The pizza king of Akron has passed away.Frank Vaccaro, who once baked as many as 200 pizzas an hour on a conveyor-belt oven and had six shops in the Akron area at his businesses’ peak, died Tuesday at Akron City Hospital. He was 80.A son of Sicilian immigrants, Mr. Vaccaro began selling pizza in 1956 out of the beverage store he ran in the Arlington Road Plaza. In a June interview, he reminisced how at the time, he didn’t even have pizza boxes and would slide the pies into paper bags for customers.Eventually, the shop adopted its signature box with Mr. Vaccaro’s picture on the lid, proclaiming, “Tasty pizza … as you like it.” In 1975, the city of Akron issued a proclamation honoring Mr. Vaccaro as “the Pizza King of Akron.”The shops stopped using the boxes years ago, but Mr. Vaccaro’s son Raphael, who operates Vaccaro’s Trattoria on Ghent Road in Bath Township and Vaccaro’s Pizza on Sand Run Road, said he recently placed a new order for the iconic boxes.Now, he said, they will serve as a tribute to his father, who died from congestive heart failure after several years of failing health. Mr. Vaccaro had suffered a stroke and a heart attack in recent years and had been living at the Village at St. Edward in Fairlawn.No shortcutsRaphael Vaccaro said he is grateful for his father’s 80 years. Every day working with him was a lesson, including his father’s often-repeated “The only way is the hard way,” stressing how success came only from plenty of hard work.“It was a lifetime of advice,” Raphael Vaccaro said. He said his father’s attitude at work was always that of a coach and his players, and he enjoyed being in the thick of the game. “He worked hard and he liked to be part of it. He was very successful at what he did.”Raphael Vaccaro, the only one of his siblings to go into the family business, said his father always insisted on the freshest ingredients for his food, especially the pizza dough. “Fresh dough, fresh, fresh, fresh, is always the key,” he said.The Vaccaros opened Vaccaro’s Trattoria 16 years ago, and eventually the South Arlington Road restaurant closed. His father kept the pizza shop on Sand Run Road open and intended to keep it for his retirement, but eventually closed it as well. Raphael reopened it in 2009 after friends complained about not being able to get good pizza in the area. ‘Wonderful guy’Libert Bozzelli, a longtime friend and poker buddy of Mr. Vaccaro’s, said even though he could barely walk, Mr. Vaccaro rarely missed their weekly card game until about a month ago. “What a wonderful guy. He’d take the shirt off his back for you,” Bozzelli said. “And you could take his word to the bank.”Bozzelli still recalls with fondness the food at Vaccaro’s Arlington Plaza restaurant and the homemade bread. “I don’t think anybody could beat his Italian food,” he said. “He put many hours in his business.”Tina Smiroldo of Clinton, who worked for Mr. Vaccaro at the Arlington Plaza restaurant and later at the Trattoria for much of the past 30 years, still recalls the day he hired her.She was 21 and recently had arrived in Akron from Sicily. She couldn’t speak much English, but she and her sister walked into Vaccaro’s and asked for jobs, and he hired them on the spot.“He was a very good man. He could be a little stubborn once in a while, but he was very good to me and helped me a lot,” she said.Smiroldo said because she had no car, Mr. Vaccaro often would drive her home from work at the end of the day. “He was a good employer and a good friend,” she said.Mr. Vaccaro is survived by his wife, Angelina “Linda,” four sons and a daughter. Funeral arrangements are being handled by the Ciriello & Carr Funeral Home on Miller Road in Fairlawn.Lisa Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or at labraham@thebeaconjournal.com.