WEST VIEW, Pa. — Only minutes after Prohibition died in 1933, Angelo Cammarata, 19, served a 10-cent bottle of Fort Pitt beer to a customer in his father’s neighborhood grocery.
Ever since, except for a 30-month hitch during World War II, the son of Italian immigrants has been tending bar and serving drinks.
Guinness World Records dubbed him the longest-serving bartender a decade ago, and he has earned induction into Jim Beam’s Bartender Hall of Fame and numerous other honors.
Now 95, he’s calling it quits.
Known as “Camm” or “Ang,” he has presided over Cammarata’s Cafe through births, deaths and weddings — acting as a kind of psychologist, if not priest, for his customers for more than 70 years.
The two-room bar he operates with sons John and Frank anchors the ground floor of a white cinderblock building in this suburban Pittsburgh borough. He and wife Marietta, 92, lived in the second-floor apartment until several years ago.
“This is a good bar. All my customers here are family. We call them our family, our friends. We know them all. And they’re all good,” he said one day this week.
Lean of build, with much of his white hair, Cammarata looks maybe two decades younger.
The cafe is being sold in part because John, 59, recently had a heart attack. It was time, the Cammaratas decided.
Angelo’s last call will be sometime in the next couple of weeks, pending state approval to transfer the liquor license to the new owners. Afterward, he says he’ll do chores at home and take care of his wife.
A chalkboard sign thanks customers: “We consider you a large part of our family.”
