L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 www.italoamericano.org 11 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE Dear Readers, The Earthquake that shook Northern California at 5:04 in the afternoon, just as Game 3 of the World Series was about to begin at San Francisco's Candle Stick Park measured 7.1 on the Richter Scale. It killed more than 60 people, injured more than 2000 and left at least 10,000 people homeless in cities and tow n s throughout N orthern California. A s the 27th annivers ary of this natural disaster on October 17, 1989 approaches, I thought I would share with you, especially my East Coast transplant Readers, how the California earthquake caused the iconic Bronx Bakery Brand of Stella D'Oro to slide after the los s of its Italian connection. Quake Bridges were moving, cars w ere s liding around like they were on ice, suspension cables on the bridge were swinging back and forth and some drivers were slowing dow n uns ure if they s hould continue to ride or run. It also caused a 50 foot section of the upper deck to collapse onto the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, a major S.F. Oakland artery across the San Francisco Bay. *** N earby, on a 1 1/2 mile s tretch of Inters tate 880 in Oakland, known as the Cypress Street structure, cars disappeared as the quake caused the road beneath them to drop like an elevator. D is as ter became tragedy as forty-two people died on a bit of rad that normally could be traversed in 90 seconds. among the dead was an Italo- American male, twenty seven years of age who had recently moved to an Oakland apartment from New York City. *** Stella D'Oro, which means "Star of Gold" in Italian was founded in 1932, by J os eph Kresivich, an immigrant from Trieste, Italy who arrived in the U.S. in 1922 and began working in New York City bakeries. He married A ngela Zambetti, a widow with a young son named Felice in 1928. Angela was an expert baker in her own right and together four years later, they opened a bakery called the Stella D'Oro Biscuit Company. Its products included breadsticks, anisette toasts, egg biscuits, almond biscotti, cookies with centers shaped like little stars, seasonal Italian breakfast treats and for the benefit of their Jewish customers they also made cookies "pareve" without diary products , for J ew s keeping Kosher. By 1950, the Bakery had grown so successful they needed larger quarters and Stella D'Oro moved its manufacturing facility to West 237th Street on the north end of Kingsbridge in the Bronx section of New York City. *** In 1965, Stella D'Oro co- founder Joseph Kresevich died and Felice (Phil) Zambetti, his s teps on, the only child of Angela's previous marriage took over. People who worked at Stella D'Oro when Phil Zambetti was the bos s recall that period fondly, like the reign of a good king. Stella D'Oro had expanded into markets in Boston, Florida, Chicago and San Francisco. Just east of that city, in San Leandro, it operated another plant, and under Zambetti it was able to build a third, in southern Illinois. Wages w ent up. Workers received health insurance paid for by the company, a fully funded pension plan, sick leave, and up to four w eeks paid vacation a year. They got a factory-wide birthday holiday (for everybody's birthday, celebrated annually on the same day), with pay. Stella D'Oro sponsored a local Little League team, donated cookies to charity events, opened a restaurant with cheap and good Italian food next to the factory and hos ted Kiwanis Club meetings at the res taurant. The company's delivery truck w ere painted white with a gold band running around the lower half and forest- green hubcaps. They came and went straight from the factory to stores, with no warehouse in between. Phil Zambetti and his wife had four children. The kids were around the factory all the time. M aking thes e cookies - w as more an art than an ordinary blue collar job, and much of the machinery was nonstandard, improvised. The workers who ran it tended to be un- interchangeable individuals. S ome had been at the company for more than thirty years. Five hundred-plus people worked at Stella D'Oro then, and the kids knew many by name, and vice versa. Zambetti's two sons, Marc and Jonathan, loved hanging out at the factory and took over S tella D 'O ro themselves after their father retired. Marc was the older. Both graduated from college in the nineteen-eighties and started working for the company. Then, in 1989, after moving to San Francisco to get experience in the San Leandro plant, Marc was driving from work back to his apartment on the afternoon of O ctober 17th, w hen an earthquake caused the Cypress Street viaduct of the Nimitz Freeway to fall. Its collapse killed forty-tw o people, the largest loss of life in one place during the quake. Among the dead was Marc Zambetti. He was twenty-seven years old. *** In 1992, after discussions within the family, the Zambettis decided to sell the company to RJR Nabisco. Jonathan Zambetti had not wanted the responsibility of running Stella D'Oro without Marc. Stella D'Oro was at its peak, doing sixty-five million dollars in business a year. Eight years later, in 2000, Nabisco its elf w as bought by P hilip Morris, the parent company of Kraft, the second largest food company in the world. Inside Nabisco's corporate structure, and inside Kraft's giant corporate structure, Stella D'Oro disappeared. When the Teamsters Union struck Stella D'Oro, after the purchase, Kraft fought the strike, w on, and res tructured the delivery system, making it less direct. Workers and distributors said that Kraft also switched to cheaper ingredients , like powdered eggs instead of real ones, and the quality of Stella D'Oro cookies began to decline. Lost and neglected within the larger company structure, Stella D 'O ro s ales declined and Brynwood, in 2006 bought the company for $17.5 million. During its fourteen years with Nabisco and Kraft, its price had gone dow n by almos t ninety million dollars. A fter Brynw ood reduced wages and benefits an eleven month strike ensued. By 2009 after the N ational Labor Relations Board ruled that Brynwood had engaged in unfair labor practices, and were owned back pay, the workers celebrated at the company gate. A lmos t s imultaneous ly Brynw ood announced they would close the factory in ninety days. In September 2009 came the news that Stella D'Oro and been sold to Lance Inc. The New York factory would be closed and production w ould have moved to Ohio. I think they still own it but unfortunately the Stella D'Oro has been tarnished. *** The I-880 Freeway collapse in Oakland, Calif.

• Cover