A poster advertises the all-day 40th anniversary celebration that Milano's House of Pizza will be hosting Saturday.

Frank Liakakos was just 14 when he and his family packed up and left their home in southern Greece for America, so he probably wasn’t yet aware he was headed for the part of the world where he would have the best chance of fulfilling the top two things he would later covet the most: Finding freedom and realizing a dream.

Freedom, because Liakakos, who was barely 30 when he partnered with the late Arthur Tsionis, also a Greek immigrant, to open a pizza and sub shop, “always wanted to be free, because I could depend on myself … I knew I could do it if I was free to do it.”

And that dream, the American dream that Liakakos’s generation and those before him heard so much about in their faraway corners of the world, could, and almost always would, be fulfilled if, he said, “someone is willing to work hard … at being successful.”

This weekend, some 40 years after Liakakos and Tsionis first unlocked the door to the wedge-shaped building at the fork of Broad and Amherst streets, Liakakos, his wife Jen, his son George and George’s wife, Jessica, are celebrating yet another milestone in the life of Milano’s House of Pizza & Seafood.

Nashuans of a certain age may recall the late 60s and 70s when two of Milano’s predecessors occupied the wedge-shaped eatery – The End Zone and Stadium subs and pizza.

(Courtesy photo) The landmark wedge-shaped building at the fork of Broad and Amherst streets has housed Milano's House of Pizza & Seafood for 40 years.

The names, of course, were a nod to the shops’ popular neighbor a couple of streets over. Speaking of neighbors, Liakakos still recalls the rather bizarre bit of unsolicited advice he received when he and Tsionis were in the process of acquiring the shop.

Whomever it was “told me he didn’t think it was a good idea to open a pizza shop across the street from a cemetery … it’s not a good location,” Liakakos said, at once grinning and shaking his head.

It was 1966, and America was in the initial stages of a social uprising when the Liakakos family arrived. They settled first in Lowell, home to a substantial Greek community, and soon his father got a pretty good job in one of the shoe factories.

Everyone worked, ages and abilities notwithstanding; families had to eat, so everyone needed to contribute.

A teenage Frank shined shoes for a living, moving on to kitchen work at local eateries before taking on an ice cream truck route.

(Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP) Milano's House of Pizza owners Frank and Jen Liakakos, in the recently expanded lounge adjacent to the pizza shop and restaurant that Frank and a former business partner opened 40 years ago this weekend. They are hosting a special all-day anniversary celebration on Saturday.

The gig was Liakakos’s first taste of freedom, as in, free to work on his own, “because I knew I could do it.”

Forty years later, thousands of pizza, sub and seafood consumers would be quick to agree.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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