For Piccola Bussola owner Tony Lubrano, his Mineola restaurant is a tribute to the life work of his late father Pasquale, who inspired Lubrano and his three brothers to follow his lead as a restaurateur.

When the 51-year-old Lubrano was preparing to open the Mineola restaurant eight years ago – one of three restaurants his family owns – his late father took a direct hand in making suggestions about everything from the equipment to the decor. That seemed only appropriate since the Lubrano patriarch opened the original Piccola Bussola in Glen Cove 32 years ago.

“My dad started these restaurants,” Lubrano said. “It pleases me that I’m carrying something that my father had done.”

Lubrano’s younger brother John manages the Huntington location that Tony ran for 10 years before opening the Mineola restaurant. His younger brothers Carlo and Marco now run the original Glen Cove restaurant.

Lubrano said his mother, Rafaella, told him that one day several years ago, as they were sitting at their usual table in one corner of Piccola Bussola, his father said to her, “Look what I built. Look what I left behind.”

Pasquale Lubrano, who died from leukemia lymphoma five years ago, was working on oil tankers in the early 1960s when he decided to get off the boat with a friend of his in New York City and have “a little adventure,” as he later told his sons. He started with $20 in his pocket and the clothes on his back. He decided to stay and found a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Forrest Hills.

He then worked his way up to chef at the restaurant, La Stella, where his eldest son, then 13 years old, first worked with him as a dishwasher.

In 1979, he opened Piccola Bussola in Glen Cove, and his son Tony, then 18, worked for him in a variety of roles, from busboy to bartender.

“Just because you’re the owner’s son doesn’t mean you act like the owner’s son,” Pasquale told his son.

He wanted to his sons to go to college and do something else with their lives, Lubrano recalled, and he earned a political science degree at Adelphi University.

“For a long time, I tried to get out,” he said, recalling that he managed a Coldwell Banker Real Estate office.

But when his father and his father’s partner asked him to run what would then be a second restaurant location in Westbury, he faced a crucial career decision. He consulted his wife, Nancy, who was then working for Ernst & Young, proposing the restaurant as an option that enable her to stop working and focus instead on raising their children.

“To me, that’s really important, raising your kids rather than having them raised by somebody else,” he said.

The Westbury venture didn’t work out, but a subsequent restaurant in Huntington did and Lubrano considers it the best move he ever made.

“I never looked back on it. It was the best decision I ever made in my life,” Lubrano said.

The decision to open Piccola Bussola in Mineola prompted a change in his life that Lubrano didn’t anticipate.

Living in his hometown of Plainview, he planned to get the Mineola location up and running, put the operation in his brother John’s hands and return to running the Huntington restaurant.

But he found the small-town feel of the area appealing and he became a driving force on the board of the Mineola Chamber of Commerce.

“I never felt like I was a part of something like I am here,” Lubrano said.

He and his friend Harry Zapeti started what has become the annual “Night on the Town” event at the Jerricho Terrace to raise money for Leukemia Lymphoma research and the Michael J. Fox Foundation and succeeded in raising $20,000 for each of those causes at the event last May.

This year, he’s has been in conversations with the Lymphoma Leukemia Society about making next May’s event even bigger, with the society soliciting major sponsor support.

“We’re talking to the Leukemia Society about making it their gala event this year,” Lubrano said.

Tickets will soon be available at his restaurant for the May 3 “Night on the Town” at Jericho Terrace from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., an event that will include food booths from restaurants in MIneola and the New York metropolitan area and fundraising raffle.

That’s just part of what Lubrano has done to honor their father’s memory. In November of last year, he held a wine tasting at Piccola Bussola that raised $11,000 for lymphoma leukemia research. Last month, he held another wine tasting event that raised $6,000.

When his father was initially diagnosed with the disease, he was given no more than a year to live. He agreed to participate in a trial with a new drug that was in development, and survived past the term of the original diagnosis. Participation in subsequent medical trials extended his life another 15 years.

“We were given a tremendous gift of 15 years,” he said.

His sister, Francesca, told Lubrano two years ago that they should repay the debt she said they owed for the years of life their father had gained. So he and seven other family members ran a half-marathon in Orlando, FL, last year, raising $28,000 for Leukemia Lymphoma.

Lubrano’s fundraising goes beyond that very personal cause.

When the idea for the Taste and Style of Mineola fundraising events were first developed in 2003, he naturally assumed a role as co-chair for the culinary sampling event as the only restaurateur on the Mineola Chamber’s board.

The proceeds from the event above costs will go to local organizations including Friends of the Mineola Library, Island Harvest, the Mineola Athletic Association, the Mineola Fire Department, the Mineola Volunteer Ambulance Corps, the Mineola Auxiliary Police, Mineola Youth & Family Services, Mineola VFW Post 1305, Mineola American Legion Post 349 and the American Red Cross on Long Island.

He also is co-chair of the annual Mineola Street Fair, featuring local restaurants and businesses with Willis Hobbies co-owner Steve Ford.

“Tony’s a great guy. He’s involved in every event the Chamber puts together. He’s very community-minded,” Ford said.

When the Mineola Junior Fire Department asked if he could make the meatballs for its annual spaghetti dinner fundraiser, he agreed an this year he’ll again be taking 300 pounds of ground meat from the junior volunteers. And Lubrano himself distributes cups of hot chocolate at the annual Village of Mineola Christmas tree lighting.

He said he never hesitates to pitch in working with the staff members of his restaurant, who he thinks of as a second family.

“I never say they work for. They work with me,” Lubrano said.

He said he enjoys running in his free time, but he even spends some days off at the restaurant, which he has no plans of leaving in the foreseeable future.

“I can’t even imagine every retiring,” he said.

Reach reporter Richard Tedesco by e-mail at rtedesco@archive.theisland360.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x204