The Donut Concession

 At the end of my sophomore year, Wally Zaremba RIP cornered me and told me he was tired of being the class president and I should consider running. I said "no thanks", I had a car, a night job and a pocketful of money. He caught my attention when he said: "you know they let you out of class any time you are working on the class business." I was in and won and served both my junior and senior years.

Keep in mind during the rest of this piece that like any good member of my gender I took credit for success but it was the girls in our class who did most of the work. I wouldn't have got elected or raised a dime if it wasn't for Karen Larson, Karen Parker, Lorraine Skinner, Linda Clausen, Jean Harney and too many others to name.

I loved Eddie Fogelberg. He was head of the English department. He was a great teacher and town historian. I have his book and every newspaper article he ever wrote but we weren’t on the same fundraising page. At a sales meeting rallying the troops, he could turn you into a somnambulist.

Mr. Fogelberg was lukewarm toward some of our more aggressive fundraising ideas. Sure, we had the normal stuff like dances, calendar, and cookie sales but we weren’t setting any records. He went out on a limb and approved a horse show but that was the extent of his risk-taking.

That all changed our senior year when Phil Russo became our class advisor. Mr. Russo taught the business classes.
I knew Mr. Russo Quite well. He lived in my neighborhood and I had delivered his newspaper for a number of years. Of course, the flip side of that is he knew me quite well so it was no surprise as to what he was getting himself into.

We got off to a good start with the normal stuff but we soon hit on a blockbuster. We were going to do a candy sale and one of the girls I think Karen Larson came up with the idea of an incentive, not some certificate or blue ribbon or some small recognition, something good! We were looking for some pizzazz.
So we came up with some really nice prizes for one through five places The top prize was a Honda motorbike. It was going to take a little investment but Mr. Russo quickly signed off on it.

We announced the plan at a senior assembly and it was met with cheers and pledges to win. Now Larry Lundgren RIP was the single best salesperson in our class. Much of my own sales success in later life I attribute to Larry’s mentoring. He could sell snow to an Eskimo.

Larry immediately announces that no one should set their heart on that bike because he, Larry Lundgren was destined to be the winner.

A brief aside. The pinnacle of Larry’s sales success came when he was named by Jose Menedez with O. J Simpson in attendance as Hertz National Sales manager. Later at a sales meeting with 50 top producers in attendance, they paid Larry the ultimate compliment by throwing rolls of toilet paper on the stage while cheering him after one of his presentations.

But I digress.

Larry put in a good effort but the ladies blew his doors off. Roberta Turco didn’t make any pledges she just got busy selling candy. Like well over 200 boxes. I couldn’t remember the number so I contacted Roberta. She couldn't remember the exact number either but she sure remembered that motorcycle. Even after 50 years, she was still a little salty over her mother making her sell it.

It was a great success but our biggest moneymaker was donuts. In those days the senior class was given the donut concession. Every morning when the school buses emptied we had 800 or 900 students walking in front of me and Dave Freni. And we were ready to give them a carbohydrate fueled beginning of the school day.

The previous classes didn’t seem to take it that seriously because frequently there were never any donuts because they had already run out.

We had to get the money from Mr.Russo every day as we had to front the money for the next day or there were no donuts. We appealed to Mr. Russo to quadruple the money as we thought there was much greater demand.

He readily agreed but was concerned about overage. "Day-old donuts wouldn’t have much appeal" he opined. We met that objection by saying we would leave the overage in the teacher's room. He was good with that.

I can tell you from experience that teachers like donuts better than cops. There was some serious staff weight gain that year.

We again appealed to him to expand the product offering, he said no to the coffee but soon we were moving quantities of milk and juices.

One drawback was having to get to school really early. My mother was impressed because my junior year she was throwing cold water on me to get me out of bed. She thought I had a renewed interest in school.

We finished the year rolling in money and spent some underwriting the class banquet. We couldn't get rid of it all so by the 5-year reunion it became a nuisance having responsibility for it.

By that time we could all drink legally so we subsidized the reunion and gave away 40 half gallons of booze as door prizes.

Let me give you a tip. If you’re going to do fundraising have the business major lead the program and have the English literature major proofread the advertising copy.