Vonda Bucci, matriarch of sandwich favorite John’s Roast Pork, has died at 91

Vonda Bucci, 91, who ran the South Philadelphia destination John’s Roast Pork for decades — first with her husband and later with her son, John Jr. — died Tuesday after an extended illness.

John’s remained open Tuesday, but only because the shop’s rolls had been delivered that morning, said John Bucci Jr. It will be closed for the rest of the week and will reopen next Tuesday.

Bucci’s son said he regarded her as not only his business partner but his best friend, and often said that she was the brains of the operation. She was also a lot of its heart and soul, a fixture in what started in the 1930s as a shanty on Snyder Avenue on a plot of land between railroad tracks and what is now a Columbus Boulevard strip center.

» READ MORE: A short history of John's Roast Pork

Mrs. Bucci and her husband, John Sr., took over the business in the early 1960s when his father, Dominico Bucci, fell ill. The business served a steady stream of truckers in those days, when the road — pre-I-95 — was a busy north-south thoroughfare.

When John Sr. got sick with lung cancer in the mid-1980s, Mrs. Bucci approached her son and made him an offer: If he would leave St. Joseph’s University and work at the shop, she would get a loan from a relative and fix the place up. John Jr. agreed, and the place reopened in 1987. His father died four years later.

In time, with John Jr. at the grill and his mother up front, the accolades came in, not only for the namesake roast pork but for cheesesteaks.

But in 2008, Vonda Bucci had to step up again when her son — diagnosed with pre-leukemia — underwent a bone-marrow transplant and needed time to convalesce. With relatives, including a niece and John Jr.’s wife, Vickie, Mrs. Bucci ran the shop in his absence for 18 months. Five years after the transplant, he was back full time.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete Tuesday.