Contraguerro Following Father’s Footsteps as Italian-American of the Year
“I’ve heard it from my father all of my life – you do what you have to do in order to survive. I believe that mindset is built into Italian heritage.”
That quote is a great example of where Bob Contraguerro Jr. comes from, and it represents why he’ll be honored this week as the Italian-American of the Year by the Undo’s Upper Ohio Valley Italian Festival. The annual banquet is tomorrow evening at Undo’s West in St. Clairsville, and then the festival will kick off Friday at noon.
The award recognizes individuals who demonstrate leadership, service, and a deep commitment to their heritage and community. Bob Sr., in fact, was named the organization’s Italian American of the Year in 2012.
“This community has been good to us over the years, and we live here, and we’ve all grown up here, too,” Contraguerro said. “We’re also raising our families here, and our relatives are here, too, and that’s something that doesn’t happen for a lot of families in this area. So, it means a lot to us because we’re all here growing up in this community.
“As we’ve expanded our business into the Morgantown, Pittsburgh, Charleston, and Sarasota, Florida, areas, we have all made that choice to remain here in Wheeling so, we like to do whatever we can do to support Wheeling because we want to see it thrive. We want to see it grow. We want to see events happening in Wheeling. That’s why you see our name on a lot of things. We can’t support everything, but we believe you have to do what you can for your community.”
Positive Impacts
“I’ve always heard that a lot of Italian heritage is about hard work, and I think that came into play when my father was building the business.”
The “Founder’s Story” on the website for Panhandle Cleaning & Restoration explains how he convinced the administration at Central Catholic High School to hire him as the janitor to help pay for his tuition, and it also explains how he worked his way into a bank loan that allowed him to begin his first carpet cleaning service to go along with floor care, tile work, and janitorial services.
“All the way back in 1977 when he started this company, it was him in a vehicle and he went out and knocked door to door,” Contraguerro proudly reviewed. “It was about hard work then; it’s about hard work now. There’s no magic bullet other than outworking everybody else, and that’s what he always said.
“I remember him telling me all of the time, ‘When I was delivering papers, I had 400 paper customers, and then the newspaper (manager) told me I couldn’t have any more customers because they didn’t believe I could deliver any more papers.’ But then he did and proved them wrong,” he said. “We still do those kinds of things today, and we’ve always been able to do whatever we’re asked to do because of that mindset.”
“The business is chaotic most of the time because of what we deal with every day, and you can only plan for as much as you can in this business,” Contraguerro said. “But this business is really an unplanned business because it’s always about whatever the next phone call is about. It’s about when the next storm happens or when something unexpected takes place at home or at your business.
“What you have to do is plan all the things you do know,” he said. “That way, the scheduled work is completed while knowing there’s always going to be something that’s going to come up that’s going to disrupt that plan. But you can’t let that upset the cart. You have to be able to deal with that. That’s the restoration business, and we do our best for our customers.”
