Andrea Sorrentino, 'fabric' of the Huntington community and longtime shoemaker, dies at 90

Andre Sorrentino’s strongest memories of his father are sitting at his kitchen table for Sunday dinner. Andrea Sorrentino owned a shoe shop in Huntington and regularly invited customers to his family home for a home-cooked meal by his wife, Luisa.

“Whether it was a judge, whether it was a doctor, whether it was a guy on the back of the garbage truck, it didn’t make a difference,” Andre Sorrentino said.

He added, “As soon as you walked in his shoe store, you became part of his family.”

Sorrentino, who family and friends described as a “fabric” of the Huntington community, died June 18. He was 90.

Sorrentino grew up in Naples, Italy, where his father taught him shoemaking at age seven. At 21, he married Luisa, his childhood sweetheart. The couple moved to the United States in 1959.

Andre Sorrentino said his parents pursued the American dream.

“Every odd was against them,” Andre Sorrentino said. “They couldn’t speak the language, they had no education. They learned how to speak English by television and going to work.”

Despite emigrating with little money, the couple purchased a home in 1964. Sorrentino opened his own shoe store around 1976, where he worked until he died.

“Everybody’s got a hero, right? Whoever it may be, Michael Jordan or whoever,” Andre Sorrentino said. “My brother and myself, we always said our hero was our dad.”

Friends described Sorrentino as essential to Huntington. His son said he would often walk in on his father offering a customer marital advice.

“He’s a shoemaker, but the impact that he has had on Huntington is just amazing,” John Albicocco, 67, a cousin of the family, said. “I used to say he was church, because he was saving soles, and he’d always look at me like I had two heads.”

John Kean, a real estate developer who grew up in Huntington, formed a close personal relationship with Sorrentino over the years coming into the shoe store, which was lined with rows of unlabeled shoes.

“I remember many occasions I’d be there, sitting there getting my shoes shined, and watching people come in, and they were dumbfounded that he could find them in all these thousands of shoes,” Kean, 67, said.

Kean said this ability to find people’s shoes, sometimes even years later, is a testament to how much Sorrentino cared about his customers and community, a sentiment family and friends echoed.

“He’s like everybody’s father or grandfather,” Kean said.

Fred Grover, Sorrentino’s neighbor of 25 years, said Sorrentino delivered freshly made bread and pizza to his family every Saturday afternoon and that his children grew up “hopping the fence every day” to help Sorrentino water his garden.

“They treated our family as if we were their own ... that’s the way he and Luisa lived their lives,” Grover wrote.

Sorrentino met Luisa when she was 7 years old learning to sew from his mother. Andre Sorrentino described it as “love at first sight” and saw his parents as the epitome of a good marriage.

“You read storybooks and true love stories,” Andre Sorrentino said. “To me, this was it. This was a real life love story.”

Luisa died at 87 in early May after being treated for cancer for three years. Andre Sorrentino said his father stayed by her side while she was sick and died of a “broken heart.”

“He didn’t feel good, and he laid down, and he just wanted to be with my mother,” Andre Sorrentino said.

Sorrentino was an avid gardener who grew tomatoes in his backyard, from which he and his granddaughters made sauce each summer. He cared for three lemon trees, which he moved between his backyard and storefront window.

Albicocco said Sorrentino’s kindness is what he will remember most.

“He wasn’t putting on a show or he wasn’t putting on a face,” Albicocco said. “It’s just who he was.”

Sorrentino is survived by his two sons, Andre Sorrentino and Pat Sorrentino of Huntington, and two granddaughters.

Sorrentino’s funeral service was Tuesday at St. Patrick’s Church in Huntington. He was buried in St. Patrick’s Cemetery.