Insurance executive who oversaw Oyster House expansion
“Fear” wasn’t a word in Benjamin G. Peticca’s vocabulary — or in his persona.
“Above and beyond everything, Dad was a true man of action and was fearless of any challenge,” said his son Benjamin Gerard “Gerry” Peticca, of Penn Hills. “He was amazing and fearless in the kitchen as well.”
An insurance executive who reinvented himself several times — including overseeing the expansion of Pittsburgh’s oldest restaurant, the Original Oyster House — Mr. Peticca had a knack for understanding people.
“My father has mentored hundreds of (insurance) agents and people in the bar and restaurant industry from Manhattan to Las Vegas and everything in between,” said his other son, Mario Peticca, of Wilkins.
Benjamin George Peticca, of Wilkins, died March 11 of a heart attack. He was 91.
The son of Italian immigrants, Mr. Peticca grew up in Braddock, where he delivered groceries for his family’s market.
The family struggled but still fared better than some during the Depression, Mario Peticca said.
“Just because they had access to food, they were considered well-to-do throughout the Depression,” he said.
Mr. Peticca was captain of both the football and basketball teams at Braddock High School, where he graduated in 1947.
He met Mary Ann Zvolensky, who would turn out to be the love of his life, in a most unexpected way.
“Scott High School and Braddock were like oil and water back then. They were big competitors,” his son
Mario said. “My mom went to Scott, and she first saw him when they played Braddock in a football game. In her senior yearbook, it said, ‘Mary Ann is in the Scott clique, but a boy from Braddock she did pick.’ ”
The couple married in 1951. When Mrs. Peticca died last April, her husband was inconsolable.
“This man was missing her so bad for the last 11 months that he would call for her to take him home,” said Mario Peticca, who was caregiver for his parents in their final years.
After high school, Mr. Peticca played football for a year at St. Vincent College until his mother’s death.
“He went to St. Vincent as a walk-on until his mother got sick a year later,” his son Mario said. “After that, he went home to help the family, and he never went back to college. He went back to the family business, then worked for the railroad for a while.”
Afterward, he served in the Korean War as an Air Force radar specialist along the coast of Maine.
“He would thumb his way home on the weekends and during leave, sometimes during snowstorms,” Mario Peticca said.
Shortly after his military service, Mr. Peticca started working in life insurance and eventually opened his own agency in Wilkinsburg.
By 1970, he left insurance and joined forces with the late Lou Grippo, a friend who had just purchased the Original Oyster House in Market Square.
“That’s when my dad jumped in and Lou gave him the reins to do something different,” his son Mario said. “They opened seven locations, and my dad served as general manager.”
Mr. Grippo eventually closed the satellite locations to refocus his energy on the Downtown establishment, but he kept Mr. Peticca on staff and even named a dish after him: “Captain Ben’s Barge,” a seafood combo.
The Peticca boys also found an early love of the restaurant business at the Original Oyster House.
“Both my brother and I got our start working there growing up,” Mario Peticca said.
By 1985, Mr. Peticca had left the Oyster House to help his son Gerry open a coffee shop in the Manor Building, Downtown.
Five years later, Gerry Peticca opened Tugboat’s Restaurant & Bar in Chalfant, also under his father’s tutelage.
“I was privileged to work alongside him for so many years — he didn’t just talk the talk; he walked the walk,” Gerry Peticca said. “It’s a high risk anytime you go into business, but my dad had confidence; he had a way of pushing you, and like I said, he was fearless.”
Once the business was established, Mr. Peticca took more of a part-time role, his son said.
“He was there to help me launch it, and he would jump in and help out a couple of days a week with anything I needed,” said Gerry Peticca, who, like Mr. Grippa, honored his father with a popular menu item: “Captain Ben’s Famous Fish Sandwich.”
“It was an instant success,” he said.
In the 1990s, Mr. Peticca returned to the insurance field, working as a district manager for Pennsylvania Life Insurance Co.
“He was general manager in their Monroeville office for close to 20 years,” his son Mario said.
“He recruited hundreds of people at Penn Life,” Gerry Peticca said.
Though he wasn’t a professional chef, Mr. Peticca wasn’t a slouch when it came to homemade Italian dishes, like his famous meatballs and Sunday gravy.
“He could hold his own in the kitchen,” Gerry Peticca said.
“I’ll miss his dinners, our family vacations, and I will miss him desperately and forever,” his son Mario said.
“The best advice he ever gave me was, ‘Don’t ever be afraid to take a chance,’ ” his son Gerry recalled. “Before he died, he told us, ‘Enjoy your lives like mom and I did.’ ”
Along with his sons, Mr. Peticca is survived by two grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his brothers, Vincent, Carl and Henry, and his sisters, Liberty Sturba, Rose Cognito and Edie Yocca.
His funeral was last week.