04/02/2021
Ray Lavecchio
6/10/29 - 3/30/21
It’s with a heavy heart we share Ray passed away this week.
He wore many hats over his 92 years of life. Son, brother, spouse, father, uncle, grandfather, friend and storyteller to all who meet him. But Ray (Raimondo’s) will forever be known as a legacy in the food industry here in Arizona. Over the past 44 years he has owned 7 different restaurant locations: Pizzerias to traditional & Gluten-free Italian. He also opened the first Tea Room in Arizona, Francesca’s Tea Room. The first of 4 tea room locations. Ultimately closing down the brick and mortar locations to focus on serving the valley with his Gluten-free Italian food through catering & Farmers Markets. He was the winner of “Best In Phoenix” multiple times over and his family recipes straight from Italy, several generations back are still considered some of the “BEST TASTING ITALIAN FOOD” by many.
Our family had the privilege of getting to know Ray through Levi’s relationship & he quickly became like family to all of us. Levi started working with Ray in 2020 with the intention of Levi continuing his Raimondo’s legacy. While the two would closely work together at farmers markets they would always get asked if Levi was his grandson. Ray would just beam, “No, but I wish he was”.
Ray was still unloading and loading vans for markets until the last three month’s of his life. On several occasions we had to bungee cord him to his Walker so he would stay seated and let us do the work for him. We would all laugh but he was still amazing to watch as he would share stories with anyone who would listen and kiss the hands of the ladies who came by.
Our whole family could share for the better part of the day and reminisce about all the stories he was either part of or he told, and for those who knew Ray, you understand how detailed those stories could be.
His last month our family & our church family were able to help move him from his Central Phoenix apartment to one in Sun City where it was closer for Gail Ross, who worked for him at farmers markets for the past 5 years could be close by. Soon after Gayle Marble (Levi’s grandmother, a retired nurse) started helping Gail take care of him. Ray would lovingly call them Gail # 1 & Gayle # 2. He was surrounded by friends who wanted nothing more than to help him finish his race strong, and that’s what he did.
He will forever be remembered and missed greatly by all that knew him.
