Obituary:
Ernest J. Mancini / Headed renowned family bakery
Sunday, October 03, 2004
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ernest J. Mancini, longtime owner of a family bakery in McKees Rocks
whose bread became a Pittsburgh culinary trademark, died Thursday. Mr.
Mancini, of Windgap, was 84.
Feisty and athletic until leukemia sapped his strength, he was more
like a peer than a patriarch to his grandchildren.
"He used to say he was the best dancer and the best wrestler in his
high school. And he danced until the end, until he couldn't walk
anymore," said his grandson Ernie Hartner, 24, who with his brother and
cousin runs a branch of Mancini's Bakery in the Strip District.
A McKees Rocks native, Mr. Mancini was the youngest of seven children
who all worked in the bakery that his brother, Jimmy, founded in 1926.
He studied business administration at Duquesne University for two years
before joining the Air Force in World War II.
He served as a top aide to a ranking commander. He would often proudly
tell the story about when the war ended, he used his connections to
wrangle a Jeep-load of food and orders for a fictitious mission into
Italy from his base in Germany, Ernie Hartner said. Mr. Mancini drove
to his grandfather's native village in the Abruzzi mountains and
delivered food to the starving inhabitants. When the villagers realized
whose grandson he was, there was dancing in the streets, said his
grandson, who recently met a relative who was there.
"In that little town, he's regarded as a big hero," Ernie Hartner said.
After the war, he went into the bakery business with his brother and
married Emma, the daughter of one of his father's friends.
The bakery was already renowned for its signature Italian twist loaf,
and Mr. Mancini was loath to tamper with success. He adopted some
automation, but insisted on letting the dough rest before baking. Today
it still takes more than four hours to prepare a loaf of Mancini bread,
using the same recipe his brother started with in 1926, said his
daughter Mary Hartner of Robinson, who has run the business since Mr.
Mancini retired 22 years ago.
He was in constant motion, she said, rising in the middle of the night
to handle problems at the bakery. But he was not obsessed with work.
"My dad was a lot of fun. He was always ready for a party," she said.
The bakery was supposed to have passed to her brother, Frank. But his
death in a motorcycle accident drew her into the business. Her father
showed her the ropes, then stepped aside quietly.
He took his grandsons to lunch weekly, starting when they were in grade
school, and golfed daily at the Chartiers Country Club.
There, Mr. Mancini co-founded the annual Ogad Festival -- which, with
no apologies for political incorrectness, was "dago" spelled backward.
It was a males-only event, its tables heaped high with loaves of
Mancini bread, salami, sausages and other Italian delicacies, while
accordion players added to the ambiance.
In his heart, Mr. Mancini was always 25 years old, Ernie Hartner said.
"When I would come home from college I'd have lunch with him every
single day. I golfed with him, played gin with him," he said.
They made the rounds of his favorite restaurants, where Mr. Mancini
walked straight-away into the kitchen to greet the chef, and kissed the
cheeks of waitresses who brought him special cakes and gift bottles of
wine.
"Anyone who met him fell in love with him. A lot of my friends called
him Pap," Ernie Hartner said.
When his younger daughter opened a gym, he visited her daily and helped
her out by running errands, Mary Hartner said. But he was never one to
tell his children what to do with their lives. And he never pushed his
grandchildren to follow him into the bakery business.
"He probably put more pressure on them not to do it. It was, 'That's
hard work. You guys all have good educations,' " she said.
Nevertheless, when his grandsons and their cousin put aside other
careers to start a Mancini's in the Strip, "I think secretly, deep down
in his heart, he was real proud," Ernie Hartner said.
Besides his grandson and daughter, Mr. Mancini is survived by his wife;
another daughter, Amy Mancini of Bridgeville; two brothers, Albert of
Kennedy and Mike of Mercer; and two grandchildren.
Visitation is today from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at Anthony M. Musmanno
Funeral Home, McKees Rocks. Services will be private.
