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COMMUNITYNEWS.ORG
AUGUST 30, 2018 FREE
New clerk has long history of service BY MICHELE ALPERIN
James Pittari, Steve Cabrera and Linda Pittari stand inside their West Windsor eater y, Classico Tomato Pies. (Staff photo by Joe Emanski.)
Setting a new tomato pie standard USA Today says yearold West Windsor pizzeria makes best in the state BY JOE EMANSKI
jemanski@communitynews.org
Fans of Trenton-style tomato pies will always argue about which one is best. Some say it’s DeLorenzo’s Tomato Pies in Robbinsville, while others favor Papa’s, also in Robbinsville, or Palermo’s in Bordentown.
(DeLorenzo’s Pizza in Hamilton has plenty of supporters, but most would say they make pizza, not tomato pie, where the mozzarella cheese is on the bottom and the chunky crushed tomatoes are on top.) USA Today recently decided to weigh in on the matter through its affiliate website, 10Best (10best.com). And while they did include those three local favorites on their list of the top 10 tomato pies in New Jersey, none of them managed to earn the top spot. The 10Best editors bestowed that honor upon Clas-
sico Tomato Pies, a one-year-old pizzeria in West Windsor. The website’s editors identified two main varieties of tomato pie: Trenton style, and Philadelphia bakery style, in which a focaccia-like crust is topped with chunky tomato and little or no cheese. They came up with a single top-10 list including both styles. Restaurants on the list beyond the local pizzerias include Krispy Pizza of Old Bridge, Maruca’s Tomato Pies in Seaside Heights, Cacia’s Bakery in four See CLASSICO, Page 8
Arguably, there’s no job at town hall where its more important to have ties to the community than the position of township clerk. In that respect, Gay Huber, who became West Windsor township clerk of as of July 2, is the perfect person for the job. Not only was she born in West Windsor, so were her mother and her maternal grandfather. Her great-grandparents arrived in the late 19th Century to farm property where Toll Brothers is currently building the Enclave at Princeton Junction on Bear Brook Road. In addition to her deep familial ties to the township, she has also been serving West Windsor professionally since 1987, when she started to work parttime in the community development department. She’s also not new to community service. Except for a short hiatus, Huber has been a member of Princeton Junction Volunteer Fire Co. since she was in high school. Huber’s earliest experience was with the fire company, which she joined while she was a student at West Windsor Plainsboro High School. “It was the thing to do back then,” she says. “It was a calling that I felt I wanted to do, to be involved in, to help the community.” Serving in the Princeton Junction Volunteer Fire Co. is also a family tradition; as Huber puts it, “It’s in your DNA.” Her maternal great-grandfather was a founding member
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and an uncle was chief in the 1950s. Her son-in-law, David Terzian, has been the company’s chief for two years (Terzian’s father and all his siblings were part of the Lawrenceville Fire Co.). Huber’s daughters, Rana Terzian of Lawrence, Dawn Huber of Princeton Junction and Tara Huber of Hamilton are all members of the fire company, two as firefighters and one as an associate member. Her husband, Dennis, also served as a firefighter with Princeton Junction and was the long-time chief. She says emphatically, “I did not go into burning buildings.” Rather, she was more “in the administrative end,” something that became her forte as she progressed in her career. At the fire company, where she served as secretary for over 15 years, she ran the fundraising drive, held birthday parties, did “all of the behind-the-scenes things,” like bringing a truck with water and nourishment to a fire scene so that the firefighters “were rehydrated and would go back in and complete what they had to do.” She says didn’t worry when her husband used to go into burning buildings. “I never thought about it. It was just part of our life. But the first time my daughters went in, it was a little different. I was nervous, but I knew they could handle themselves.” Explaining why, as a senior in high school, she joined the New Jersey Army National Guard, she says, “My father had always wanted to serve in the military, See HUBER, Page 6
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