For decades, Tony Lena’s was a place where customers came for an Italian, a Steak Bomb or a slice of pizza. They left with something else, too — a joke, a nickname, a conversation or the feeling that someone genuinely remembered them.

That is the Tony Lena his daughters have come to know through the hundreds of messages they’ve received since their father died Saturday at age 81.

Former employees have shared lessons they still carry decades later. Former athletes have written about the coach who believed in them. Customers have recalled the man who knew their names, remembered their orders and made every visit feel personal. Many of the stories, they admit, were ones they had never heard before.

“We knew that he affected the people in the community,” his daughter Jennifer Lena Venuti said. “But we really didn’t realize how many.”

“There are a lot of stories we didn’t even know,” his daughter Tammy Lena Chambers added. “If you read through some of the things that people wrote after we put his obituary out there, people said, ‘I remember this,’ and ‘I remember that.’ There are a lot of happy, positive stories.”

Born in Medford on Aug. 16, 1944, Lena grew up in Marblehead, where he learned the family business from his parents, Sam and Emma Lena. After graduating from Marblehead High School, he attended Syracuse University, where he studied broadcasting, wrestled, played lacrosse and was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity. He married Caroline Marx in 1966, and together they raised daughters Tammy, Jennifer and Vicki.

Lena’s connection to the restaurant business began long before his own name appeared on the sign. He learned the trade working alongside his father, Sam Lena, whose original Lena’s Submarine Sandwich Shop opened in Vinnin Square in 1945. In the early 1960s, Tony operated a Lena’s location in Marblehead before launching Tony Lena’s in 1973. Over the next several decades, he expanded the business throughout the North Shore, with locations in Lynn, Swampscott, Marblehead and Salem, eventually growing the brand to more than 30 restaurants. 

He also expanded the menu, introduced hot sandwiches and pizza, and created the familiar logo featuring his smiling face.

Although he retired in 2010, stepping away from the business didn’t last long. Missing the fast pace and daily interactions with customers, he returned in 2012 to reopen his longtime Boston Street restaurant in Lynn. 

Today, the family’s Cherry Street restaurant in Swampscott, operated by daughters Chambers and Venuti, is the last remaining Tony Lena’s, continuing a family tradition that began more than 80 years ago.

The daughters say the restaurant has always been about far more than food.

“I think a lot of people know us because we grew up here in Swampscott, and we both have kids who grew up here in town as well,” Chambers said. “We know the community very well.”

Even today, customers who have moved to Florida, Maine, New Hampshire and beyond stop at Tony Lena’s when they return home, often picking up sandwiches before boarding a flight back.

“They get off the plane, they get Tony Lena’s,” Venuti said. “And when they’re going back, they’re getting a sub for the plane.”

Growing up in the business meant learning that relationships mattered as much as recipes.

“We worked since we were like 9 years old,” Chambers said. “Whether it was sweeping or washing dishes, he taught us the value of a dollar.”

It also meant watching the way their father treated people.

“My father was always good to his employees, and we’ve always been good to ours,” Venuti said. “We retain our employees, and they retain all their customers, as my dad did.”

He gave employees nicknames that often lasted for years. Customers became friends. Friends became family.

“He always had a nickname for everybody,” Vicki Lena Durkin said.

Former employees continue to carry pieces of Tony with them. One recently texted the family to say she still hears one of his favorite sayings whenever she’s working: “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.”

Others have shared stories his daughters never knew.

A former member of the Northshore Tennis Club wrote that when he couldn’t afford his membership years ago, Lena paid for it, Venuti shared.

Those subtle acts reflected the same approach he brought to coaching.

Long before retirement, Lena became a familiar face on tennis courts throughout the North Shore. An avid player and later president of the North Shore Tennis Club, he coached at Swampscott High School, Bishop Fenwick, and Lynnfield High School for more than four decades before coaching his grandsons in Little League.

“He just loved helping kids and teaching them how to play,” Venuti said.

Chambers added, “He knows how to talk to kids. He knows how to get them to listen. He’s so funny. They love him.”

Former players have continued reaching out in recent days, including one who credited Lena’s encouragement with helping him make an All-Star team.

His daughters say that ability to connect with people defined nearly everything he did.

“He was almost like a magnet,” Durkin said. “He was friendly and funny and always happy.”

His sense of humor became legendary among those who knew him.

He turned Halloween into a neighborhood tradition by handing out submarine sandwiches instead of candy. He drove a bright red Mustang convertible around town and, years earlier, a yellow Volkswagen Thing that he would steer home from the tennis courts while tossing tennis balls toward friends walking along the road.

“He was the party guy and the fun guy,” Durkin said. “He was always the one singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs.”

Even as his public reputation grew, his family says the greatest changes came later in life.

They watched him become increasingly devoted to his grandchildren, more involved in his church and more intentional about making time for others.

“If his phone rang, he answered it,” Venuti said. “It didn’t matter what was going on.”

He never wanted someone to think they had been ignored, so even if he couldn’t talk, he would answer and simply say, “I’ll call you right back.”

“I think as we got older and got married and started having kids, our relationship with him changed for the better,” Venuti said. “His joy was for the grandkids.”

His grandson Jake Venuti captured that side of him in a tribute written after his death.

“‘Jake! How old are you?’”

“‘I’m 5, Grandpa.’”

“‘You know, when I was 5, I was really 6.’”

“Always had a joke ready,” Jake wrote. “Clearly where I got my immature side from.”

Beyond the laughter, Jake remembered something else.

“I’ve never seen someone drop anything and everything to make sure to be there for your grandkids like you did,” he wrote. “You always made it a point to have a strong individual relationship with each of us.”

Those relationships are what his daughters have found themselves thinking about most this week.

Not the number of restaurants their father owned or the decades he spent in business, but the hundreds of stories now being shared by people who considered Tony Lena part of their own lives.

Whether someone knew him as the owner of Tony Lena’s, Coach Lena, a loyal friend, or simply the man behind the counter with the trademark mustache and quick wit, nearly everyone seems to have a story.

For his family, that may be the greatest measure of the life he lived.

Tony Lena died peacefully on July 18, surrounded by his family. He is survived by his former wife, Caroline (Marx) Lena; daughters Tammy Chambers, Jennifer Venuti and her husband, Anthony, and Vicki Durkin and her husband, Bill; grandchildren Jake and Anthony Venuti, Madison Chambers, and Ryan and Rachel Durkin; and members of his extended family. He was predeceased by his brother, Frank Lena.

A Funeral Mass was celebrated at 11 a.m. Friday at St. John the Evangelist Church in Swampscott, followed by burial at Waterside Cemetery in Marblehead.