When the Rosatos of Pittsburgh get together for big family functions, as they often do, they have to rent a hall to accommodate everyone. When one of them gets married, the future spouse's family has to spot them 80 names on the guest list. And when all the generations pose for a picture with their mates, the photographer has to back up so far to get them all in that it's hard to make out their faces.

This sprawling family began with a penniless Italian teenager who came to Pittsburgh from the mountains of Abruzzo in 1950 without a word of English, and the American girl he married just under the wire to avoid being kicked out of the country.

In many ways, Francesco Rosato's story is the classic American immigrant saga -- rags to riches powered by hard work, self-taught business savvy, strong family bonds and faith in the future.

"I've always thought my dad is a great Father's Day story," said his oldest son, John Rosato, 57, owner of Rosato & Sons Landscaping and director of football operations at Duquesne University.

"He came here with a fifth-grade education and no money, built a life and a family and retired a millionaire -- except that his idea of retirement is work."

Francesco and Gloria Sciulli Rosato raised 14 children in South Oakland in a half-double with two bedrooms, one bathroom and an attic.

Francesco Rosato, or Frank, worked three or four jobs at a time -- landscaper, construction worker, steelworker, grocer -- often enlisting the children as helpers. Gloria took care of the kids -- six girls and eight boys -- cooked an endless stream of meals, loaded her husband's tools into the truck and made sure all the children sat with her in the front pew at St. Paul Cathedral every Sunday. Frank didn't join them because, he said, he was always working.

The couple sent all their children to college or other post-secondary education ("They made sure we worked it off," John said). Today those children are landscapers, corporate executives, company managers, medical professionals, contractors and Pittsburgh police. All but two still live in the region, and their combined offspring include engineers, teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, soldiers and students.

Gloria died of cancer at 54 in 1986, leaving Frank as the patriarch. Today he has 36 grandchildren and, as of this writing, six great-grandchildren.

At 76, Frank now lives in a Squirrel Hill house designed by Pittsburgh architect Henry Hornbostel, with plenty of spacious bedrooms, bathrooms and TVs, shelves full of family photos, a state-of-the-art kitchen he installed, and an expansive second kitchen in the basement where the "real Italian" cooking takes place -- canning tomatoes and peppers, making sausage, salami and wine.

There's a manicured garden courtesy of Rosato & Sons, studded with classical and religious statues and brimming with impatiens, peonies, lilies, hydrangeas and roses -- plus Frank's newest addition, an ornate 10-foot mermaid fountain.

His Italian accent is unmistakable, as is his enjoyment in showing a visitor around the place and pointing out the many expansions and improvements he did with his own hands. He still works most days taking care of 21 rental properties he bought over the years in Oakland, Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, doing most of the renovation and upkeep himself.

"He knows how to do everything -- plumbing, electrical work, cement," said his daughter, Diane Ziggas, and he learned it from the bottom up, by doing.

Francesco Rosato came to America at age 17 on a six-month tourist visa at the invitation of his uncle, Octavio Rosato, a groundskeeper at the University of Pittsburgh. He offered his nephew three incentives: passage on the boat from Italy; a job on the grounds crew at Pitt; and a girl he could marry to stay in the country.

It sounded good to the teen. He was one year away from military conscription and his village, Pizzoferrato, was still struggling with the aftereffects of World War II.

The young Francesco arrived in Pittsburgh and began working on the grounds crew. But there was a hitch in his uncle's plan.

"The girl he found for me, I didn't like her," he said.

Another girl in the neighborhood caught his eye, however. She didn't speak Italian, but her mother and older sister acted as interpreters.

Francesco was a young man in a hurry -- his visa was running out and he had no money for passage back to Italy. So his approach to Gloria was less than romantic.

"I said, 'I gotta get married,' " he recalled, to the laughter of his son and daughter. "After a week she told me, 'No.' My uncle thought I did something wrong. He talked to her mother. [Gloria] changed her mind, and I learned fast how to talk."

Frank borrowed $10 from his brother-in-law for the hotel room and got married with holes in his shoes. John Rosato was born 10 months later. The young family lived in a three-room, third-floor apartment on Meyran Avenue in Oakland and stayed there as three more children joined the fold.

In 1954 Frank was laid off from the grounds crew and took a job with a contractor working seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

The following year, seeking job security and benefits for his growing brood, he went to work as a union laborer at Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. and as a night janitor for a cleaning company. When a side-by-side duplex came up for sale on his street, he bought it for $8,000, installing his family on one side and his in-laws on the other.

The house had gas light but no basement or garage, no hot water or furnace. Frank decided he needed to dig a cellar under the occupied dwelling.

