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“Heaven just became a whole lot sweeter,” said another of many who shared memories of Cardy’s Sugar Bowl and its amiable 84-year-old proprietor.
Cardazone's children announced his Wednesday night Sept. 6 passing simply and elegantly with a broken heart emoji and a link to a video of Frank Sinatra singing "My Way" at Madison Square Garden on the Cardy's Facebook page.
Misfortune decades ago put Cardazone behind the counter where he’d end up catering and bringing joy to countless children -- and their children’s children.
The building at 248 Union Street was built nearly a century ago by Italian immigrants Antonio and Concetta DaGrosa for their “A. DaGrosa Ice Cream Parlor.”
Two decades later, the DaGrosas sold the shop to their daughter, Angie, and son-in-law “Jimmy” (Vincent Cardazone Sr.).
The name became “Cardy’s Sugar Bowl,” but the penny candy (Swedish fish!), egg creams, newspapers and other staples of the classic neighborhood malt shop remained.
Tragedy struck in October 1976 when the senior Vincent Cardazone was hit by a car and unable to run the store.
Enter lifelong Lodi resident Vincent Cardazone Jr. He spent 16 months remodeling the store he grew up in, then reopened it on Feb. 28, 1978.
“A wonderful part of my childhood. My grandparents and uncle lived upstairs and I spent many days in [the] shop,” Beverly Mastromonica Norris noted. “A true legend.”
Cardazone at some point became known as “Benson," although no one seems to know why. No matter -- whatever you called him, he brightened your life. Sometimes it was with something sweet. Often it was with his sardonic signature line: “Have a bad day.”
Cardazone was “one of a kind,” said Mike Gervino. “Cardy’s was a place where we could hang out and always have a good time.”
It also became known as the breeding ground for one of punk rock’s most influential bands, the Misfits, formed in the 1970s by singer Glenn Danzig and bassist Jerry Only.
“He was like a dad to us growing up,” said Dave Coleman. “He gave us money to go to Pizza Hut, candy to go down the shore...hell, he would let us run the cash register if he had to run out. He was a huge part of my childhood.”
WCBS Radio 880 and PIX11 helicopter traffic reporter Tom Kaminski penned a poignant tribute.
“If one spot could define someone's childhood, Cardy's defined mine,” it reads in part. “Growing up, our entire world revolved around Cardy's. The place that supplied my friends and me with candy, comic books, baseball cards, stickball bats, Spaldeens, chocolate egg creams and memories galore.”
Kaminski wrote fondly of taking his son to Cardy’s for his first genuine chocolate egg cream, “at the same place where his old man had his.”
"Benson" made them with U-Bet syrup, of course.
When he and his wife visited last summer, Kaminski wrote, Cardazone “chatted as he always did while whipping us up two chocolate egg creams, with a pretzel stick on the side, like always.”
"Everything changes," Cardazone once said. "Now you have strip malls and franchises. Nobody knows your first name anymore. It's different."
Loyalists knew him. And there were many.
“4 generations of our family have enjoyed Cardy’s,” wrote Stephanie Shutt. “May he rest in the sweetest of peace.”
“He was the best. Cardy's was legendary,” added Michelle Albert Minsky.
“He will forever be cemented into our most favorite childhood memories of cherished days gone by,” said Andrea Voto Mancini. “What a great legacy.”
NOTE: Arrangements hadn’t yet been finalized when this story was written. Check back over the weekend.
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