The DiCamillo Boys
THE DI CAMILLO BOYS
There were eleven children in my father’s family. Seven girls (three entered the convent and lived out their lives there) and five boys (no priests). Curiously, my aunts entered three separate religious communities.
The Di Camillo Family at home circa 1934
Whenever my seven aunts would refer collectively to their five brothers, they were always called “The Boys”. This continued until the grave. Tommy, Frankie, Nick and Goo Goo (Joseph) always remained “The Boys”. Anthony, who died in infancy, was somehow apart, and his sad story is covered in an earlier post “Under the Cover of Night”
“The Boys”
Tommy, Frank, Nick, Joe and The Pierce Arrow, circa 1926
Tommy fashionably suited circa 1925
Thomas Paul (always referred to as “Tommy”) was the eldest, the tallest, the most confident and I would guess the most content with his lot in life. By all reports he was something of romantic figure in the Italian American community of Niagara Falls in the 1920s. A strapping, fashionable youth who secured for the family a Pierce Arrow (a luxury car of the time and made in nearby Buffalo) which added to his romance, and, I suspect, my grandfather’s disapproval of such a conspicuous vehicle. They were different kinds of men.
Tommy in spats and the Pierce Arrow (mysteriously missing the hood ornament), circa 1927
He was also gifted with an amazing ability to play the piano by ear. It was, after all, a time when probably more families had a piano than a record player. He was virtually a party in pants, and the Di Camillo family’s own Scott Joplin. Certainly, he was the most daring of the boys. His exploits defying a local mob protection racket is documented in an earlier post “Addolorata to The Rescue”. There was also his elopement, a significant concern to his very traditional parents. He had clearly broken with protocol, and my grandparents were steeped in the traditions that preceded marriage: family introductions, engagement, and wedding celebrations. A strained relationship developed with his father after his daring disregard for familial conventions. In addition, the bride’s family, although from the same region of Italy (Abruzzo), were not practicing Catholics-- and proud of their agnosticism. Laurina was a modern, attractive girl. She played tennis, swam, and was a freethinker.
Laurina by the Hyde Park, Niagara Falls pool. Circa 1940s
These details certainly didn’t make this marriage easier for my grandparents to accept. This all resulted in Thomas actually establishing a bakery of his own, separate from the family. His separate venture was established at 823 17th Street in Niagara Falls. His bakery (Thomas Di Camillo Jr).is listed in a1935 municipal directory of city bakeries. Previous records show the location had been a defunct bakery and was in the rear of the building with access to the Niagara Falls City market.
This family derailment is the only known period of family disharmony in that remarkably happy family of eleven adult children. This estrangement and separate venture predictable faded away with the birth of his first child, Elizabeth, “Betty.”
Tommy, Elisabeth (Betty), Laurina 1934
Francis, who was always called Frank or Frankie in the family, was my father. He was a very different sort of boy than his older brother Tommy.
Frank Di Camillo circa 1939
He was the shortest, and I’ve never heard of his romantic past, no notable music ability, although I am in possession of his violin., and he was a victim of childhood polio. This affliction had a huge impact on his life, and I think particularly his relationship with his parents. My grandparents had a special love for their wounded children, and they had several. The classic family wisdom concerning my father, as decreed by my grandfather was “Frankie has to get an education-- he is not going to be able to do rigorous work”. Earning a respectable living was the all-important goal in that family. “Hard-working” was a godlike quality to them.
My father went to college, since it had been established as a child and seen as his only option to make his way in life. He fell into line, was a good student and demonstrated a level-head with consolatory qualities. After my grandfather’s death in 1940 at 65 my father became my grandmother’s “prime minister”. There were, after all, four rambunctious teenage girls still at home, a grocery store, and a wholesale bakery to run. Curiously, after my father died an old girlfriend of his showed up in our store one day and dropped a bombshell. She told my brother that my father had wanted to become a priest-- but was rejected as he was a polio victim. I guess it was like the army. We had never heard this story from any member of my father’s family. However, my brothers and I didn't find it hard to believe as he went to bed every night reading his missal.
