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Daniel Patrick Pergamo, who served in the Belmont Police Department for more than four decades retiring as its acting Police Chief, died Saturday morning, April 9, 2016.

He was 80 years old.

Pergamo was born in the Kerry Corner neighborhood of Cambridge which once stretched along the Charles River and Putnam Avenue. After serving in the Navy on a submarine, he joined the Belmont Police Department where he spent 33 years on the force, moving up the ranks to end his career as the acting police chief. He attended school nights to earn his undergraduate degree from Northeastern University and then his master’s degree in Criminal Science from Anna Maria College in Paxton.

When asked what he did before he retired, he would say “I worked for municipal government.”

Daniel and his wife, Helen – with whom he raised four children – loved to dance and would spend Saturday nights either at the Canadian American Club in Watertown, the Irish American Club in Arlington, or Hibernian Club in Watertown with their many friends dancing the nights away.

Daniel leaves his wife of 57 years, Helen (Poirier), and his children; Carole Sceppa and her husband Joseph of Burlington, Patti Naylor and her husband Michael of Billerica, James and his wife Susan of Belmont and Joanne Shortell and her husband John of Burlington. He is the grandfather of Michelle Proehl, Daniel Naylor, Kristen and Nicole Sceppa, Michael and David  Pergamo, and Brendan and Erin Shortell and great-grandfather of Matthew Proehl.  He was predeceased by his siblings; Joseph Pergamo, Mary Mercer, and John Pergamo.

Visitation will be held at the Edward V Sullivan Funeral Home (which supplied the information for the obituary) in Burlington (Exit 34 off Rt. 128/95, Woburn side) this morning, Tuesday, April 12 from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Margaret’s Church, 111 Winn St., Burlington at noon Tuesday. Burial will be private.

Instead of flowers, memorials in Daniel’s name may be made to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org