[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 12, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                     HONORING THE LATE ROSE TOTINO

 Mr. DURENBERGER. Mr. President, I rise today to mourn the 
passing of a distinguished and truly beloved member of the Minnesota 
community.
  Americans knew Rose Totino as the creator of our country's largest 
frozen pizza company.
  Rose Totino started baking pizzas when she was a young newlywed. Her 
success with pizza at local PTA events convinced her to open Totino's 
Italian Kitchen on Central Avenue in Minneapolis--and then start a 
frozen pizza factory in 1962.
  By the 1970's, Totino's Pizza was the largest frozen-pizza factory in 
the United States.
  In 1975, she was able to sell the company to Pillsbury for $20 
million.
  She wrote one of the most impressive small business success stories 
of Minnesota history. But Rose Totino, who died last month at the age 
of 79, was more than a business person and entrepreneur. She was an 
outstanding human being whose life can serve as a terrific example to 
all of us.
  Her friends remember her as a woman who--though she was a very 
powerful person--did not revel in power for its own sake. When you 
would ask her, ``How are you?'' she would answer: ``I'm fine--but more 
important, how are you?''
  Archbishop Roach of the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul--where Rose 
Totino lived her whole life--made a similar observation about her 
character. He said that there were two things that stood out for him in 
Rose Totino's life.
  First, she knew where her gifts came from. She never let her public 
life be disconnected from her private faith in Jesus Christ.
  And second, she was a beacon of hope and optimism in a world that 
desperately needs it.
  If I might be allowed to put this into my own words, Mr. President, I 
would say that Rose Totino realized that happiness is a gift that 
increases when it is passed on to others. She saw the truth of faith 
not as a stick with which to assail rivals, or as an instrument of her 
own superiority. Rather, it was the secret behind the smile she gave 
the world.
  And it was her willingness to share this secret with so many people 
that made her such a beloved figure in the Twin Cities.
  Her exuberant approach to life won her many friends--inspiring a 
sense of personal loyalty in all who knew her. Another person of wealth 
might use his riches to win friends and influence people--not Rose. 
When she began giving away much of the millions she earned to numerous 
public causes, she did it with what amounted to a self-deprecating 
shrug: ``Have you ever seen a U-Haul behind a hearse?''
  That kind of down-to-earth wisdom marked her whole life. Her proverbs 
ring in the memory:

       Health is wealth, and friends are fortune.
       If you don't believe in something, you'll fall for 
     anything.
       The older the hand, the better the broth.

  This is the attitude that led her to make her famous comment about 
the equal rights amendment: ``Why,'' she asked, ``should I give up 
superiority for equality?''
  Her leadership was broadly recognized. She won the very first Woman 
Entrepreneur of the Year Award conferred by the Small Business 
Administration. She won the John R. Roach Leadership Award, and awards 
from the National Food Brokers Association, the National Council on 
Aging, the Frozen Food Hall of Fame--but the most important awards were 
not the ones that were conferred on her, but the ones she gave us.
    
    
  The gift she gave was, first and foremost, herself. To her, family 
was a concept that extended beyond even her nine grandchildren and five 
great-grandchildren--it included her employees, her prayer groups, and 
practically everyone she knew.
  She lived by the words of St. Paul:

    
    
       For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
     that for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so 
     that by his poverty you might become rich.... As a matter of 
     equality your surplus at the present time should supply their 
     needs, so that their surplus may also supply your needs, that 
     there may be equality.--II Cor. 8:9, 13-14.

  Wise words about how to build a just community.
  And let me add, Mr. President, some words from Robert Browning that I 
believe summarize the Rose Totino example for all of us:

     Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
    
    
     Or what's a heaven for?

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