When George Mather, of Raynham, reflects on his close friendship with Paul Posti, a personal chef for Frank Sinatra, a prevailing thought comes to mind.
“The most notable thing to me was he was a great Patriot,” Mather said of Posti during an interview with the Herald. “He loved this country … defended this country.”
Posti, a North End native, boasted a decorated career as a chef, cooking for some of the most popular singers and actors in history. Mather, however, points to how his friend became a “famous war hero” in World War II.
While in combat as a B-17 Flying Fortress tail gunner, Posti shot down a German Flocke-Wolfe fighter plane with a Smith and Wesson, 38-caliber service revolver, in 1942. He received the gun from his father who was a member of Boston mob, The Black Hand.
The feat was the only kill of its kind in World War II and has not been repeated since, helping Posti earn a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest decoration for heroism, the Air Force newsroom reported in 2003 after his family donated the gun to the Air Force Museum in Ohio. Posti completed a full tour and was stationed at Royal Air Force Base Polebrook in England.
“Officials disputed the achievement until a few days later when Capt. Clark Gable presented proof of the kill,” the Air Force newsroom reported. “Gable, who left his movie career to become an aerial photographer with the U.S. Army Air Force, took Posti into a darkroom and ran off a strip of movie film. The captain had operated a gun camera aboard another bomber during the mission and filmed the German plane in its death dive.”
Posti died at age 89 in 2002.
The intriguing and dynamic life that Posti had compelled Mather and his wife, Sharon, to write a memoir on their friend. An updated version of “POSTI: War Hero, Hollywood Insider, Chef to celebrities, and Redemption” was just published earlier this month.
“Posti was part of the greatest generation,” Mather wrote in the memoir’s introduction section. “He found it difficult to adjust to and keep up with an age where information moves at nearly the speed of light. His remaining years were physically limiting, to be sure, but the magnanimity of his heart and soul along with his robust strength of character never waned or weakened.”
Mather, born in Brockton, served as a pastor at a lutheran church in Sherman Oaks, Calif., a neighborhood of Los Angeles that borders Hollywood and Van Nuys. There, he met Posti “one Sunday morning back … in 1993 at the close of an ordinary church service.”
At that moment, Mather said he thought Posti may have been “looking for answers to life.”
“He immediately took to us because he was raised in the North End,” Mather said of when he met Posti and introduced his wife. “He recognized my Boston (accent) so we hit it off.”
Mather said he found the first conversation they had to be “super interesting,” with his wife highlighting how her father served in the Army Air Forces. Posti then took off his glasses and tapped the rim on his eye.
Posti lost one eye when shrapnel exploded out the right waist gun position, according to the American Air Museum.
Posti, born in Walpole, lived in the North End until the age 13 when his father sent him to Italy so he could begin his culinary training under George Escoffier, who was known as “the greatest chef who ever lived.”
Mather and his wife visited Posti every Monday night at his house in Van Nuys, Calif., where he gave the couple private cooking lessons that would become dinner. They’d bond about their Massachusetts ties over Italian coffee and biscotti, Mather recalled.
“He loved to talk about Boston, the North End, St. Joseph’s Day when they had the parade,” Mather said of Posti. “He loved Cape Cod.”
Throughout his impressive culinary career, Posti became executive chef to Clark Gable, Elvis Presley, Pavarotti and Frank Sinatra, who he cooked for for more than 24 years. Posti even co-invented the Cobb Salad – “to please a demanding Cecil B. DeMille (widely recognized as a founding father of American cinema),” a summary for the memoir states
“Paul Posti was very protective of his relationships with well-known celebrities,” Mather said. “He felt that to do things for his own advantage would betray his friendship with them. If I had asked him to introduce me to Frank Sinatra, he would cease being friends, he would have perceived me as trying to use him to get to see Frank Sinatra.”
