Building a Bridge Between the Hungry & Well-Fed
He made a comfortable living in his family's Italian cheese mini-empire, keeping bellies full with snack-sized slices of provolone, mozzarella toppings for pizza or gooey fillings for a layer of lasagna. Then, at the prime of his corporate life, he gave it all up to carry out the same quest purely out of the goodness of his heart.
The second chapter of the late Leo Frigo’s story led to creation of what is today the largest food bank in Wisconsin --- Green Bay's Paul's Pantry -- and one of the top five in the United States depending upon the measuring stick used.
But exactly who was this seminal, but spartan, man whose devout Catholicism guided him to a new but, in his mind certainly, higher calling --- one that carries on not only at Paul's Pantry but with both a bridge and street named in his honor? In Green Bay, those are tributes otherwise reserved for city founders, influential mayors, Packers legends and, in the case of the Claude Allouez Bridge in De Pere, the first European missionary to native tribes in present-day northeastern Wisconsin.
“Leo, when he was driving with his kids (and) they acted up or fought in the backseat, he would make them get out the rosary,” said Craig Robbins, executive director of Paul’s Pantry. “That calmed everyone down.
“He was the kind of guy who just leaned on his faith. We might talk about some issue for 45 minutes, but then he would (conclude with) ‘Well, it's not our problem anyway; it’s up to God.'’”
The Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge -- 1 1/2 miles long and more than 200 feet from the water to the crest of its awe-inducing, bluish-steel arches -- carries Interstate 43 traffic over the Fox River just south of where it spills into the waters of Green Bay. Formerly the Tower Drive Bridge, it was renamed in 2002, a year after Frigo's passing.
Just before the east approach to the bridge, an exit onto Webster Avenue brings drivers to a mostly industrialized area that includes Leo Frigo Way. Formerly the south end of Webster Court, it’s a two-block stub of a street where Paul’s Pantry predominates: three facilities housing its sprawling free grocery, cold storage for perishable foods, offices and -- at a cul-de-sac -- a Walmart-worthy warehouse for non-perishables.
But grandeur and scale meant nothing to Frigo, good deeds for the poor everything.
A photo of Leo Frigo at work at Paul’s Pantry hangs at the facility with a replica of the street sign hamed for him. Leslie Gast photo
“He was one of a kind,” Robbins said. “When he met you, he didn't just shake your hand; he would grab both hands and pull you in. He was very compassionate yet very, I guess....he couldn’t be fooled that easily. He learned a lot volunteering across the street.”
By that, Robbins meant the former location of Green Bay’s St. Vincent de Paul thrift store and private-sector, faith-based relief agency, where Frigo started donating time while still president of Frigo Cheese Corp. Frigo couldn’t be suckered, Robbins said, but he would help people out with one or more basic needs so they could save money on other bills where they might be gaming the system.
“Let's say you came in and had your electricity turned off for the third straight spring,” Robbins said. “First Leo would get a cooler from the store, get some food and a couple ice packs and say, ‘OK, keep this food cool. And when it’s gone, come back -- but don’t come back three years in a row.' He was firm but gentle.
“The Norbertines (Catholic order), people would just knock on their doors and get cash. Leo would tell (the priests), ‘No, no, no. Send them over here, and we'll figure things out.’”
Five Italian immigrant brothers -- including Leo’s father, Pasquale -- established Frigo Cheese company in 1939 in Iron Mountain, Mich., after more than a decade and a half of cheesemaking in that area and across the stateline in far northeastern Wisconsin.
Frigo’s grew into one of the largest Italian cheesemakers in the United States, but Leo retired in 1983 at the still-young age of 52 to enter the nonprofit world.
Frigo began his charitable career aiding prison parolees in their readjustment to freedom. That volunteerism planted the seeds for the food bank that would open a year later, as he heard the ex-cons describe how they hoped to stay straight. But with jobs difficult to come by after serving time, they turned to crime again so they could eat.
Sixteen years after Paul’s Pantry’s humble start in a corner of the old St. Vincent de Paul, Robbins succeeded Frigo as head of the pantry and remains just the second director in its 37- year history. He first met Frigo in December 1999, while serving as a church volunteer at St. Vincent de Paul.
“He had had a stroke (a year earlier) and had a difficult time speaking,” Robbins recalled. “But I could somehow understand him and finish his sentences. Everyone else couldn’t understand a lot of what he was saying. I don’t know, maybe it was the Holy Spirit.”
Just a month after their first encounter, Frigo was ready to step back into a lower-profile helper’s role. Paul’s Pantry started advertising for a paid director in January 2000, and five months later Robbins was hired. A grocery professional his entire adult life, Robbins felt some of the same pull from the heavens that inspired Frigo to serve as its lead shepherd.
