Rose S. Tata, longtime manager at Mack's Pizza in Wildwood

Rose Salerno Tata, 94, former longtime manager at Mack's Pizza at Wildwood Avenue and the Boardwalk in Wildwood, died on Monday, Nov. 16, at Victoria Commons, an assisted living facility in North Cape May.

Gerald Riess, who retired this year as a police officer for the Delaware River and Bay Authority, had known Mrs. Tata since he took a summer job at the pizza shop in 1979, when he was 13.

After retiring, Riess said, he returned as a manager at Mack's, which, he said, has seating for about 150 diners on two floors.

"Back in the day," he said, Mack's "had four locations" in Wildwood, but today there are only two, the other at Roberts Avenue and the Boardwalk.

Open only six months a year, he said, it serves "just pizza and soda."

Riess said he worked at Mack's through high school and college, getting to know Mrs. Tata when she was well into her 50s.

She circulated among the tables, Riess said, because "she was a very social creature. She liked interacting with people."

Mrs. Tata was a middle child in a family of two brothers and seven sisters, a sister, Jean Roman, said in an interview from her home in Boise, Idaho.

Growing up in the Bustleton neighborhood of Philadelphia, Roman said, "she worked on a farm when she was a teenager," weeding among the vegetables.

"She was a hard worker all her life," Roman said, later working at a deep fryer at a Stouffer's restaurant in Center City.

Riess recalled that Mrs. Tata "owned a business on the Boardwalk in Wildwood in the late '60s, early '70s," a sandwich shop.

But for decades after that, until she retired in 2011 when she was 90, she was a perennial presence at Mack's.

"It was a big responsibility for a little woman," Riess said. "She was very stern, very strict.

"She was working with college and high school kids, and had to keep them in line," he said. "She made sure everybody got focused and got the job done."

Mrs. Tata hired her, Barbara Roach said, "when I was 16, in 1980," and since then Roach has "worked the front counter, serving pizza slices."

For years, Roach said, Mrs. Tata was the only manager at the Wildwood Avenue site, but "now there are two or three."

Mrs. Tata "nurtured a lot of kids, took them under her wing," Roach said, and even outside of work, "she was my friend, always there for me."

Riess said Mrs. Tata's husband, Andrew, "passed away in 1983; their son, Gaetano passed away in 2014."

Besides her sister, she is survived by two other sisters.

A visitation was set from 10 to 11 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, at the Evoy Funeral Home, 3218 Bayshore Rd., North Cape May, before an 11 a.m. funeral service there, with burial in Cape May County Veterans' Cemetery in Cape May Court House.

Donations may be sent to www.woundedwarriorproject.org.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.evoyfuneralhome.com.

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