Today’s Hunstville Times has more about why Terry’s Pizza closed shop:

Faced with a lost lease, the death of their father and increasing family demands, the children of Lou Pejza, Terry’s owner, decided last week to shutter the restaurants.

“We determined it was best for the family, especially our mom,” said Carol McBroom, one of Pejza’s five daughters.

In a meeting Monday, the family told employees first before making the news public, said Donna Miller, another of Pejza’s daughters. “We felt Dad would have liked that.”

The article also has more on the history of Terry’s

Terry’s was founded in 1959 by Pejza and his sister and brother-in-law, Theresa and Earl Alger. The family, originally from the Midwest, wanted to bring Chicago-style pizza to Huntsville.

For Pejza, the restaurant was originally a moonlighting venture; in his day job, he repaired typewriters for IBM.

The first store was on North Memorial Parkway. The Governors Drive restaurant opened in the 1960s and the South Memorial Parkway site in the early 1970s. The exact dates escaped Pejza’s daughters, who tried to guess based on how old they were when they first washed dishes at one of the restaurants.

Still a mystery: where did the name “Terry’s” come from? A nickname for Theresa Alger, one of the original partners perhaps?

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