“I was looking to make a change, and then this (want) ad shows up in our church bulletin,” Robbins said. “I showed it to my wife and said, ‘Do you think God’s trying to hit me over the head here?’”
Tragically, Robbins’ enriching association with Frigo turned out to be a brief one. Less than a year after Robbins took the job, Frigo died in a car crash on Feb. 13, 2001, while -- in almost providential fashion -- delivering food to a shut-in friend.
The man was a struggling alcoholic, in and out of rehab and halfway houses, whom Frigo tried to keep busy and out of trouble by bringing him to volunteer at Paul’s Pantry. The other man’s drinking problems, though, finally prohibited him from driving.
“Leo would bring the guy cigarettes, food, candy, razors, shaving cream; that’s just who he was," Robbins said. “Leo probably shouldn't have been driving either, but you couldn't tell him no. He would hop on a forklift in our warehouse, and we’d all be: ‘You probably shouldn't be up there, Leo.’”
The numeral “13” runs eerily through Paul's Pantry's history, in happenings of both the folklorish, unfortunate variety (the date of Frigo’s death, just one day before the food bank’s founding anniversary); and the celebratory (its Jan. 13, 1983, organizational meeting). Leo himself was the 13th of 16 brothers and sisters and therefore named for Pope Leo XIII, an acknowledged friend of the lower classes who was the Roman Catholic Church’s third-longest serving pontiff (1878-1903).
“He was a miracle, he really was,” Robbins said of his old mentor. “He shouldn't have even been talking with the severe type of stroke he had. But he would carry this 3-by-5 notebook listing all of the volunteers that day, so he could still call everyone by name.”
Frigo penned handwritten thank-you letters to every donor during the charity's infancy. And even after the pantry advanced to mass-produced copies of the letters, Frigo insisted on personally signing all of them along with a shorter note, Robbins said.
Frigo also could cleverly hide any oncoming tempers or frustrations by simply moving to another area of the operations, where the cares of the last spot would leave him, Robbins said. Once, at a food drive at Lambeau Field during a Packers game, a drunk driver struck and knocked over his collection bin, sending cans rolling away like escaped puppies in a pouring rain.
Frigo managed to keep his good-guy demeanor intact by choosing to cuss in Italian, Robbins said.
“He was the kind of guy who just leaned on his faith. We might talk about some issue for 45 minutes, but then he would (conclude with) ‘Well, it's not our problem anyway; it’s up to God.'’” – Craig Robbins, executive director of Paul’s Pantry
FAMILY TIES AND INSPIRATIONS
Pasquale and Luigi “Louis” Frigo, Leo's father and uncle, immigrated to Chicago in the early 1900s looking to export their family's successful cheese business to the States. They hailed from the Alpine mountains and valleys of the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, where Asiago cheese was developed throughout the Middle Ages (a bit further to the south are the famed canals of Venice, the regional capital; and Verona, one of Shakespeare's richly romantic settings for "Romeo and Juliet").
In Italy, cheese can’t be called "Asiago" unless it is made in Veneto. No such economic protectionism exists in the U.S. -- courts have ruled it to be a generic term by now -- but in 1942 Pasquale and son Anthony, a future Ashwaubenon village president, were instrumental in creating FDA ingredient, mixture and other standards for labeling a block as Asiago, according to Tony Frigo's 2017 obituary.
Pasquale and Louis also took the business north to Wisconsin's Marinette County and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, joining three other cheesemaster brothers already in the area --- artisan food crafters long before the term grew fashionable. They catered to a ready-made market -- and knowledgeable workforce -- of Italian-Americans whose ancestors arrived in the late 19th century, driven away by political upheavals in their native country and drawn to the upper Midwest by lucrative mining jobs in the UP, according to researchers at Northern Michigan and Michigan Tech universities.
Famous sports figures Steve Mariucci (the former NFL head coach) and Tom Izzo (Michigan State's NCAA champion basketball coach) are self-described proud products of this sizable Italian “Yooper” community.
Tending to his business concerns on the Wisconsin side of the border, Pasquale met his future wife and Leo’s mother, Camilla, when he rented a room at her father's boarding house in Lena in 1923.
Leo, born in the Oconto County town of Pound in 1931, attended Catholic school in Oneida and De Pere’s former St. Norbert High School. After serving in the Korean War, he entered the seminary and joined Catholic fraternal orders in New York state and in Iowa, inspired by several siblings and two aunts who had entered the priesthood or convent.
