A tribute to Vonda Bucci, the late matriarch of John’s Roast Pork

The Queen of South Philly sandwiches is gone. But Vonda M. Bucci is remembered by legions of fans of John’s Roast Pork, which she shepherded alongside three generations from a humble neighborhood luncheonette to an iconic sandwich destination of national renown.

“Keep moving! Order your sandwiches! Step down! Is that hard?” boomed Vonda in 2008 from her perch at the end of the counter, where she ran the register for more than half a century with a trademark seasoning of gruffness, warmth, and South Philly salt. “I try to be nice, I really do, but sometimes it doesn’t work.”

Vonda’s tough love worked just fine with longtime customers like Dennis Sweeney, a retired executive for the nearby CSX railroad who bought his egg-and-mushroom breakfast sandwich from John’s almost every workday for 20 years.

“She was a South Philly Special who cared about a lot but took no grief. She was very focused on her business,” he said. “But you could also see how much she cared for her customers. She was so appreciative of those people coming in. She always thanked them. And whenever she saw me, she wanted to give me a big hug.”

No one received that special Vonda stew of love and scrutiny as much as much as her son, John Bucci Jr., who took over the griddle full-time when his father, John Sr., became sick with cancer in 1987. The two would show up at 6 each morning to make hundreds of breakfast sandwiches for a standing order for UPS. It was Vonda who finally taught Bucci Jr. the tricky butcher’s knot needed to bundle the picnic hams seasoned with garlic and herbs for the roast pork that is the family’s birthright recipe, long the cornerstone of the luncheonette’s business, which was founded in 1930.

» READ MORE: More on John's Roast Pork history

“My mom would always stand there when I was younger telling me I was being wasteful with the seasonings. ‘You’re seasoning the pork, not the floor!’ Or she’d tell me I was putting too much meat on the sandwiches. ‘Yo, John! Yo!’ Of course these are things I tell my employees now that I’m paying the bills.”

Vonda was the child of immigrants from the Abruzzo town of Tollo. Though she was born in South Philadelphia, she spoke no English by the time she went to kindergarten. When she graduated from the Bok vocational high school in 1951, her classmates voted Vonda Scutti “most likely to succeed in business.”

“And boy, did she show them,” said Carol Messick, Vonda’s oldest child.

Vonda was introduced by an older brother to John Bucci Sr., a neighbor on South 20th Street. While they were courting she would often join him at the Bucci family’s business events, catering weddings with roast beef and roast pork.

“It was a working date,” joked Messick. “But they were out together making sandwiches and making money, and that was fine.”

“Roast pork has meant everything to me and my family,” John Jr. told The Inquirer in 2000.

Vonda’s business savvy was often on display during her frequent and noisy haggling sessions with purveyors, who thought they could take advantage of her in an era when most sandwich shop operators were men, “and she would have none of it,” John Jr. said.

She also managed, through sheer persistence, to buy from CSX the triangular slip of industrial land that the John’s Roast Pork shack sits on at Snyder and Weccacoe — after 55 years of renting it from the railroad and its predecessor, B&O: “She wore them down and she was thrilled. Because then we were able to build and improve the property,” Messick said.

Vonda and her son became “best friends” as John Jr. began to drive the business and evolve it with his passion for cheesesteaks, which, after winning a region-wide survey of cheesesteaks by The Inquirer in 2002, took off in a major way. The restaurant was named an America’s Classic by the James Beard Foundation in 2006.

“The James Beard ceremony was a black tie event at the Marriott Marquis in New York and it just blew her away,” John Jr. said. “We were sitting next to great chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Tom Colicchio and Giada de Laurentiis and then they put the spotlight on my mom in the fifth row — and it was just surreal. We were just these sandwich makers from South Philly!”

Vonda never let that fame go to her head. She cherished the intimate relationships she had built over decades with old-timers, whose orders she knew the moment they stepped inside the luncheonette, Messick said. The more her clientele changed from truckers, railroad workers, and locals to a destination of national renown thanks to TV coverage from stars like Andrew Zimmern, who dubbed John’s “sandwich euphoria,” the more concerned she grew for regulars. That’s why she created a separate line for roast pork orders to bypass the longer wait for cheesesteaks, John Jr. said.

Vonda’s biggest challenge, though, would be keeping the restaurant afloat when John Jr. became gravely ill in 2008 with preleukemia and had a bone-marrow transplant. She held down the business for 18 months along with John’s wife, Vickie Bucci, and Messick’s two daughters, Erica Messick and Bethany “Boo” Messick, who learned to work the grill and register — with a little advice from grandma, of course.

“She’d watch us like a hawk and you couldn’t get anything by her,” said Boo. “She’d sit by my side at the register and poke me: ‘They got mushrooms on that.’ Then she’d say, ‘Ask them if they got sweet peppers. Uh-huh. See? I told you.’ She was the toughest boss I’ve had — and I’ve worked for politicians. She runs a tight ship, but if you did right by her, then you were golden.”

Vonda put up a strong front during John Jr.’s sickness, but later confessed that “it was touch and go, and I was scared. But I didn’t show them anything. I just said, ‘It’ll be OK.’”

A devout Catholic, Vonda also prayed regularly for her son’s health, making a special trip to the shrine of St. Padre Pio in Vineland, along with frequent visits to St. Monica’s church in South Philadelphia and the shrine of St. Rita at Broad and Ellsworth. But Carol Messick said her mother’s primary coping mechanism was always to focus on work: “The business was like her other child.”

When John Jr. woke up from his transplant procedure, Vonda was the first one he saw standing beside his bed.

“Am I alive?” he asked her, still addled from the medicine.

“Well, I’m not dead yet, so yeah, you’re alive!” she said with her typical gallows humor.

John Jr. would slowly but surely make his way back to the restaurant, part-time at first, then full-time in 2013. Vonda had no interest in taking a break.

“Retire? Me? Never. When they carry me out of here, then I’ll retire and relax,” she said in 2013. “All I did was have a big family, cook big dinners, and try to make everyone happy. And I’m fine. I’m making myself happy.”

Vonda eventually did stop coming regularly to the luncheonette after a fall in 2018 that prevented her from driving. But even at 91, she remained owner of the business and still signed checks until six months ago, when she was diagnosed with throat cancer.

Even on the morning she died, her family knew the luncheonette should stay open that day. The fresh-baked seeded rolls and meat had already been delivered and “we all said mom would not approve of us closing,” said John Jr.

“Mom was the Boss,” he said. “Until the end and beyond.”