In Memoriam - Joseph O. Basile

The New England food industry lost one of its hardest working businessmen. Joseph O. Basile, founder of Catania-Spagna Corporation, died on December 20, 2003 at the age of 86.

Joseph O. Basile

Joseph started working in his father's business before he was fifteen. In a 2002 interview, he reminisced about his youth.

"I used to take three gallons of oil to school with me and leave it in the dressing room. When the bell rang, I went to the East Boston Ferry. It took two pennies to go across so I could go house-to-house. If I got stuck and couldn't sell it all, I'd leave it with a customer as inventory and go back the next day. I went every two weeks to the same route and just kept building it up."

When Joseph took over the family business, he realized that house-to-house selling was simply too time consuming for any hope of real growth. So he started wholesaling olive oil to retail stores and restaurants.

In the late 1930s, Joseph single-handedly built the business until he had wholesale customers all over Northern New England and New York State. He filled the cans, loaded the truck, drove the routes, collected the money and then drove home to do it all over again. In summer and winter, he often slept in his 1935 Chevrolet panel truck.

Joseph left for the army in January 1942. By the time he returned in 1945, the young war veteran had to start all over again.

He rented a building in Boston's North End and began rebuilding his business. He visited every customer personally. He extended credit. He offered two cans for the price of one -- whatever it took to win back his customers. This was the beginning of Catania-Spagna Corporation.

"The hardest thing to learn was the crazy oil market," Joseph recalled. "The prices went up and down. You had to buy in the future, and I didn't know anything about that. I just learned as I went along."

Joseph began hiring salesmen, and the business prospered. By 1957, Catania-Spagna had outgrown its Boston location. He moved everything to nearby Somerville, where the company remained until 1994. Among his many achievements were establishing the La Spagnola brand of blended vegetable and olive oils and the Marconi brand of premium extra virgin olive oil.

When Joseph brought his own children into the business, he insisted that they too work hard and learn the business from the bottom up. Under his leadership and by his example, the next generation continued the traditions of hard work and customer service. By the time Joseph retired in 1984, Catania-Spagna was a multi-million dollar business.

In 1994, the company moved to its present location in Ayer, Massachusetts, a 100,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility with the capacity to process millions of pounds of oil a day. Joseph Basile lived to see his dream of a successful family business that will be passed on to the fourth generation.