There were no elopements in my father’s case: he played it by the book. He married a college girl, from an Italian-Catholic family, courting, with the obligatory family introductions. Neither of my parents were interested in rocking the boat, ever!
Frank and Anita (Vespa) 1939
My uncle Nick was next in line. He was not tall but taller than my father, and in many ways the most loved by his nieces and nephews. A happy and generous guy who couldn’t say hello to you without slipping you a couple bucks. Nick was nearly devotional regarding his work and, like my father, had a childhood derailment which shaped his life. As a child he had serious burns on his neck which required repeated painful surgery and left significant scars for all to see. Like my father with his limp and shrunken leg, my uncle and my father were curiously nurtured and pushed to defy the odds against them. Nick took the approved course of courting, family introductions, and a church wedding.
Nick in front of the Di Camillo GroceryStore with nephew Tommy Bruno, circa 1942
Nick with his twins Judy & Jimmy, circa 1944
Nick still at the ovens circa. 1998
Goo Goo (Joe), 1934
The youngest of the boys was “Goo Goo” (Joseph). He came by this family moniker because of his large, romantic, heavily lashed eyes. “Goo goo googlie eyes” was a catchy refrain from Barney Goo Goo, a popular comic strip character and the main character in a song from the 1920s. There is always, in every family, a handsome, or pretty one. Joe was it for my father’s family, stylish, a man about town with blonde girlfriends in convertibles waiting for him in front of the store. He, like his oldest brother, had musical abilities and was a singer and a crooner performing in various clubs in Niagara Falls and Buffalo.
Goo Goo at the Buena Vista, Lewiston, NY circa 1939
Joe had as his inspiration Russ Colombo who in the early 1930s helped set the standard for Italian popular ballad crooners. Russ was trim, handsome and debonair, known as the “Romeo of the radio” and preceded Frank Sinatra by ten years. Joe eventually went to New York to try his luck as a professional singer but eventually returned home. He also fell into line courting and marrying an Italian American college girl in a traditional formula like my father and Nick. When we were kids in the 1950s and 60’s, Uncle Joe was without question the most “with it” of our uncles-- and certainly the most stylish.
These four boys are the men who ultimately defined our family bakery and with their unstoppable commitment and devotion kept our legacy alive.
Tomasso Di Camillo, Sr. circa 1929
My grandfather died in 1940 and had been ill for several years before his death from cirrhosis of the liver. I do not know how my uncles gravitated to their ultimate jobs in the family bakery exactly (as there is sadly no one to ask). My father’s future roll was established early as “the keeper of the books” and his accounting degree cemented his position. Tom, Nick and Joe saw their positions grow organically. All three paid their dues by delivering bread and knew how to roll a loaf of our signature bread (as did my father). Nick, with his boundless energy, emersed himself in bakery production.
During World War II they were faced with great demand, limited ingredients and labor. They bonded in this period not merely as brothers but as business partners as well.
Tommy Frank
Nick Joe
By the 1940s all of the four brothers were involved in the wholesale bakery. All of them were working twelve hour days with a skeleton staff.
It was after the war and filled with optimism that they took a risk (one of many they would take on their journey) and moved their production from the cellar bakery on 14th street, to a dedicated building on 20th street, a former pasta factory.
The original 14th Street store, bakery and home circa 1946
The 20th Street Bakery circa 1945
This was a huge step for them as they now had the space to grow the business. They were aggressive men, and not just riding on the original formula, always trying to stay current with the market they served. With the slow but steady decline of neighborhood grocery stores, which had been their prime outlet, they were prompted to expand into a more dedicated retail presence.
Jerry DiCamillo and unknown clerk in front of the new Third Street store circa 1952
In 1950 they acquired an existing retail pastry bakery in Niagara Falls, Phyllis’s Bakery on Third Street which had its own pastry production facility and was owned by the Sheusi family. With this acquisition they now had two production bakeries with all cake and pastry coming from this new facility, all bread, rolls and pizza from their 20th street bakery. Bread was and has remained central to our brand.
As the 1950s progressed, their operation took on a lively retail presence with outposts in Neisner’s (a local five and dime Rocester-based variety chain), Slipko’s Food King, a local quality butcher shop that was expanding into the new concept of grocery market.
