Leonard “Ben” Toia, the previous proprietor of Leona’s pizzerias and eating places round Chicago, loved easy pleasures, based on his household.
He discovered serenity with a bag of bread crumbs and the corporate of geese, squirrels and geese — even when those that ran the golf course subsequent to his northwest suburban residence didn’t.
He didn’t let the youngsters beat him at ping pong on the basement desk, relishing his victories by operating round afterward, arms raised, and proclaiming himself “winner and nonetheless champion!”
If he beloved you, he’d smile and maintain the sleeve of your coat for a second as you tried to place it on, cheekily obstructing the method.
“He wasn’t one in all these guys who had a ship or golfed,” his daughter Jacquie Toia mentioned. “He was all about his work and his household.”
Mr. Toia died April 5 after a stroke, based on his household. He was 94.
After he graduated from Waller Excessive College, now Lincoln Park Excessive College, he joined the Marines.
As soon as he acquired out of the service, he returned to Chicago, working as a printer for Standard Mechanics journal.
He appreciated the pizza at a neighborhood spot known as Leona’s at 928 W. Belmont Ave. Much more than the pizza, he appreciated Sue, the proprietor’s daughter.
He turned a daily. And, after just a few months, she warmed to Mr. Toia, who by then owned a neighborhood tavern in Ukrainian Village.
After the couple acquired married, Mr. Toia’s mother-in-law satisfied him to get out of the bar enterprise and are available work on the pizzeria.
Ultimately, Mr. Toia ran Leona’s. Within the Seventies, his son Leon joined him within the household enterprise. Within the Nineteen Eighties, his son Sam did, too.
The trio opened a second location on Sheridan Street in Rogers Park. Extra adopted. By the point Mr. Toia retired within the mid-Nineties, Leona’s had greater than a dozen areas in Chicago and elsewhere in Prepare dinner County. The household offered the enterprise in 2013.
“When my dad began, he was the man within the apron operating the neighborhood pizza place, making pizzas, taking orders,” mentioned Sam Toia, who’s now president of the Illinois Restaurant Affiliation. “When me and Leon acquired concerned and we expanded, Dad oversaw each day ordering.”
Mr. Toia was born June 28, 1930, through the Melancholy, to Salvatore and Josephine Toia, immigrants from Italy. She was a homemaker. He labored in upkeep for town of Chicago, fixing streetcars.
They lived on the Close to North Facet in an space that was residence to many individuals who got here to the USA from Sicily.
All through his life, Mr. Toia repeated a number of issues to his youngsters that caught with them. Like: “A greenback saved is a greenback earned.” “The precise highway is commonly the laborious highway.” And: “Life is filled with peaks and valleys; benefit from the peaks as a result of the valleys are proper across the nook.”
Mr. Toia didn’t need his solely daughter, who studied nursing in faculty, to comply with her brothers into the household enterprise, a lot to her chagrin, and insisted on driving her to a job interview at what’s now Lurie Youngsters’s Hospital shortly after she graduated from the School of St. Teresa.
Mr. Toia needed her to strive her hand at one thing else earlier than deciding whether or not to get into hospitality.
“I had such a nasty angle,” Jacquie Toia mentioned with fun. “I’m nonetheless at Youngsters’s.”
One of many solely instances she remembers her father getting indignant together with her was when she accompanied her dad and mom on a Mediterranean cruise for his seventieth birthday. Jacquie Toia mentioned she misplaced observe of time whereas searching for boots, inflicting her household to overlook a deadline for a shuttle again to the ship.
“He was so mad,” she mentioned. “He by no means acquired mad, and I mentioned, ‘Do you need to see my boots? Do you need to see my new boots? Do you need to see them?’ And he lastly broke a smile.”
Mr. Toia, who beloved his German shepherds and poodles, raised his household in Portage Park earlier than shifting to the northwest suburbs.
“He was only a very mild however steady-as-she-goes type of man, the spine, ensuring we had been protected and safe, he was all the things,” his daughter mentioned.
Although Mr. Toia glided by Ben, it wasn’t his given identify. His mom started utilizing the identify due to her affinity to St. Benedict, a Catholic saint of Italian origin.
Mr. Toia is survived by his spouse Sue, sons Sam and Leon, daughter Jacquie, 4 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Companies have been held.
