Before She Died, Adella Page Wanted Framingham Baking Co. Pizza

FRAMINGHAM, MA — John Page remembers those early years in the 1950s and 1960s along Fenelon Road in Framingham were difficult. His father struggled with sobriety, and money was tight to the point where the bank was ready to take the family home.

But it was also a spirited time. He remembers kickball with 30-odd kids living in the neighborhood and ice skating on the reservoir behind his house. And on Friday nights, it was riding his bike down to Framingham Baking Co. to pick up slices of pizza for his parents and three brothers.

"Money was really tight. We were always looking for a bargain, and it was 25 cents a slice," he remembers. "We loved it."

So when his mother entered hospice care in Maine in the spring, he got back on his bike, so to speak, to go pick up some pizza.

Facing her last few months on Earth, Adella Page asked her son to bring her Framingham Baking Co. She needed those good, warm memories of pizza and the young family living along Fenelon Road more than ever.

The pizza

For as long as it's been around, there are probably hundreds, maybe thousands, of people with good memories of Framingham Baking Co.

Three Italian immigrants founded the bakery in 1917 in a building near the corner of Waverly Street and Daytona Avenue. When a founder died in 1921 while delivering bread in a horse-drawn carriage, a brother-in-law of one of the founders was asked to come take it over.

At age 21, Vincenzo Bertolino and his wife, Giusepina, moved to Framingham from Springfield and bought the bakery. It's been in the family ever since.

Decades ago, Framingham Baking Co. primarily sold bread. Ever resourceful, the bakers would take leftover bread dough, smear on some sauce, and add cheese to create a Sicilian-style square pizza that could be sold at room temperature right on the counter.

In 2020, Andrea Dooley, great-granddaughter of Vincenzo Bertolino, is learning to run the bakery as her father and two aunts prepare to retire. And today, the pizza far outsells the bread, Dooley said. On weekends, the bakery will sometimes sell up to 60 sheet pans.

It's nothing like you get at takeout spots in the area. Framingham Baking Co. uses American cheese instead of mozzarella, and the crust isn't crust at all — more like a very soft focaccia. Dooley prefers hers at room temperature, but it's good cold or right out of the oven, she says.

Dooley said it's "humbling" to know that Adella Page requested her pizza at the end of her life. But it's not uncommon for the pizza to travel. Sometimes a parent will come grab a slice for a child living in another city, she said.

"It makes me feel like I have something here," Dooley said. "It's not just some pizzeria."

Warm memories

Adella Page was one of the world's hardest workers, John Page remembers. She worked multiple jobs — selling Tupperware, for example — so the family could stay in that Fenelon Road home. And she succeeded.

After her sons grew up, Adella Page and her husband, Ron, built a home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in the late 1980s. Ron Page died a few years later, and she stayed in Maine and remarried. She volunteered with her local food pantry and was active with Al-Anon. She continued to sell Tupperware.

She entered hospice in March after several years fighting cancer. With her time short, the pizza was more important than ever. (She also frequently requested blueberry muffins from Muffin House Café, which has locations in Natick, Hopkinton, Mendon, and Medway.)

"She'd be like, 'I love that Framingham Baking Co. pizza, it just brings back memories of you boys after church and Friday nights when we watched 'Hogan's Heroes,'" John Page said.

The family would also pick up the pizza on Sundays after the 10:30 a.m. Mass at Saint Bridget's.

John Page traveled to see his mother every other weekend bringing pizza or, as she requested for Christmas, meatloaf. It was truly comfort food, helping her relive what John Page thinks was probably the happiest time of her life, even with the hardship. The pizza helped her remember the place where her sons and grandchildren were born.

Adella Page died Jan. 27 at age 90. During the funeral procession, John Page and his three brothers stopped and tossed roses into the ocean in their mother's memory. She would've liked seeing her sons together again, he thinks.

"You smell the pizza and it brings you back. Isn't that what life is about? Bringing you back to the great memories of your childhood," he said. "I'm sure she's having a slice upstairs with her god."