By the time the 1960s arrived they had six retail stores in Niagara Falls. They made a significant move in 1962 and became a vendor for the burgeoning new supermarket chain that was formed in Niagara Falls by a consortium of grocery store retailers. This would develop into the Tops Markets chain which swept across Western New York and would become by the 1980s the dominant food retailer in the area.
It was with the opening of the first fully realized Tops Market in 1962 on Portage Road in Niagara Falls that the Di Camillo brothers opened a separate retail outlet inside this Tops market and branded it “Laura D.” However, this venture proved short-lived.
The growth of Tops coincided with the closing of many of their traditional small retailers. At the same time, Canadian Italian bakers began importing bread form Canada at a discounted cost. By the mid-1960s the brothers eventually found themselves in a desperate and precarious financial position. Faced with filing for bankruptcy, they gathered one night in 1966 at their attorney’s office (Ralph Boniello, Sr.) presumably to pursue bankruptcy. It was at this meeting that my uncle Nick made an impassioned plea that they try a new radical approach before throwing in the towel. This was to be the beginning of a new chapter for our family’s firm. “The Boys” were about to take their greatest risk, betting the farm, so to speak, to preserve their bakery.
It was a frightening time for the entire family whether you were involved in the bakery or not. It was and is our family’s legacy. I was 16 at the time and was for sure on my own planet but I felt the fear in our midst. One curious event that left a lifelong impression on me was when the entire family committed to weekly gatherings in my grandmother’s sprawling apartment above their original bakery. The purpose of this weekly meeting was to pray aloud the rosary as a family, presumably to ask for divine intervention to bail us out of our situation. Adults were in chairs around the living and dining room and all the kids were down on our knees. However, whenever my father’s family were together, no matter how somber a moment, it always ended up with food and laughter.
The Di Camillo family at home, circa 1949
I personally remember these gatherings being kind of weird but fun parties. It certainly gave us kids a tangible sense of a shared purpose, and that for our family, it was time to circle the wagons.
Four partners became three when Joe was amicably bought out by his brothers and began pursuing a new and successful career. He still managed to come in to roll bread in the morning before he started his new day job.
It was at this point that the three remaining brothers, Tom, Frank, and Nick embarked on a radical and possibly ruinous personal plan: they each took out second mortgages on their homes to finance their turnaround. With this move they were betting on everything they had. In conjunction with this risky act, they radically altered their business plan and got rid of all the routes and drivers and basically left the wholesale business. They were not just throwing money at the problem; they were making fundamental changes in their direction.
The Di Camillo Fleet circa 1940s, Unknown Driver, Joe and Tom DiCamillo
They scaled back their assortment of baked goods and became totally committed to their three remaining retail stores, with one brother running each. They were now open seven days a week, slashed prices, opened on Sundays and began their aggressive “Sunday Specials”. Five loaves of bread for a dollar, glazed ring donuts for 59ȼ. Significantly, they began aggressive advertising campaigns in the local media to announce their new strategy.
Niagara Falls Gazette advertisement circa 1969
This turnaround still remains one of our family’s treasured miracles. Perhaps not a Wall Street Journal story but within just four years they had erased their debt, and they were showing a healthy profit. I would guess my father and his brothers were riding a high few men feel in their late fifties.
This new situation for my father was made crystal clear to me one evening in 1970. At the time I had just entered the University at Buffalo and had a 45-minute commute. We were in the living room when my father announced to me that we were getting a new car. I was experienced enough to know that my father’s idea of a “new” car was new to us, not brand-new. Then he revealed he meant a truly brand-new car! He got my attention-- but knowing the man my first thoughts were “the cheapest Chevy they make without carpets, and no extras”. Then he said we were going to the Pontiac dealership! After nearly falling out of the living room chair I went with him on cloud 9.
My father and his brothers got to see this reversal of fortune and were able to pass on a prospering legacy to another generation.
Our family has never forgotten this humbling brush with the extinction of our family legacy and those hard working tenacious “Di Camillo Boys” who preserved against the odds!
- Michael DiCamillo
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