Anyone who called “Sal the Fruit Man” a friend knew he could be a prickly pear. They could also confirm if you peeled back the layers you'd find a heart of gold.
For four decades, he sold tomatoes and peaches and bananas from his curbside produce stand in Mid-City. Along the way, he expanded an empire of friends, acquaintances and connections that could rival that of any political fixer. It was his most valuable resource, friends say, and he tapped it to help others who had none.
Sal Cannatella died Jan. 26 at his Mid-City home at age 85, confirmed his brother-in-law Joe DeNone. The cause of death was cancer, he said.
Advocate staff photo by Ian McNulty - Sal Cannatella's fruit stand has been a fixture in Mid-City for decades. Each summer, the vendor throw a party to support St. Jude Community Center and raise money for the hungry in New Orleans.
Cannatella was best known for his produce stand, and he embraced the nickname “Sal the Fruit Man.” Beginning in 1980 he was a constant presence at the corner of South Carrollton Avenue and Banks Street by Jesuit High School, setting up his stand under the shade of oak limbs and colorful umbrellas.
Less known was his work raising money to help feed people in need, which for many years culminated in a homespun fundraiser he organized by pulling together every strand of his long New Orleans life.
“That’s what made him happiest,” DeNone said. “If you didn’t know him it could be hard to see this, but Sal had a tremendous heart."
Sal Cannatella is known as the fruit man of Mid-City, where he's manned his produce stand for decades. Each summer he organizes a fundraiser for the hungry in New Orleans at his local pub.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Cannatella came from a family of police officers. But as a young man he went to sea instead.
He sailed in the merchant marine and worked on banana boats plying the old United Fruit lines between New Orleans and Central America. In an interview, he said he once played baseball in Havana during shore leave, in the days before the Cuban revolution. When he wanted to settle down, he took over a relative’s produce stand and eventually became a fixture in his old neighborhood.
“I’ll miss him every day,” said his longtime friend David Moreau, athletic director at Jesuit. “There was always a story, he always had something going on.”
Equal parts gruff and gregarious, Cannatella would paint otherwise ordinary words with a thick accent that left no doubt he was a New Orleans native. As a devout Catholic, he annually attended a silent retreat, but around his neighborhood he was known for speaking his mind and cursing a blue streak at everyday aggravations.
Sal Cannatella is known as the fruit man of Mid-City, where he's manned his produce stand for decades. Each summer he organizes a fundraiser for the hungry in New Orleans at his local pub.
People who met him didn’t forget him, DeNone said. He made friends at the circuit of neighborhood bars he frequented, in the daily business of his fruit stand and at his church.
“It was unbelievable how many people he knew,” DeNone said. “If he met someone once, he made an impression. He would connect people and they all knew they could call on him if they needed anything.”
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Cannatella himself called on his friends each year for his fundraiser, a DIY extravaganza of Italian food at an Irish pub that played out as equal parts Sinatra and slàinte.
In an interview, Cannatella recounted that while driving to his produce supplier one blistering summer day he passed a line of people waiting for meals outside the St. Jude Community Center in the French Quarter. It stirred him.
“I don’t have any money, and you know if I did those people wouldn’t be standing in line in that heat for food,” Cannatella said then. “I love to work because you get to meet new people every day. I love human beings. And I hate to see them in that line, just trying to eat.”
He decided to start an annual fundraiser, which he initially held at Finn McCool’s, one of his watering holes a few blocks from his produce stand. He hit up everyone he could for raffle donations and invited them all to the event. It would unfold like a mini Irish-Italian festival, with food and raffle items everywhere and DeNone himself, a professional singer, belting out Rat Pack hits and “Sweet Caroline,” switching between white and black tuxedos as he went.
The New Orleans crooner Joe DeNone sings classic lounge numbers during a 2015 fundraiser for St. Jude Community Center, held at Finn McCool's Irish Pub. His brother in law, Sal Cannatella, organizes the event each summer.
The crowd was a mix of church ladies and courthouse honchos, priests and politicos, neighborhood regulars and expats who came to watch soccer but end up singing along with DeNone’s tunes, all helping the cause Cannatella adopted.
In later years the event moved to different bars. Cannatella and his friends even managed one final edition in 2020. It was a small gathering because of coronavirus precautions, but DeNone said the generosity still flowed, perhaps especially so because those attending suspected it could be Cannatella’s last.
“We’re all saying Sal’s probably in heaven organizing another one now,” said DeNone.
DeNone said Cannatella’s family is discussing the future of the produce stand.
Cannatella, a widower, is survived by two sons and a daughter. Funeral arrangements are pending.
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