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SPEAKER 1: Well, my dad came over early because of sulfur mines in Italy had run out of sulfur. And so there was a whole migration of the miners from that area. And they came to the iron mines of Minnesota. And my mother followed.

We were raised in Aurora. I was born in Aurora, Minnesota. And my father worked for the school board there as a janitor. And when they changed politics, then he lost his job. And that always gave me a distaste for patronage and politics.

And we then moved to Hibbing. My dad worked in the mines and my mother would make wine and we'd sell it during the bootlegging days. And then later on, she also would cater to the so-called rich people with Italian foods, and I'd watch her make it.

We lived in a $5 a month flat that had more cockroaches than I had hair in my head. No matter what we did, it was something that gets blazoned in your mind where you never want to be poor again.

SPEAKER 2: What do you remember most from growing up?

SPEAKER 1: That you had to go out and make a buck. That you needed to have money. That you needed to be able to not let anybody be spurrier to self, like my dad getting fired in Aurora. So I wanted that feeling of independence.

SPEAKER 2: You had intentions to become an attorney. You went to Hibbing Junior College, but you dropped out not long after getting started on the law program there, and you got into sales. Why did you decide to do that?

SPEAKER 1: Well, Mark, I was working in the mornings at 5:00 until I went to school. There was a Hibbing Junior College. And then I'd work after school until about midnight in the Daylight Market, it was called, in Hibbing. And therefore, I more or less slept during classes, especially we had one professor in the so-called pre-law school that would sort of drone on, and it would be just like taking a sleeping pill.

And so I decided I wasn't going to get anywhere working in the morning, working at night, and trying to go to school and learn something new. So I decided that I better do something else. And an opportunity came up for me to sell wholesale groceries on the Iron Range for a commission, half of the profit. And I, as a result, built a business on the Iron Range selling.

SPEAKER 2: And the story goes that during World War II, sometime during World War II, maybe during the end of the war you came across beansprouts, you landed a $2,500 loan, and that became the beginnings of Chun King. What convinced you to take that chance, to go after the Chinese food market? Here you're an Italian man in Northeastern Minnesota and you ended up packaging Chinese food for the nation from the Iron Range.

SPEAKER 1: Well, that goes to prove that opportunity in the United states, if you really want to go after it, is unlimited. The fella that makes those Windows, with computers, hell, I thought he was in the construction business selling Windows until I found out that he made his billions with computers. There is no field that if you set your mind to it that you can't succeed. And so that proved that insofar as Chinese foods up in Duluth, Minnesota.

In selling wholesale groceries, I noticed that Chinese foods was one line of canned products that was not too very competitive. And therefore, I felt that there might be an opportunity if I packed a good Chinese food that had a little taste, a little garlic seasoning, using a little chicken broth, and so forth, so it didn't taste like paste like a lot of the Chinese foods did in those days. And beansprouts-- you bought the mung bean for $0.05 a pound. You got seven to eight pounds of beansprouts, so it's less than a penny a pound.

It was a very low cost ingredient. And yet, it was the main ingredient. So I looked at it as an opportunity to finally make some money.

SPEAKER 2: How did you get the loan?

SPEAKER 1: Well, it was funny. I had a friend by the name of Antonio Papa. He was a food broker that sold olive oil and the Romano cheese and salami and so forth to grocery stores. And he was selling my mother, in our little grocery store in Hibbing. And then I told him one day that I wanted to borrow $2,500 to go in business.

He thought I was going to go into the store retail business. I never told him that. I just said I was going to go in business. So he felt, heck, $2,500, not only will I help a friend, but I'll get some business.

So after I got started in beansprouts, because he'd come up there about every three months and he says, where's the store? And I said, what store? I brought him in the back room where I was growing beansprouts and his face fell. And I guess he felt, there goes my $2,500.

Two weeks later, I got a letter from Antonio saying, Jeno, I'm planning to buy a little hotel here in Hurley, Wisconsin, I think it was. How about sending me my money? And by that time, I was kind of successful in a small way. I sent him his money. But I never forgot that.

