Until recently, Thelma Beall may have been Maryland’s oldest pizza quality-control expert. The Ledo Pizza cofounder visited a different branch of the restaurant near her home in Annapolis once a week to sample the food — even after she turned 100.
If everything was as it should be, “I wouldn’t hear from her,” said CEO Jamie Beall. If something was off, be it the crust or the service, he could expect a call from his petite but “fiery” grandma. “They’re not doing something right,” Jamie recalled her saying. “You need to send somebody down there.” She’d promise to come back the following week to ensure that he did.
Beall died on New Year’s Eve at age 101.
Born in 1924 in rural Prince George’s County, she witnessed the region’s transformation from mostly farmland into one of the D.C. area’s most populous jurisdictions, while her pizza helped to define the state.
“We basically became the Maryland-style pizza,” Jamie said: Old Bay, crab cakes and Ledo’s.
The chain now has 126 branches from Florida to New York. When the first Ledo Restaurant opened in 1955, pizza was still relatively uncommon in the U.S. It became a signature almost by accident, as the restaurant’s owners were looking for an inexpensive dish to give out free to guests. The kitchen used rectangular sheet pans to make its pies, since round pans weren’t widely available, and provolone instead of mozzarella because “they didn’t know any better.”
Thelma’s first job was working for a small grocery store owned by her father, George A. Wyvill, for which she earned just 25 cents a day. After graduating from Upper Marlboro High School in 1942, she worked briefly for the federal government.
She married Robert L. Beall, a former county liquor inspector and tobacco farmer, who told his wife he wanted to open a restaurant in a strip mall in Adelphi. “I don’t know if she was necessarily all-in, but she was there to support him,” Jamie said. The business was a partnership with Tommy Marcos Sr., and Thelma was its first president.
On opening day in 1955, Thelma filled in for a server who was late, Jamie said. After that, she became the restaurant’s hostess and managed the finances. Over the years, customers included New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas, the Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra. “It was the place to be seen,” said Jamie.
Ledo began franchising in 1989, with Beall’s children and now grandson eventually taking the reins of that operation. Marcos’ sons managed the original restaurant in Adelphi for a time before it relocated to College Park, where it now operates as a Ledo franchisee controlled by the Bealls.
Jamie said Ledo Pizza’s growth across the country reflects his grandmother’s legacy. She urged her grandson to: “take care of your family. Take care of the community.”
At home, she enjoyed cooking for her large family and was particularly known for her baked goods, including slightly burned sugar cookies. She is survived by three children, Robert, Mildred and Thelma “Bea,” as well as six grandkids, 14 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandsons — infant twins — whom she got to meet on Christmas.
Jamie said Thelma never smoked and drank only sparingly, and maintained an active and independent lifestyle into old age, though she reluctantly gave up driving at age 95. She enjoyed gambling, but, frugal by nature, she kept to the penny slot machines.
She also “lived a healthy lifestyle as far as what she ate,” Jamie said, keeping a diet that included, of course, her weekly pizzas.
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