William A. Del Monte | Survived S.F. quake, 109

William A. Del Monte, 109, the last survivor of the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, died Monday at a retirement home in nearby Marin County. He was 11 days shy of his 110th birthday.

His niece, Janette Barroca of San Francisco, confirmed his death of natural causes. He'd been doing "great for 109 years old," Barroca said Monday.

Mr. Del Monte was just 3 months old when the quake struck, forcing his family into the streets to escape in a horse-drawn buckboard with fire burning on both sides, Barroca said. The family crossed the bay to Alameda County but eventually came back to the city after the home was rebuilt, Barroca said.

His father had opened the famous Fior d'Italia on Broadway in 1886, and it was destroyed in the quake but reopened in a tent not long after. By 1915 the Italian restaurant was prospering again, according to a 2011 San Francisco Chronicle story.

Mr. Del Monte attended San Francisco schools and after graduation went to work briefly for his father at his North Beach restaurant. But even in his teens he was interested in playing the stock market. By 1929 at age 23, he was worth a million dollars.

He lost the money but around the same time he gained a wife, Vera Minetti. They eloped to Reno in 1925 and were married for more than 55 years before she died in 1991.    - AP