And in fact, when he became somewhat incapacitated, I put him in the nursing home there across from the clinic, and he was there till he died.

SPEAKER 2: What are some of the most important things you learned as you built Chun King into this $63 million corporation?

SPEAKER 1: You know, $63 million sounded a lot in 1967 when I sold it. But today, when you read about the billions that many are making, it's nothing. It's peanuts. I'm a little ashamed that it was only $63 million rather than proud of it looking back today, to be honest with you.

But it proved to me that I could go ahead and build a business, that I could be independent, that I didn't have to be worried or scared or subservient or not be able to tell somebody what I thought of them. And I guess that's where maybe this love/hate of Jeno has started, that I have been very, very much of an activist, but very much of an independent person who doesn't hesitate to tell you to go to hell if that's what's necessary in my mind.

SPEAKER 2: Why did you sell Chun King?

SPEAKER 1: I got tired of it. I felt it was time to go on to other things. I had built another company in the meantime, and that was Northland Foods. We were packing fruit and berry pie fillings in cans, and I was packing Jeno's Pizza mix. And I thought, well, now's the time to cash in on this one and start another one, because I like to create, and I like to start companies. I like to build them. I like to create products. I like to be my own man in the competitive marketplace.

And then there's a time when I feel sell it and go on to the next one.

SPEAKER 2: Where did you get the idea to start making frozen pizzas? Grocer's freezer shelves at the time, as you certainly remember, weren't full of frozen pizzas at that time. Where did you come up with that?

SPEAKER 1: Well, after I sold Chun King to Reynolds Tobacco and then I had to serve about four years in New York, and I say serve. To me, it was like going to prison because I hate New York. But I became chairman and founder of the RJ Reynolds foods company because the tobacco people wanted to get into the foods business in order to hedge their bets because tobacco was beginning to be labeled that it caused cancer and everything else. And so while I was there in New York, I decided that I was going to expand my Jeno's Pizza Mix, which was where you made the pizza at home.

And I thought of the pizza rolls. I thought that what I could take, what I had there was egg rolls, because the Moline company in Duluth had made a machine for us that would fill these egg roll snacks, and then we'd freeze them. And so I thought, well, if I put a pizza filling in there, it'll even be more popular. So that's how I decided to get into the frozen business of pizza rolls and frozen pizza.

SPEAKER 2: You were obviously at that time very busy growing Jeno's. And that became, once again, a tremendously large company, much bigger even than Chun King. But at that time, too, you were becoming very active in civic affairs. Why did you become interested in that and why did you, at a time when you were busy with your own private concerns, why did you dedicate and devote so much time to these civic concerns?

SPEAKER 1: Well, I sort of liken my life to that of a farmer. As a farmer, in order to get the next crop, I had to put fertilizer back in the soil. You had to reinvest in that soil even though you didn't know how your crop was going to come out that coming year. And I've always likened that to anyone.

If you make money, if you have the benefits of being in America or any part of the world, that you should plow back some of your time, some of your money, some of the proceeds that you get from those endeavors to help the community, the state, the nation. And I get a little upset at times when I get all this hate mail. Northeastern Minnesota, if I don't close a deal at Hibbing or delay it or I'm negotiating, I get so much adverse publicity, and I wonder, what the hell is the matter?

After all, what did I accomplish up there besides building Chun King, besides Wilderness Pie Filling, besides Jeno's Incoporated? Who was one of the original investors in the Radisson Hotel when we needed a new hotel? Who started the arena-auditorium, the skywalk as a result of that? And I'm talking about being the prime mover, the activist.

The air terminal, Spirit Mountain, when they ran out of money, the Regional Library, the Deck, the Convention Center now, UMD Medical School, Trepanier Hall, Palucci Planetarium, and above all, the taconite tax and the production tax-- I was the prime mover there. And that was all part of the time I spent in addition to building my businesses, in addition to raising one hell of a fine family.