"It took two, three years," he recalled. "I had the house up on jacks."

He, his friends and the older children dug out 76 truck loads of dirt by hand, moving it in buckets and, at times, by conveyor belt running out the back window. The goal was one big playroom for the children, but Frank had another pressing need.

"First I put in a wine cellar," he said with a chuckle. "I didn't get no permit. It was a different time."

He dumped the dirt here and there around town. Once the police almost caught him, but he escaped.

He began pulling night duty at the mill so he could work daylight as a landscaper. He also did free labor on the mill superintendent's house as insurance on keeping his night-turn shift.

"I lost one day [at the mill] in 40 years," he recalled. "Everyone played my check number that day," but it didn't hit.

Sleep was catch-as-catch-can -- a few hours at home, a few in the mill locker room. Frank and Gloria almost never had a meal together.

One day Frank brought home a freezer so enormous they had to remove the door and its jamb to fit it into the kitchen. Even with that huge appliance taking up half the space, all the kids assembled for dinner every night, squeezing elbow to elbow.

"You didn't miss a meal," John said.

And you didn't stay at a friend's house to escape the crowd.

"We didn't know how to do that," Diane said.

Things only got tighter when their dad brought his parents over from Italy and moved them into the attic. Eventually, the kids forced Frank to put another bathroom in the basement.

In 1972 they opened Rosato's, an Italian and Greek grocery store on the corner of Atwood and Bates streets. The whole family worked there. Frank made the sausage and pasta and met the bread delivery trucks at 5 a.m. Gloria ran the place for several years, until she became pregnant at 40 with their 14th child. The doctor ordered her off her feet, so they closed the store.

The family was still residing in the half-double.

"Kids were sleeping all over the place," Frank said. "You had to watch where you walk so you didn't tramp on them."

"We had to get in line to use the bathroom," said son John, who lives in a new house in the Summerset development in Squirrel Hill. "All the boys would be hopping on one foot. I have phobias from growing up that way. I have a bunch of TVs and a bunch of bathrooms."

"We all do," said daughter Diane.

Whatever time and money Frank had to spare, he put into buying neighborhood properties -- in cash -- and renovating them with the help of his children.

"He got his money's worth out of us but we all pitched in and that's how he ended up doing better," John said. "We didn't know any different."

To feed his big family, Frank bought sides of beef, whole lambs and pigs from a slaughterhouse in Canonsburg. Gloria and the kids would be waiting at home to cut the meat, wrap it and get it in the freezer before it spoiled.

They bought apples by the bushel, cereal by the case. When it was time to buy shoes, Frank went to a wholesaler for a quarter-gross of all sizes, took them home and dumped them on the floor. The kids rooted through the pile for whatever fit best and wrote their names on the soles.

In 1978, after 22 years in the Oakland half-double, Frank Rosato finally moved the family into an enormous Squirrel Hill house with seven bedrooms and five baths. The kids thought they'd landed in heaven. John Rosato was married by then with three children of his own, and he bought the even bigger house right next door.

Frank retired from the mill after 40 years. Nine years after his wife died, he moved into a condo in the Trimont on Mount Washington but got tired of fighting traffic to Oakland and eventually returned to Squirrel Hill.

Every so often, Frank visits his warehouse in Oakland, where he keeps all his gardening and construction tools, extra cabinets and parts he collects for his rentals, a restored 1946 Buick and a cache of antiques he picks up at flea markets, where he indulges his only hobby.

"He's a magician with money," John said. "He just has a knack for it. He handles all his own investments. He's bought and sold more property that other people didn't see as worth much, and he can spot the valuable pieces in a room full of junk.

"If he ever had a formal education he'd be dangerous."

But none of that is what Frank holds most dear.

"My daughter got married three years ago and every member of the family was here," John said. "We took a photo of everyone together and made him an enlarged copy in a frame. When we gave him that and said 'Here's what you made,' he had tears in his eyes. That's what matters to him."

Thinking back on his childhood, John Rosato said of his father: "He's grandfatherly now, but he ran a tight ship with a strict demeanor. None of us liked it at the time, but it paid off.

"I'm a worker -- he had me pulling weeds from a young age and I have two jobs today -- but I couldn't work as hard as he did. He's the success who came from nothing."

Today, the family will be assembled at Frank's house for Father's Day. His daughters will take over both kitchens, producing enough food to feed an Italian army, and every corner of the house and yard will be filled with Rosatos. Frank will call his children by their correct names, but he's given up on keeping the grandchildren straight.

After they all leave, he will sit on his patio with a glass of wine, turn the floodlights on his mermaid fountain and sit quietly, enjoying the rewards of his hard-won American dream.