. William DiCuccio lodged where the wealthy lodge in the Dominican Republic, at Casa de Campo Resort and Villas — with its 13 tennis courts, its equestrian trails and polo grounds, its three golf courses with seascape vistas of the Caribbean — and experienced only what the wealthy experienced.
Only when DiCuccio visited a destitute village 10 miles inland and attended a Sunday service at a small church, its low-slung tin roof just above the heads of 20 worshippers, some naked, standing on a dirt floor — that he experienced what the poor experienced.
Inspired, he gave it all away — “all of it,” he said of the proceeds from the sale of his 44,000-patient medical practice in Butler — and created a better life for the residents of Villa Hermosa, that destitute village.
DiCuccio, a Butler County Community College trustee and retired family physician, has been selected by Saint Vincent College, his alma mater, as one of its six 2020 Alumni of Distinction. The private college in Latrobe chooses alumni of distinction based on achievements in any one of eight categories, which include professional achievement, church or religious involvement, community or civic involvement, and ethical or humanitarian efforts.
DiCuccio, 72, of Gibsonia, in 1970 earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Saint Vincent College. The 1966 Butler High School alumnus graduated from Jefferson School of Medicine in Philadelphia in 1974.
In 2005, DiCuccio and his wife, Marge, now chief nursing officer at Allegheny General Hospital, founded My Eternal Refuge, a name suggested by those villagers. The mission in Villa Hermosa built a school that educates 400 children in kindergarten through sixth grade each year, a plant that purifies 4,500 gallons of water each hour, a medical clinic that has restored eyesight to more than 3,000 — and a new church.
“Dr. DiCuccio’s career and life’s work to this point reflect service to others in the purest form,” said Ben Becze, Saint Vincent College senior director of development and alumni relations. “His professional acumen in the practice of medicine is of the highest caliber.
“Extending beyond his primary care practice, he has given unselfishly of himself through service to the greater Butler community and beyond Western Pennsylvania, to the children of Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Becze said.
My Eternal Refuge is located on the southeastern edge of Hispaniola, the Caribbean island that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti — the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, according to the CIA’s World Factbook. “We never saw poverty like this,” DiCuccio said of that 2005 trip to Villa Hermosa, where visiting Haitians attended the service and lived in a nearby garbage dump. “They couldn’t afford clothing. Some of these were kids who never had clothing, never had an education, an immunization, a medical examination.”
Villa Hermosa has a reported 98,000 residents, with those younger than 10 representing its largest age demographic and those 60 and older, its smallest.
The DiCuccios first began to visit Casa de Campo Resort and Villas in February 1993.
They would meet a resort bell captain named Santiago Gil, who lost his job after a hurricane lashed the island in 1997, and whose clergy studies and later, purchase of drums, tambourines and guitars to accompany Sunday services in that small church, were funded by the DiCuccios.
In February 2005, during their trip to Casa de Campo Resort and Villas, the DiCuccios were asked by Gil to visit that church. “I said to (Gil) ‘We’re going to build a school here, so that if another hurricane ever comes through, I want the villagers to be able to come into the school,’ because there was no place for these people who lived in shacks to go,” DiCuccio said.
My Eternal Refuge
DiCuccio and his wife founded My Eternal Refuge in 2005, a year in which he and Marge were married, in which he sold his medical practice in Butler and in which Butler County commissioners appointed him as a BC3 trustee. He serves as vice president of BC3’s board.
Nick Neupauer, BC3 president, said DiCuccio epitomizes the character of BC3.
“Not only in giving monetarily, but in giving his time,” Neupauer said. “Bill has been a trustee over the years who has always been there personally for me as a president, and never misses a meeting.”
DiCuccio served as medical director when the county owned Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, as the medical director for Butler County Prison, as vice president of medical affairs for Butler Health System and as past chairman of the Jean B. Purvis Community Health Center. He is a member of the board of directors of World Servants. The Villa Hermosa mission, DiCuccio said, “has been a blessing that we could never imagine.”
Bill Foley is coordinator of news and media content at Butler County Community College.
