Longtime Santa Rosa grocer Ray Lazzini dies at 89

Ray Lazzini lived all his life in Santa Rosa, and nearly all his life he sold folks groceries and served his famous polenta stew to oftentimes hundreds of people at feeds that raised money for causes throughout the community.

Lazzini and his wife, Kathy, had operated their family grocery store, Ray’s Food Center, at Dutton and Hearn avenues, for ?50 years when they retired in 2007.

“Fifty years,” Ray Lazzini said then. “It’s time.”

He was 77 when he quit working at the store but kept cooking for fundraising dinners. Also in retirement, he set off with his wife to do his first serious traveling since the Korean War era, when he spent long stints at sea on aircraft carriers.

The Lazzinis took a cruise ship through the Panama Canal, and visited Italy three times, and took some other fabulous trips before the retired grocer began to lose himself to vascular dementia. He died March 19 at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. He was 89.

Lazzini and his late brother and sisters, Joe, Gloria and Delores, grew up in the Little Italy district of downtown Santa Rosa and then in the Roseland neighborhood. While at Santa Rosa High, Ray Lazzini barely acknowledged neighbor girl Katherine Giannini, who was several years younger and attended Ursuline High.

Lazzini graduated in 1948 and found work at the former Corby Market on Barham Avenue. He and Giannini, who by then had graduated and worked for the telephone company,went on their first date, to the hardtop car races, in early 1952.

They became engaged shortly before he joined the Navy, where he worked as an electrician, fixing jets on aircraft carriers. They married in June of ’52.

Lazzini served four years in the Navy, and returned to Santa Rosa. He was in the produce department at Espindola’s on Fourth Street when he and his brother, Joe, a World War II veteran, agreed they’d buy a market on Dutton Avenue, in the countryside southwest of town.

Kathy Lazzini and several other family members worked at the market, too. For a number of years, an uncle, the late Nello Bassignani, ran the meat counter as an independent business. The Lazzinis’ son, Steve, and his wife, Leslie, operated the deli, called Steve-O’s.

Genial and eager to be of help, Ray Lazzini was in his element at the market.

“He was always a groceryman,” his wife said. “He loved the grocery business.”

All through his career, Lazzini also cooked and served polenta stew at benefit and social dinners of Ursuline, Cardinal Newman and Santa Rosa high schools, Resurrection Parish, several Italian-American organizations and the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

His sons, Steve and Mark Lazzini, subsequently purchased a market on Bennett Valley Road that they call Lazzini’s.

Their mother said that very much pleased their father.

Ray Lazzini savored traveling with his wife and playing golf with his friends. He worshiped each Sunday at Resurrection Parish.

“He was a holy man,” said his wife. “I know he went right to heaven.”

Lazzini also is survived by his daughter, Kathy Rae Hansen, his sons, Kenneth, Steve and Mark, and his “adopted” son, Jerry Gage, all of Santa Rosa; seven grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.

A Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. April 6 at ?10 a.m. at St. Rose Church. Entombment will be private.

Lazzini’s family suggests memorial donations to the Memorial Hospice Building Fund, 439 College Ave., Santa Rosa, 95401, or to the St. Vincent de Paul Society at Resurrection Parish, 303 Stony Point Road, Santa Rosa 95407.