Founder of Del’s dies at 84

By Benjamin N. Gedan

Journal Staff Writer

Angelo DeLucia, shown in 1972, turned the business over to son Bruce two decades ago but continued to maintain an active interest in the operation.
Providence Journal files
Angelo DeLucia, who built a corporate empire by squeezing lemons and turned his company, Del’s Lemonade, into an symbol of Rhode Island, died late Thursday in Kent Hospital, Warwick. He was 84.

The cause was prostate cancer, according to his daughter, Lorie Sardelli.

“Del’s is synonymous with Rhode Island, that’s why we sell so much,” Lisa Harrison, founder of the Only in Rhode Island stores, said yesterday. “It’s a phenomenon. Every time we turn around, we are out of Del’s.”

DeLucia, who was raised in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Providence, did not invent the slushy beverage that has become shorthand for summertime in Rhode Island.

He inherited the recipe from his father, Franco, who brought it from Naples, Italy, where his family stockpiled snow in caves, mixed in lemon and sugar in the summer and sold it as granita di limone.

But he was not born into the business, either. Franco DeLucia spent his career as a master molder for Brown & Sharpe, and he sold only small quantities of lemonade in pool halls and at a stand in front of his house.

Angelo DeLucia, born in 1922, joined the Army during World War II, and he was injured by a land mine in North Africa. After he returned to Rhode Island, he was trained as a dental technician, and he later opened a bowling alley in Cranston.

But business was slow, especially in the summer, forcing DeLucia to hunt for new income.

In 1948, he built the foundation for Del’s. It was a humble start: a 100-square-foot hut on Oaklawn Avenue, so cramped that he had to knock down a wall to accommodate a new ice cream maker in 1952.

“I started with a little shack,” DeLucia told The Providence Journal in a 1972 interview. “I got a saw and sawed the windows in.”

Del’s icy drink may have seemed like a small improvement on the beverage peddled by young entrepreneurs on sidewalks across the country. But the company grew quickly, powered by a platoon of pushcarts at beaches and ball fields and “mobile units” — Del’s iconic trucks.

The trucks — painted white, yellow and green — displayed the frosted lemon that DeLucia chose as Del’s logo, and drew thirsty passersby with a honk that DeLucia designed.

Six decades later, Del’s generates $2.5 million in annual sales and is sold in 14 states, according to DeLucia’s son, Bruce, the company’s president.

Success did not come without sacrifice. As he built Del’s, DeLucia said, he rarely saw his children. In the summer, daughter Sardelli said, he would leave before she and her brother were out of bed. To see him, she had to loiter by a Del’s truck.

DeLucia spent more time at home, often camped out on the lawn of their Warwick home videotaping his children riding the family toboggan. But even there he found work, mowing the grass or building a barn and horse stable.

He found chores for others, too, assigning his children and their friends to scrub the pool deck and muck out the horse stalls. “It was referred to laughingly as the work camp,” Sardelli, 50, of Naples, Fla., said.

At Del’s, DeLucia was also frugal and demanding. He eschewed forklifts, for example, instead helping employees lift hundreds of 60-pound sacks of sugar delivered to the plant. Lemons were cut and pressed by hand.

Bruce DeLucia took over the business two decades ago, after a series of heart problems forced his father to retire.

Under his leadership, the company grew from 6 stores in Rhode Island to more than 50 throughout the country, including in warmer climates where they operate all year. Del’s machines appeared in hospital and university cafeterias. Supermarkets picked up Del’s powder and liquid lemonade, and six new flavors were introduced at stores.

Only in Rhode Island sells Del’s powder, T-shirts, candles, body lotions and gels. In a Wikipedia entry, Del’s is called “The Taste of Rhode Island,” and knowing how to eat it has become a test of Rhode Island citizenship (hint: don’t ask for a spoon or straw).

But Del’s founder never fully let go. Bruce DeLucia said his father would regularly drop in, commenting on the colors of new stores and equipment purchases.

A week before he died, he gave a final piece of business advice: “He said, ‘If I die and it’s a hot day, don’t close,’ ” Bruce DeLucia said. “That’s just the way he did it. You try never to miss a business day. It’s a big pair of shoes to fill.”

In addition to his children, DeLucia is survived by his wife, Phyllis, and two grandchildren, Stephanie and Nikkie. DeLucia donated his body to the Brown University medical school; a memorial Mass has not yet been scheduled, Mark Russell, president of the Monahan Drabble Sherman Funeral Home, said.