When a boss retires

[Rocco]

I think these days a Boss retires when they send him to prison for life...lol

[johngotti2018]

Joseph Bonanno and Frank Costello have managed to retire and live well until the end of life.

Bonanno start a war and was forced to retire when Costello barely survived to a bullet.In this time and in the glorious old days a boss never wanted to retire except if was too old to continue to control the family and in this cases when in semi-retirement or when to prison like the other bosses (Amuso,Peter Gotti etc) and was boss only in the name because can't give orders.

[B.]

I've wondered this also. Not too many of them though. Like with Sam Decavalcante. He didn't die till 1997 which was 15-18 years after Riggi took over?

Here is what JD posted about DeCavalcante:

- By the early 1980s there was a push to have Sam DeCavalcante taken down as Boss, not just by the DeCavs themselves but from New York. Main reason was DeCavalcante resided in Florida and wasn't hands-on enough. Around September 1982 a group of three acting as Family spokesmen traveled to Florida to ask for DeCavalcante's resignation which he gave.

So it wasn't completely voluntary, though he had been more or less retired by this time. The mention of New York pushing to have him taken down also sort of goes against the idea of "figurehead" bosses in general -- seems a boss is or was expected to be actively involved to some degree.