When Santo Formica, BS ’47, enrolled at Purdue in 1941, working in the Purdue Memorial Union’s cafeteria simply helped pay the bills, until he tried what was served for dinner one night.

Photo provided

Santo Formica is keeping his heritage alive through family recipes that have been in his family for generations.

“I happened to eat their spaghetti and meatballs, and they were terrible,” says Formica. “So I went to the manager, and she told me to make some of mine and they’d try serving it. I cooked enough for about 100 people, and we sold out within the first hour.”

Getting to cook a meal that he enjoyed so much made the cafeteria work much more pleasant.

“I only made 30 cents an hour working there. But there wasn’t much money at home in New York at the time, and I was paying my own way through college. It made me understand the importance of working hard and getting something when you put your mind to it,” he says.

Formica, 83, the son of Sicilian immigrants, is no stranger to sauces and meatballs and other Sicilian, Italian and Mediterranean recipes. He and his late wife, Mabel, wrote and published three cookbooks based on their love of cooking.

“In our first book, we put in all our family recipes on how to make sauces and meatballs,” Formica says. “We went to get information from my mother, and she didn’t even know what a recipe was. We had to decipher what a ‘pinch of this’ and ‘little of that’ meant.”

Formica

The Formicas’ second book was published in the 1970s and focused on Sicilian cooking. Their third and biggest book, with all Mediterranean recipes, was published in 1997. They also ran a cooking school for almost 20 years.

“All the books are sold out and out of print. We just keep a few copies for ourselves around the house,” Formica says.

His job in the cafeteria at the Union ended with the completion of his first semester in December 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II.

“We finished the semester and took off. Pretty much all the young men in the freshman and sophomore classes volunteered to go,” Formica says.

Sally Miner, Formica’s good friend and companion, notes that when Formica’s family immigrated to the United States when he was 6 years old, his father was very vocal against the Mussolini regime.

“After Pearl Harbor happened, Santo was sent overseas to fight against this regime,” Miner says.

During his service in World War II, Formica found himself a combat engineer in the Army, serving as an explosives expert as well as helping to build bridges for tanks.

“Engineering was not my major at Purdue, but that’s exactly what I was doing in the Army,” Formica says.

It was animal husbandry and nutrition, in fact, that Formica was studying. He was able to return for the fall semester in 1946, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1947. He went on to receive his master’s at Cornell, in nutritional science.

His degrees were a mighty accomplishment for someone who hadn’t even considered going to college.

“My high school biology teacher in the Bronx, Lucy Orenstein, pulled me into her office one day. I had been a bit of a troublemaker, getting into fights all the time. Well, she slapped me around pretty good, and when she finally stopped I asked her what she’d done that for,” Formica explains. “She said she just wanted to get my attention, and boy, did she ever. She told me I had potential, if I would ever apply myself and quit messing around and getting into fights.”

So she took matters into her own hands. Orenstein paid the $50 out-of-state tuition fee for Formica to go to Purdue.

“That was the only reason I came. But it was one of the best things I have ever done. Mabel and I enjoyed every minute of my Purdue education,” he says.

Formica’s first job after college graduation also included recipes, though it focused more on his background in animal nutrition. Formica took a research job in the laboratories at Swift and Co., a premier Chicago meat-packing company.

“Swift had a kennel of 60 dogs, and we used them for taste panels,” Formica says. “We also had human taste panels. We’d take cans from each lot manufactured, and on Friday we would open the cans, test and taste for quality.”

After leaving Swift and Co., he and Mabel and their five children moved to just north of Little Rock, where they built a plant that manufactured special nutritional supplements for poultry, swine and cattle. Later, he worked in Saudi Arabia for five years at a poultry complex and also consulted for the chicken industry in France and Spain.

Then he and Mabel founded Little Sicilian Inc., a specialty food business that sold Sicilian food products to grocery stores. Formica just retired Dec. 31 from his very successful business venture.

Another accomplishment that Formica is proud of is donating a replacement portrait of his hero, Albert Einstein, to Purdue. Formica remembered a portrait of Einstein that used to hang in Purdue’s Electrical Engineering Building until it was stolen and never returned. He commissioned John Deering, a popular Little Rock artist and editorial cartoonist, to paint the portrait.

“I donated the portrait to the Purdue Student Union Board, and they liked it so much that it hangs in the office of the president,” Formica says.

Formica is also a well-known volunteer in the Little Rock area. He cooks five or six charity meals a year, including an Italian dinner for the local chapter of Easter Seals. Last year’s meal for 200 patrons raised a little more than $15,000.

Formica also does charity dinners for groups such as the Heart Association and Kidney Foundation, which raise about $1,200 each time.

Mabel, whom he had met while training for the Army in Arkansas, passed away five years ago. Today Formica keeps busy cooking, visiting with his five children in Arkansas, Georgia and Colorado, and spending time with Sally.

“I also lost my husband five years ago,” she says. “We helped each other through our grief.”

A Web site dedicated to Formica’s recipes, family history, cooking suggestions, where to find his products, and even some tips on speaking Sicilian, is at www.littlesicilian.com.

Contact Formica at (501) 835-2473