As it turned out, however, Frigo could not bring himself to abstain from one of the forbidden fruits of his Trappist and Franciscan brothers. “He couldn’t go for the meatless diet,” Robbins said.
Leo instead rose through the ranks of his dad’s company. He served as manager of its flagship production plant in the Marinette County village of Lena before ascending to the very top as company president. He lived at various times in Upper Michigan, Lena and, in his later adult life, De Pere. Stella Foods of Green Bay bought Frigo’s Cheese in 1992 and, in turn, sold to Montreal-based mozzarella manufacturing giant Saputo in 1997, one year after a devastating fire at the Lena factory. Saputo carries on the Frigo name brand primarily in the ricotta, Parmesan and Romano varieties, plus its popular "Cheese Head" mozza sticks and cheese/salami combo snack packs.
After leaving Frigo Cheese, Leo named his food bank after St. Vincent de Paul, the patron saint of charity whose namesake generosity society of lay Catholics he had already joined.
Vincent de Paul, a 17th century French priest, was most noted for ministering to and aiding the perceived lowest of the low: the oar-pulling slaves of the French Navy whose destiny, in many cases, was to be literally worked to death. The international benevolent society that’s named for him was founded in 1833 -- nearly 175 years after his death -- and his name also graces DePaul University in suburban Chicago.
FRIGO PUT 'WASTE FOOD' TO USE
Paul’s Pantry relies not at all on government-surplus free commodities like many similar agencies. Its entire stock of giveaway food --- six tons a day, five days a week -- comes from direct purchases via cash donations; community partner food drives; and, most prominently, throwaways from area grocery stores that are deemed unsellable.
The pantry also obtains leftovers from the city’s farmers markets, or an entire semi-load pallet which a store must sacrifice by regulatory rule if, for example, even a single row got damaged during shipment.
“Leo knew about the tremendous waste in the food industry, coming from the business that he had been in,” Robbins said. “He was wondering what people were doing with all this food. Well, it was going in the dumpster.”
Yet, area grocers remained reluctant to simply give it away. Even though the items were bound for the trash anyway, the stores in those early days thought they would lose sales if that became common knowledge, Robbins said.
The breakthrough came when Craig Beyl, manager of a former Cub Foods in Green Bay, said yes. Beyl is now Paul’s Pantry's board president. “He did it because he was so impressed with what Leo was trying to do, and then the other stores started following suit,” Robbins said. “He stayed involved with us all these years and then became a (grocery-route) driver for us upon retirement. He’s a great troubleshooter for us with his background in the grocery business.”
Robbins noted that there are no food laws regarding sell-by, use-by or “fresh-until” dates, and that “expiration dates” are not “spoiling-on-that-day” dates. Such labeling is entirely at the discretion of the processors’ estimates and the stores' preferences for when they want to rotate a food out for prime marketability, Robbins said.
“Our parents and grandparents didn’t have dates on everything, they just used the common-sense sniff test,” Robbins said. “We call it ‘bombshelter food,’ like veggies and such that are good for a year unless the can gets dented or rusted. It might lose a little flavor and nutrition, but it’s still perfectly safe.”
Not that Paul's Pantry doesn't build in safeguards.
The rule of thumb for dairy is seven days on the shelf, for example. Close attention is paid, as well, to short shelf-life items like eggs, poultry and baby formula; and sorters do keep a lookout for goods long past their estimated throwaway times, a safety check the incoming drivers are too busy to perform.
But before the grocers’ cooperation made his life easier, Frigo literally dumpster-dived for day-old bakery and other involuntary “donations.” He was quoted as saying that if he had to sacrifice part of his dignity to maintain the poor’s, then so be it.
Although there might be limits on low-inventory items at times, Robbins said, the shopper-clients at Paul’s Pantry get to peruse the store in peace, without the indignity of a handler following their every move or monitoring the amounts taken. The staff treats those it serves as if they were you or me shopping at Walmart or Pick N Save.
Paul’s Pantry now serves 110 households per day on average. Its fleet of four box trucks makes daily rounds 364 days a year -- all except Christmas -- picking up grocery store giveaways. Its more than 300 volunteers include work-release prisoners, people serving court-ordered community service and the beneficiaries themselves, in addition to church groups and numerous other Good Samaritans.
And as for the oversized heart of its original crusader for Christ, the Rev. Robert Finnegan summed Frigo up at the dedication of the Frigo Bridge a year after the founder's death.
“As Leo Frigo was a bridge builder...may all of those who travel this bridge also be inspired to follow his selfless example,” Finnegan said. “By building bridges between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and poor, between the marginalized and the dispossessed, between the hungry and the well-fed.”
What can you say but “Amen” to that?
