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This story, of course, comes out of the old country. You don't find anyone this stubborn and proud who didn't get it from a hungry immigrant who came over with empty pockets and big eyes. George Sr.'s father Antonio boarded a boat in Naples in 1893 with nothing but a copy of the family's secret fireworks recipes. Hilly New Castle reminded him of Naples in look and climate--as it did several other Italian pyrotechnicians. So the first thing he did was lock those formulas in a safe, and that is where they are today.
Boom-Boom Zambelli rolled firecracker tubes when he was 7 and was a fireworks shooter at 16. When he graduated from college in 1947, Antonio said to him, Son, it's yours. "I guess he assumed I knew it was a family business and that family comes first. He didn't have to say anything else." George Sr.'s brother-in-law was killed in a fireworks-assembly accident in 1950, but they barely stopped for a funeral. The danger is always there, he says. That's why you respect the material, and that's why you go after the best pyrotechnicians, the guys whose fathers and grandfathers were shooters, and you pay them $60,000 or more a year.
All but one of the other New Castle fireworks companies have folded. Zambelli is in an elite group of "the country's foremost players," according to John Conkling of the American Pyrotechnics Association. How elite? Zambelli did the Statue of Liberty celebration in 1986. It did four presidential inaugurations, the Desert Storm troop return, the Pope in Toronto and, perhaps most important, the Elvis Presley stamp unveiling.
We promised Americana in this piece, didn't we?
George Sr. says the company did eight figures--at least $10 million--in business last year and that for the millennium he's negotiating with "a South American country that wants shows in three cities simultaneously at $1 million per show."
Antonio's boy did O.K.
And now you know that anything is possible in America. A man gets off a boat from another land, sets up shop, and his son becomes a millionaire painting the sky.
George's wife Connie and the rest of the family are trying to get him to slow down, but he doesn't listen. He beat cancer a few years back and slowed up during the chemo, but he wouldn't quit. In downtown New Castle, the FIREWORKS CAPITAL banners fly because of him.
This is enterprise. This is family. This is work.
He knows nothing else.
There's only one time when Boom-Boom relaxes. At Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium in May, Zambelli Internationale put on a gargantuan show that had George fidgeting all week in anticipation. "You're dealing with explosives," he said. "It's like a battlefield. Anything can happen."
The Pirates won a tight one that night, the forecast rain never fell, and the fireworks after the game were spectacular.
George sat on the third-base side with his head tilted back, his face radiant under a shower of exploding light. The crowd ooohhhed chrysanthemums and aaahhhed weeping willows and the sound of exploding air. "Everybody loves fireworks," he said. "Democrats, Republicans, young, old, rich poor. It doesn't matter. Everybody loves them."
When it was over, he stepped into an elevator for the ride down to the parking lot, and another family was in there. George couldn't help himself.