Michael Iozzo

1937 - 2018

(News story) ASSUMPTION, Ohio - Michael Iozzo, a business owner for much of the 60 years since he arrived from Italy, who for more than a quarter-century supplied printed pizza boxes to pizzerias and restaurants, died Monday at home in Fulton County's Amboy Township. He was 80.

He learned about two years ago that he had cirrhosis of the liver, his son Joe said. He continued to oversee the business, PJ's Corrugated Inc. on U.S. 20, "to the very end," said his son, a co-owner.

"He was brought up that you work until you died," his son said. "That's what he instilled in us kids, too."

He was born Dec. 24, 1937, in San Nicola da Crissa in southern Italy to Vittoria and Giuseppe Iozzo. The family had relatives in Windsor, Ont., and his father moved to Toledo and was a factory worker for the automotive supplier Dura Corp. Several years later, in May, 1958, the younger Mr. Iozzo arrived in the United States.

"He wanted to be with his father," Mr. Iozzo's son said. "He was like me - father, son, very close.

"He was full of life and loved family and friends. That was my father in a nutshell," his son said.

His mother stayed home, and when his father retired, he returned to San Nicola da Crissa.

Mr. Iozzo mowed lawns and worked as an orderly at the former Mercy Hospital. He was a printer and box cutter at Davis Paper Box Co.

"He also had entrepreneurial skills and wanted to do more and be more," his son said.

Mr. Iozzo owned apartment buildings and opened a beauty shop on Sylvania Avenue called Vittoria's Hair Fashions, named for his mother, where his wife was a beautician.

He went to work for Loretta Mazzurco, who decades earlier founded a food-importing business downtown with her late husband, Carl.

Mr. Iozzo bought the business, renamed it Iozzo Foods, and was a wholesale distributor of Italian and ethnic food to restaurants in much of Ohio and lower Michigan.

"He always had a fascination with the restaurant business," his son said. "He did everything from sweeping the floors to unloading the trucks and making sales calls.

"In every business, he was hands on from start to finish," his son said.

The pizza-box business followed in the early 1990s.

"He was a phenomenal sales person," his son said. "That is what made his business ventures profitable. He could always sell it."

Surviving are his wife, the former Priscilla Baringer, whom he married Oct. 28, 1961; daughters, Vittoria Incorvaia and Antoinette Bennett; son, Joseph Iozzo; sisters MariaTeresa Iozzo Galati and Antonietta Carnovale; six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Services will be at 11 a.m. Saturday in Holy Trinity Church in Assumption, Ohio. Arrangements are by the Reeb Funeral Home, Sylvania.

The family suggests tributes to ProMedica Hospice; St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, or the Holy Trinity parish building fund.

This is a news story by Mark Zaborney. Contact him at mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.