“Eno Fraterelli came from nothing,” said his friend, Dr. Eddie DeRose, but he managed to own a jewelry store in Pueblo for almost six decades.
“He didn’t have a dime to start with,” said DeRose, a dentist. “But he had a great business sense.”
Fraterelli, owner of Eno’s Fine Jewelry in the downtown district, died in a Pueblo hospital Oct. 18 at age 88. He had suffered from lung cancer.
“He was a good and generous man,” said his companion, Mary Lou Keating.
He kept track of what female customers liked so when their husbands came in for gifts he could answer the question, “What do you think my wife would like?”
Fraterelli would design the rings for an engaged couple, and then design jewelry for the same people on their 25th and 50th wedding anniversaries, said Keating. His specialty was setting diamonds in gold rings.
Fraterelli always gave $1 bills to children of customers and was notoriously lax about collecting from people who didn’t pay. “You pay when you can,” he often said. Sometimes that was never.
Fraterelli “was a workaholic,” said DeRose, and rarely took time off from the store.
He also loved to tell stories and attracted people to the store because of his friendliness, said DeRose. Many people came by just to visit.
“In the jewelry business you make friends, and they’ll come in to buy,” Fraterelli once said in an interview.
Eno Fraterelli was born in Pueblo on May 4, 1917, one of eight children. His father died when he was young, so he dropped out of Centennial High School in his sophomore year to help the family.
He got a job running errands and sweeping floors at H.F. Scribner’s, a jewelry manufacturer in Pueblo. It was there he learned to make jewelry. Later, he worked at a pawn shop, then went on to manage the Kortz-Lee Jewelry Store.
He was in the Army from 1942 until 1946, and when he returned, he opened his own jewelry store.
He married Serena Sabatini on Oct. 20, 1940. She died in 2000. They had no children.
Fraterelli is survived by one brother, Joseph Fraterelli of Pueblo.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