First published on October 3, 2004 at 12:00 am |
Mancini's remains a tradition
By Lara Brenckle Thursday, February 23, 2006 Tribune-Review
A bakery worker knew what Jaclyn Leto wanted without her even asking.
Spying the little girl's eyes hungrily following the hot rolls, the
worker leaned over and handed her one. She picked at the hot crust
gently, then took a huge bite.
"I like to shove it in my face," Jaclyn, 10, of Stowe, said through a
mouthful.
Mancini's Bakery in McKees Rocks is celebrating its 80th year, built
mostly on experiences like Jaclyn's. Housed in a pale orange brick
building on Woodward Avenue, the business is a local institution and
something of an anomaly in an era dominated by chains and big-box
retailers.
For thousands of Pittsburghers, Mancini's is something simpler and
grander: A tradition spanning generations.
Tom Taylor Sr., for example, has been eating Mancini's bread for all of
his 58 years. He lives in Lake Latonka, Mercer County, but Mancini's
still beckons him home to the McKees Rocks area, where he grew up.
"When I was little, going to church and Sunday school, my brother was
in the service and we used to stop and get a loaf on the way home,"
Taylor said. "(When I was older), the whole lot of us would go to
football games and we'd come here and get loaves and eat them at the
game, and on the way home."
For Mary Mancini Hartner, 58, of Robinson, every delighted smile is
confirmation that she is keeping alive a legacy willed to her by her
uncle, James, and father, Ernest.
The eldest of eight children, James Mancini founded the bakery in 1926
after emigrating to the United States from the Abruzzo region of Italy
when he was 5 years old.
An experimenter and a bit of an independent spirit, James Mancini
eventually stumbled on the right combination of flour, water, yeast and
sugar and went into business for himself in a little garage in McKees
Rocks.
Hartner's father, Ernest Mancini, became James Mancini's partner after
returning home from fighting in World War II.
Ernest Mancini planned to hand the business down to Hartner's brother,
Frank. But a series of tragedies thrust Hartner into the business.
James Mancini died in of lung cancer in January 1977. In July, Frank
Mancini was killed in a motorcycle crash.
Hartner, who was living in Greensburg caring for a young son, returned
to McKees Rocks to help her father keep the bakery going. They worked
side-by-side until Ernest Mancini's death in 2004.
"It was hard because you have your own ideas about business," said
Hartner, who acquired a master's degree in business administration from
the University of Pittsburgh in 1975. "But when you work for your
father, you have to do it his way. I had to learn the baking end, the
business end and the Ernie end."
The learning is ongoing.
Suppliers, customers and diets have changed, even in the two years
since Ernest Mancini died, Hartner said.
The mom-and-pop restaurants that peppered Pittsburgh neighborhoods once
were the bakery's bread and butter. In recent years, however, those
eateries have given way to chains, who supply their own bread. And, of
course, there was the low-carb craze.
"I was doing demonstrations in supermarkets and people would come up to
me and say 'How can you sell this poison?' " Hartner said.
To stay viable, Hartner and her cadre of 26 bakers have moved beyond
their signature Italian breads, just as James Mancini would have wanted
it.
Years ago, he added rye bread to the Mancini's mix. Frank's lasting
contribution is the bakery's raisin bread. Hartner's son Nick, who
started the McKee's Rocks Bread Company with his brother Ernie, is
responsible for the bakery's latest creation: European multigrain.
The bakery also has added trendy loafs such as focaccia and cranberry
walnut, along with a line of sauces and spreads.
Still, for many people, the allure of Mancini's is tradition, not
trendiness.
Carmen Fratto, 73, of Kennedy, remembers buying Mancini's bread for
three cents a loaf.
"Mom would send me and my sister to run errands," Fratto said. "She'd
give us a bag and we'd get twists and carry it home between us."
One Mancini's tradition is particularly enduring, said Yvette Leto,
Jaclyn's mother.
"If you are taking it somewhere, especially if you buy it hot," she
said, "it doesn't quite make it to its destination." |
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