After 71 years of serving Sewickley, Louie and Sons Towing is saying goodbye and thank-you to the community, and looking to the future of the shop’s new life as Veterans Automotive.

“My dad started with nothing in 1950, at an Atlantic Gas Station on Beaver Street in Sewickley,” said Louie Trapizona, who goes by “Little Louie” and whose father was the original proprietor of the service station.

After military service in Europe in World War II, including during D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, “Big Louie” Trapizona — who passed away in 1999 — wanted to open up his own business back home.

The business was small at first but grew in the coming years.

“Amoco Oil Co. approached him. They were opening a new building across the street and wanted to know if he wanted to be the proprietor,” Trapizona said of his father. This continued from 1960 into the 1990s.

The service station was fairly basic, offering minor repairs, gas and automobile parts and components such as batteries, tires, oil and accessories. But even as an old-school shop, it was a staple of Sewickley.

As Big Louie’s sons started to partner with him in the shop, the business expanded in later decades. That’s not to say that Little Louie and his siblings didn’t get plenty of time at the shop as young children.

“I started working when I was 5. In first grade, the nuns were mesmerized. How can this little boy count change? It’s a family business. Me and my brothers, we grew up in the business,” Trapizona said. At the current age of 66, he has spent more than six decades with that family business.

As adults, Little Louie and his brothers, especially Michael, helped to add to the service station with a towing business.

“It was very lucrative at one time, we were doing a lot of heavy tow and recovery,” Trapizona said. For a time, they had a productive relationship with Ryder Trucks, and the business flourished.

Big Louie passed away on June 14, 1999. His son recalls what a pillar of the community his father was for decades.

“My dad was extremely honest. It was a personal business, that’s how we were so successful,” he said.

The community recognized his father’s goodness and honesty as well.

“Those people were so kind and so generous. How wonderful…my dad at Christmastime, they would bring him so many gifts. They loved my dad.”

Hearing Trapizona reminisce about the business evokes a time in a small town when everyone knew everyone else, credit cards had to be manually stamped, and “old-school” businesses took care of their neighbors no matter how difficult or time-consuming the job, because it was the right way to do business.

“We worked nights, weekends, until you satisfied your customer,” he said.

In recent years, a cavalcade of health issues have caused Little Louie and his brothers to consider moving on from the business that their family built. As a result, Louie and Sons will become Veterans Automotive and Plumbing, still serving the Sewickley community but under new leadership.

Trapizona is highly confident in the new owner, Mark Callahan, who is taking the reins of the Trapizona family’s business.

“I hope, and I can assure people that he’s going to continue the quality and the kind of work that we did, to carry on and enhance everything. He’s doing an excellent job, we have a good relationship. He’s a good guy,” Trapizona said.

For his part, Callahan looks forward to taking the helm of the Sewickley business.

“We would like to honor what Lou’s dad started, I know he started with a small shop down in Sewickley and built it to what it was,” he said.

Callahan is hopeful for a future expansion of the business, keeping its old-school nature while bringing it into the 21st century. If all goes well in the next several years, he plans to reach out to Tesla to turn one of the business’s two buildings into an electric car service station, “to help move it into the future of auto mechanics.”

One aspect of the business that Callahan will certainly preserve is its community spirit. Veterans Automotive and Plumbing is committed to hiring veterans to give them post-service job opportunities in the trades. Callahan himself is a Marine veteran from the First Gulf War and strives to bring others like himself a better way of life.

“We still serve America, just in a different uniform,” he said.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)