Coming to America was the foundation Sal Lapio has built upon since 1967

Sal Lapio is taking it easy now, heading to work at 7 a.m. and heading home midafternoon, a sharp contrast to when he was running a gas station that was open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. six days a week.

Sal Lapio has built thousands of homes in Montgomery County. He also operates three Pennsylvania golf courses.

Two things justify the new routine. He’s 79. And, as the founder of Sal Lapio Homes, he’s the boss.

Yet, he still goes to work five days a week and doesn’t want to hang around his four-bedroom contemporary, which, of course, he built. “No way I can stay here,” he said. “It feels like jail.”

Lapio embodies the classic immigrant story. He moved to the United States in 1967 from Paternapoli, a small Campanian town east of Naples, “where there was not too much work, and the family had no money.” The U.S. promised “progress,” he said.

And progress he did. “I think the whole story of him coming to America is pretty amazing,” said Rosann Lapio, one of his two daughters. “He had only known his wife a couple of weeks. He’s 21. He can’t speak the language. And I think he had like only $80. And look at what he accomplished.”

There were funny stories along the way. Like the time he tried to handle the gas station’s weekly bank deposit by walking through the drive-through. Or when he started classes to learn English and mistakenly followed the “Italian” signage, which led to classes for Americans to learn Italian, not for Italians to learn English.

Now he’s fully American: an American citizen who wants to be buried in America.

Another amazing element of his life: He and his wife, Maria, were born on the same day in the same year in the same village – but didn’t know each other. Maria had moved to America when she was a girl, and they didn’t connect until she was back vacationing in Paternapoli. “We only knew each other seven days” when they decided to marry, Maria told Tony Ledora on “The Traveling Golfer.”

Lapio started in America as a mechanic, specializing in sports cars, before moving up by running a gas station. He then worked for his father-in-law in construction before joining his brother-in-law Anthony Forino
in creating their own business.

One day a woman who’d been learning Italian from him made him an offer: “ ‘I’ll give you a lot for $4,000. You build a house. When you settle, you pay for one lot.’ Then from one lot I stepped up to two lots. And then three.” And today, about 3,000, focused in Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County. The company, which he founded in 1982, is based in Sellersville. Details:
www.sallapiohomes.com.

In 1995, he branched out to operating three Pennsylvania golf courses, all with restaurants and banquet facilities: Mainland in Harleysville, Bella Vista in Gilbertsville and Morgan Hill in Easton. His daughter Linda Nace runs the inside operation, and Rosann runs the field.

He bought Mainland first, intending to develop it into homes, but soon realized it could be a successful business. Owning the course led him into learning how to play golf. He and Maria winter in Jensen Beach, Florida, where they like to golf, “but we’re bad golfers, and we never keep score.”

He feels that the business has grown so much and for so long because of his experience and honesty and desires to improve the product and provide customer satisfaction.

Lapio’s family includes a brother and two sisters back in Italy (he visits them every two years or so), five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In the family, he’s known for sayings like “If I have a dollar, I got to spend it” for justifying la dolce vita, “mannaggia” for when he gets a bad hand in a card game and “tiene la capa tosta” for when he encounters blockheads.

Yet: “He never spends money on himself,” Rosanne said. “He would rather start a new business or make improvements to an existing. His goal right now is to purchase one or two more golf courses.”

Of course, the family unites for Sunday dinners, birthdays and holidays. The gatherings are known for his tomato sauce (from the 22 baskets of tomatoes he cans each year), his pizza and his wine.

Even though early in the interview he joked that hanging around the house was “like jail,” by the end of it he admitted he was a homebody. “He’s very content to stay at home spending time with his wife and family,” Rosann said. “Out of all his accomplishments I would say he would put his close relationship with his family as the most important success.”

Ken Mammarella was born in Delaware and has lived most of his life in the Delaware Valley. His heritage on both sides of his family goes back to Abruzzo.