[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.''

                          ____________________