John and Cynthia Vino Scholarship Fund

About John Vino John was born in Bronx, NY, the eldest of five children. His grandparents migrated with their children from Bari, Italy and settled in New York in the early 1900’s. They began an ice company and delivered by horse and wagon. John’s father transformed that business into Vino Trucking while raising his family on Long Island, NY. As a young boy John helped his father support the family by delivering groceries and ice. As a teen, John learned how to lay stone and brick working alongside Italian masons on Long Island. In high school, John excelled in sports, especially football and wrestling. He was inducted into the West Islip Athletic Hall of Fame in 1974. He continued club wrestling while attending night school and became the 168 lb.champion in the New York Metropolitan area. He won a football scholarship at the University of Bridgeport and earned a bachelor’s degree in education. There he founded, coached, and captained an undefeated wrestling club. He went on to complete a master’s degree at the University of Connecticut. John built a career around his love of sports: first, coaching football, wrestling, and lacrosse at the University of Connecticut, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Wesleyan University; second, in sporting goods sales, representing various sporting good companies for decades. He was widely respected in the New England region as a tough but fair referee at high school wrestling matches for 40 years. He formed many friendships with coaches and wrestlers alike during this time. John was also instrumental in creating annual gatherings and service awards for wrestling officials through the Connecticut Interscholastic Wrestling Officials Association (CIWOA). In 2003, surrounded by his entire family, John received the Lifetime of Service to Wrestling Award from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. About Cynthia Browne Vino Cynthia Browne Vino was born the oldest of two daughters during World War II. She shared a simple, three story home filled with blended generations of a Polish, Ukrainian, and French-Canadian family. They didn’t all speak the same languages, but the love, affection and support they shared for one another is both epic and eternal. As a teen attending Windham High School, Cindy became actively involved with synchronized swimming (now known as artistic swimming), devoting hours every day before and after school to practice. She competed throughout the state with “The Dolphin Club” of her school, and actively supported her peers in competitive swimming such as freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly. She later became a lifeguard and swimming teacher at Ocean Beach Park in New London. There she coached children of all ages on basic survival swimming skills and kept visitors safe in the olympic-sized salt water pool. Cindy also taught herself how to sail small boats in the Mystic area, eventually remodeling and maintaining her own little wooden boat so that she could enjoy the coastal beauty of the area. Teaching young people how to swim and to be safe while enjoying all that water can offer was a lifelong commitment and passion for her. One of her proudest accomplishments was serving as the head teacher of the Mansfield Training Center for students with special needs. These were residential students of all ages who were often left by their families with little contact throughout the year. Cindy loved these students and would take them home on the weekends to give them the experience of being with her own family. Cindy hired John Vino to assist her with physical education at the school, and it was there that they fell in love and eventually married.