Victor Martino, Jr., 1923-2025, died peacefully February 21st in Kihei, Hawaii, the day after celebrating his 102nd birthday. Victor was born in Burbank, California to Victor Martino, an orphan from Genoa, Italy, and Eva Marie (Lutz) Martino, who grew up on a farm in Kansas—the founders of Martino’s Bakery in Burbank. During the Depression he was a young entrepreneur with a paper route and Christmas tree sales. He always relished the memory of a driving trip in the summer of 1938 (he got his driver’s license at age 15) across California with three buddies, visiting the new Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco World Exposition, and camping out of their borrowed Chevy in a tent at Crater Lake, Lassen, and Yosemite. In 1943 he married Billie Wanda Martino, and they were together for 80 years. Victor, with his father’s death on the eve of World WarII, spent the war years training bomber pilots and then, together with his friend and partner Amerio Corradi, built Martino’s Bakery into the largest bakery of its kind in the country, serving 3,500 restaurants and institutions daily at the time of its sale to Pepperidge Farm in 1980. Martino’s, famous for its pies and teacakes, was a Burbank institution, and its closing following the purchase by Campbell’s was much lamented. After Martino’s ceased to operate, a small storefront bakery in Burbank christened “The Original Martino’s” was opened under the auspices of the late Amerio Corradi, and still exists today. The family treasures memories of summers spent camping on the Merced River in Yosemite National Park, where other families doing the same became lifelong friends. Billie and Victor later resided in a house they built on the ocean in Carmel Highlands, then in Bainbridge Island, Washington and Monterey, California, and spent their last years on Maui. Billie died in 2023, and Victor is survived by sons Vic Martino (Maggie Smith) of Bainbridge Island, Gregory Martino (Marlene) of Maui, and daughter Ilene (Tom) Bellerue of Maui, and grandsons Orion Cruz, Teo Cruz, Tiago Martino, and Nicolas Martino.