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Nickolaos “Nick” Sierros died at age 81, according to an obituary written by his family and published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Sierros owned A-1 Pizza in Florence (Northampton), Massachusetts, for nearly 40 years. The popular neighborhood pizzeria became Sierros’ in 1983.
Sierros, a Greek native, comes from a family of pizza-makers and A-1 wasn’t his first shop.
Along with his brother Christos and sister Panagiota, Sierros opened ABC Pizza in Cromwell, Connecticut.
Family members went on to open more pizzerias - another one in Connecticut, Bantam Pizza of Litchfield, and the rest in Massachusetts: Campus Pizza in Hadley, Auburn Pizza just outside of Worcester, and Village Pizza in Easthampton
Nick Sierros was well-known in the community due to his generosity and joviality. He was the “patron” or boss at A-1 until he died and made it a point to check on the restaurant daily, said his son Konstantinos N. Sierros, who owns Florence Pizza, which is just down the street from A-1.
Born in the wine-making village of Malandreni, Argolidos, Greece in 1939, Sierros worked the family farm selling grapes and making olive oil. He was a tank driver in the Elite Greek Armored Force Unit and migrated to Australia through the “populate or perish” campaign that sought to attract new workers to the country after World War II.
Sierros moved to Hartford, Connecticut in the early 1970s to make a better life for his wife, Dimitra Koutretsi Sierros, who had been diagnosed with Lupus. The Sierros moved to Florence in the 1980s.
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