[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 26, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: April 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
A TRIBUTE TO ERNIE ROYAL
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Ernie Royal, one of Vermont's premier chefs
and restaurateurs, died Sunday, March 13, at the age of 76. I would
like to take a moment to pay my respects to his memory and offer my
condolences to his wife of 56 years, Willa Cotton Royal.
Ernie spent years learning his trade, more years than most because he
was black and opportunities to learn the food and hotel business as a
young man growing up in Boston were limited.
But Ernie had a passion for restaurants and good food and fine
service and it was a dream he pursued relentlessly, despite the cool
reception he received from bankers unwilling to lend him necessary
financing to start his own business in Massachusetts.
He moved to Vermont, where he hoped to be measured by his character
and industry--and not the color of his skin.
He opened Royal's Hearthside Restaurant in Rutland in 1963, but his
fame quickly spread beyond Vermont as food critics for some of the
Nation's most prestigious magazines claimed him as their own personal
discovery.
I often took my family to Royal's Hearthside--the food was terrific
but you went there to see Ernie as well. He would always join us and
the conversation would range from food to politics and business.
His death is a personal loss to our family--and we share the grief of
Vermonters who knew him from the many local, regional, and State
business councils and associations that he voluntarily gave his time
and efforts.
I ask unanimous consent that the attached biography of Ernie Royal,
which appeared in the Rutland Daily Herald Monday, written by Kevin
O'Connor of that newspaper's staff, be printed in the Congressional
Record as a final tribute to Ernie's memory.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Rutland Daily Herald, Mar. 14, 1994]
Rutland's Ernie Royal Dies
his hearthside a local landmark
(By Kevin O'Connor)
Ernie Royal knew how to run a restaurant.
``Every single night you must feel like you're putting on a
party, and you must feel like singing and dancing,'' he once
said. ``If you don't feel this way toward your customers,
then you'll have problems with your restaurant.''
Royal had no problems with his customers. Instead, he faced
the obstacle of being a black man growing up in a closed,
white world.
And so he opened the door. Starting as a dishwasher, he
moved up to busboy, waiter, chef and finally owner and
operator of Royal's Hearthside in Rutland. He had been his
own boss for 30 years when he died Sunday at the Rutland
Regional Medical Center. He was 76.
Royal was born in Boston in 1917. He acquired his taste for
food early when, as a boy washing dishes at a Beacon Hill
restaurant, he could eat all he wanted.
Determined to own his own restaurant, he plotted to learn
everything he could about the business. He worked winters in
Boston, summers in resort hotels outside the city. Friends
helped him open doors usually closed to blacks.
A teacher at Boston College, for example, was also director
of the Hotel Somerset. When Royal offered to work at the
hotel for nothing in exchange for the education, the teacher
consented.
``Going to the grand hotels was exciting for me when it was
a `no-no' for a black kid even to be inside a hotel,'' Royal
told a reporter in 1979. ``My mind was like a sponge. I
wasn't nosing around at those places. I went there to
learn.''
His resume ranged from busboy at Boston's Parker House to
chief cook for the U.S. Maritime.
Royal met Willa Cotton and married her in 1938. He worked
as a chef, she worked as a baker. Together they put their
savings into running a small cafe in Dorchester, Mass.,
starting in 1955.
When the line of lunch customers grew long, the couple went
to the bank to buy the building. But the bank wouldn't loan
them money.
Yes, the Royals were popular. But they also were black.
The Royals turned to Kingsley Smith of the Hartness House
in Springfield, Vt. He pointed them to a restaurant in
Rutland that had been closed for several years. The building
was starved. So were the hundreds of hungry motorists who ran
bumper to bumper at the nearby corner of Routes 4 and 7.
The restaurant reopened as Royal's Hearthside in 1963. It
lived up to its name. Diners could see their food cooking on
an open hearth. And Royal, in white chef coat and hat, could
keep his eye on the entire dining room.
He served baked stuffed shrimp, boneless chicken, popovers
and chowder. In return he received four stars from restaurant
rating services, praise from Esquire, Holiday and Gourmet
magazines and so many plaques he ran out of wall space.
When the WCAX-TV news team came to Rutland for a state
bicentennial broadcast in 1991, weatherwoman Sharon Meyer was
given the company credit card and instructions to make
restaurant reservations at the best place in town.
``Royal's Hearthside?'' she said minutes before 6. ``We've
got a crew of about a dozen. How about dinner at 7:30?''
Running a restaurant takes time and a toll. ``My day begins
with the Today show and ends with the Johnny Carson show late
at night,'' Royal said in 1981.
The long hours were one reason he sold the restaurant in
1984, only to buy it back less than a year later.
``I am happiest when I am in the kitchen creating new menu
items and developing new recipes,'' he said of his
reconsideration. ``I missed that activity after my short
retirement.''
Royal fought for better educational and employment
opportunities for minorities as chairman of the human
resources committee of the National Restaurant Association.
He and his wife invited leading restaurateurs to Rutland in
1987 for a benefit dinner to establish a scholarship fund for
minority students at the Culinary Institute of America.
Wrote Charles Bernstein, editor of The Nation's Restaurant
News: ``One man has done far more than anyone else in
encouraging minorities to ascend from entry level positions
upward through the industry. That man is none other than the
sponsor of the dinner and of the entire effort, Ernie Royal,
owner of Hearthside Restaurant.''
Royal didn't discriminate when it came to helping other
local restaurateurs. Frank Czachor first worked with Royal as
a college student, then as maitre d' before moving on to
become chef and owner of 121 West in downtown Rutland.
``He certainly had a clear mark on the restaurant industry
in Rutland,'' Czachor said Sunday. ``He put that dedication
into the food industry and he instilled that into his help. I
certainly looked up to him. You had to look at him for
setting the standards.''
Czachor visited Royal at the hospital last week. They
talked about returning to Boston to sample restaurants.
``He was always looking for trends and seeing new things
being done,'' Czachor says.
The Herald agreed in a 1984 editorial: ``The Royals'
success can be attributed not only to a quality operation but
also to their reputation as innovators--a willingness to try
new things and never to be satisfied with constant repetition
of yesterday's ways and means.''
And for Royal, that meant not being satisfied with such
good words.
``We're trying to attract a younger group of people,'' he
said in one of his last newspaper interviews. ``You've got to
realize that we are serving the children of area people that
have been coming here for the past 20 years. It is important
for us to get into the younger generation.''
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