New York State Assemblyman and Staten Island Democratic Party chair John Lavelle died 10:20 pm in Richmond University Medical Center last night from stroke related complications . He would have turned 58 on Friday.

Lavelle suffered the stroke shortly after midnight last Friday morning in the bathroom of popular Staten Island Democrat hang out Jody's Club Forrest, just after addressing the Young Democrats of Richmond County.

Lavelle, a former Met Life executive, became party chair in 1999 and was elected to the Assembly in 2000. He is also a former president of the borough's most progressive Democratic political club, Staten Island Democratic Association (SIDA), which I belong to.

He is survived by sons, John, Christopher, and Daniel and three grandchildren.

The wake will be at Harmon's Funeral Home, 571 Forest Avenue, Saturday, 7:00 - 9:00 P.M., and Sunday, 2:00 - 4:00 and 7:00 - 9:00 P.M. The funeral will be Monday at 10:00 A.M. at St. Peter's Church, 53 St. Mark's Place.

One of Lavelle's kidneys was used to save someone else's life just before his death.

Concern about issues such as poverty and civil rights fueled his political activism.

John was a man of integrity and stood by Steve Harrison when the national Democratic Party began trying to promote Brooklyn Council member Bill de Blasio as a candidate to oppose Vito Fossella for a Congressional seat in a district he neither lived in nor represented a single person in, several weeks after the Island party executive committee unanimously endorsed Harrison. Lavelle would have none of this and successfully helped convince Bill not to challenge Steve.