Full Bellies, Full Hearts
Delta Pizza in Delta
The night before Halloween in 2013, Delta Pizza caught fire. It took the fire department all night to put it out. The 11 people living in the apartments over the store were safe, but it was a tragedy in this rural town of 700. Then the cavalry came to the rescue. “We’re cleaning up, and I heard this noise outside, like a train coming through,” says Sal Ferranti, the owner since his father, Giuseppe Ferranti, died in 1999. “It was 30 Amish men in buggies.” They jumped in to help with the demolition. In fact, the whole town pitched in, donating money, time, and more. One elderly woman who wasn’t strong enough to
help with the physical labor arrived with a pitcher of iced tea.
While the town was obviously eager to get its pizza shop back, it also wanted to repay a debt. After Giuseppe became an American citizen in the 1980s, he bought flags for every pole in town—and they fly to this day. He loved to host fund-raisers at the restaurant.
Sal turns out to be a chip off the old block of mozzarella. He often takes food left over from catering jobs to folks nearby. On snow days, kids in Delta show up to eat free pizza and watch cartoons until their parents come home from work. About twice a month, people gather for fundraisers, such as the recent one for a girl diagnosed with a blood disorder and another for a family whose house burned down.
Six years after his restaurant’s fire, Sal hasn’t forgotten his friends. Each year, he chooses a different Amish family and spends two hard days laboring on their farm, picking tomatoes or tobacco or doing whatever else they need done.
“That’s just the kind of guy Sal is,” says Deborah Shade, who nominated Delta Pizza. “Anybody that comes to him with any kind of request, he’s there.”