Daniel Unico, who created a family business making pizza and bakery boxes in Pittsburgh in the 1960s, believed that much of the success and joy he got from life came from his years studying business at Duquesne University after World War II.
He spent the rest of his life thanking the university, both as a donor and as an unusually loyal supporter of the school’s basketball teams.
Unico, a 1952 Duquesne graduate and World War II veteran, died March 24 at the age of 99. His son, Ken Unico, said the cause of death was old age, and not one specific ailment.
Last year, he received a Presidential Medal from Duquesne, where he attended nearly every home men’s basketball game at the school for four decades, showing up even in long periods when the team was so bad that few fans showed up. He and his late wife, Joan, also rarely missed a women’s basketball game at the university.
For many years, the Unicos hosted an annual Christmas dinner for the foreign members of the women’s squad. Dan Unico’s presence at games was such a tradition that the women’s team arranged for the official stat sheets to be delivered to his seat at halftime and the end of each game.
Their support and donations are memorialized by the Unico Family Pavilion, an outdoor seating and event space on the university’s Academic Walk, near the Arthur J. Rooney Athletic Field. Their son, Ken Unico, and daughter-in-law Sheila Unico, endowed a scholarship fund for physical therapy students at Duquesne in honor of Dan Unico. He was inducted into the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2025.
“He is truly one of the most impressive people I’ve been blessed to get to know during my time as president” said Ken Gormley, president of Duquesne since 2016.
Unico became an ardent hoops fan during his college years. At the time, Duquesne was a national contender. He and his Alpha Phi Delta fraternity brothers traveled each year to Madison Square Garden in New York to watch their Dukes compete in the National Invitational Tournament.
Daniel Vincent Iannacchione was born Feb. 4, 1927, in Pittsburgh and grew up in the Hill District and later Brookline. As a young man, he grew tired of having to spell out the 12 letters of his unusual family name whenever asked to identify himself. So he legally changed it to Unico, a short form that had been used informally by his father.
His mother, Brigida (Tarquini) Iannacchione, was a seamstress. His father, Amico Iannacchione, painted buildings and stenciled signs on shop or office windows.
While other boys played outside, Dan usually preferred working in a basement wood shop. In 1945, when he was nearing his 18th birthday, he dropped out of Central Catholic High School and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. The war in Europe was ending, but fighting continued in the Pacific. He was sent to San Diego and trained as a radar operator. In the summer of 1945, he was on the USS Fuller as part of a caravan heading toward Japan, where a final bloodbath was expected. He and his crewmates were advised to write final letters home in case they didn’t survive.
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 ended the war before Unico reached the battle zone. For the next 18 months, he served on a variety of ships awaiting decommissioning. When he was discharged in 1947, Unico returned home and finished his final year at Central Catholic.
When he enrolled at Duquesne, with help from the GI Bill, he became the first member of his family to go beyond high school. While still a student, he met Joan Pigoni, who was working at a Ruby’s dry-cleaning shop in Brookline. They married in 1952, the same year he graduated from Duquesne.
For more than a decade, he worked as a life insurance salesman, but his goal was to own his own business. Unico finally saw a chance to do that in 1963. The owner of a troubled box-making business in Pittsburgh advertised his need for help. Unico joined the business as a minority partner and later acquired the rest of the company, known as Paper Packaging Co. Its factory was on the North Side and later moved to a 60,000-square-foot building in McKees Rocks.
At its peak in the mid-1990s, the firm produced roughly 75 million boxes a year, mostly used for pizzas and baked goods. The firm struggled at times but survived growing competition from larger regional and national competitors.
In 1970, Unico suffered a near-fatal bout of appendicitis. During his recovery, his wife ran the business. Her previous experience included selling flowers on Banksville Road, selling women’s fashions at the Joseph Horne’s department store and helping run a driver-training school, though she never learned to drive herself. Thrust into a very different managerial role, she learned about the box business swiftly and found ways to make the firm more efficient.
Their son, Ken Unico, joined the company in the mid-1970s and eventually became the president. Another son, Mark, also worked there for many years. Dan Unico, a self-taught engineer, focused on designing better machinery and handling the maintenance and repairs.
The firm closed down in 2016. After retiring at age 90, Unico enjoyed nurturing flowers in his basement and attached greenhouse.
He and his wife owned a four-unit apartment building in Dormont and raised their four children in one of the two-bedroom units. The building was drafty and often cold in the winter. When his children suggested turning up the thermostat, Unico often retorted, “I’m not heating Dormont!”
He tended to do his own home improvements and set high standards for himself. When Ken Unico was graduating from Keystone Oaks High School, the family decided to host a party. First, however, Dan Unico enlisted help from the family in repainting the interior walls of their apartment. They ended up repainting the walls three times because Unico was dissatisfied with each application.
In the end, Unico decided wallpaper was the only solution. Because time was running short, one patch of the wall was still uncovered. Unico hid that behind drapes and vowed to finish the project another day.
“And finish it he did — 20 years later,” Ken Unico recalled in a eulogy. “Unfortunately, by this time, the color of the unhung paper no longer matched its faded counterpart on the wall.”
His survivors include four children, 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His wife died in 2019.