Taking It To The
Bank

A father-son business team donates to a ood bank.

•s•

LONNY GOLDSMITH
Staff Writer

arkus Rohtbart knows
hunger all too well.
As a Holocaust sur-
vivor, he survived five
years in 10 concentration camps. He
weighed 80 pounds when he was lib-
erated at the age of 18.
Rohtbart and his son David, now
the chairman and president, respec-
tively, of Cattleman's Inc., have
donated $26,000 to Gleaners Com-
munity Food Bank in Detroit to
help eliminate hunger.
"We've been working with Glean-
ers for almost 20 years, said David.
"Gleaners is a Detroit business,
which is where we started. It's where
our core is."
Cattleman's is a meat wholesaler
with a plant and store at Detroit's
Eastern Market and outlets in Oak
Park, Hamtramck and Taylor. The
stores sell groceries as well.
In the past, Cattleman's has donat-
ed to Gleaners, but due to financial
restraints, Rohtbart senior and junior
dug into their own pockets this year
to make the donation.
"Normally, we try and do as much
through the company as possible,"
David explains. "We aren't in a posi-
tion to do that now."
The Rohtbarts estimate that the
donation will be enough to cover a
trailer load of food.
According to Gleaners President-
elect Rick Loewenstein, the money
will replenish the food supply
drained by the holidays.
"The donation will allow us to pur-
chase food that we don't get donated,"
said Loewenstein. "Donated meat is
hard to get. This donation will allow
us to purchase meat items. We distrib-
uted 10,000 turkeys to local agencies
during the holidays."
Gleaners distributes food to 300
agencies that serve the needy.

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Eddie Jackson and Markus Rohtbart talk to a class at Crosman Alternative High School.

"Everything we do is toward mak-
ing Americans see that they don't
have to be hungry," David said.
Along those lines, the elder Roht-
bart, 71, has spent time over the last
10 years speaking to students in
Detroit Public Schools. During the
first semester this year, Rohtbart
talked to the Crosman Alternative
High School students about job
training and gave motivational
speeches.
"I'm not telling you not to go to
college," Rohtbart told a class of 20
at Crosman last Monday, "I'm
telling you that you have the oppor-
tunity to make a nice life for your-
self should you not."
Accompanying Rohtbart to the
school was Eddie Jackson, a Detroit
native who is the plant manager at
Cattleman's Eastern Market location.
"Not everyone is capable of going
to college," said Jackson, a former
professional football player whose
career ended during his rookie year
because of a knee injury. He began
working at Cattleman's at $5 an hour
in 1985 and now supervises 300
workers. "It all came from hard
work. If you put nothing into a job,
you'll get nothing out of it," he said.
Crosman, once an elementary
school, reopened last fall as an adult
education center where high school
students could get a second chance
to get their degree. Before Rohtbart
and Jackson left the classroom on
Monday, one student pledged to go
to the plant to apply later that day,
and another student next month
when he reaches his 18th birthday.
Rohtbart blames much of the
country's hunger problems on the
educational system.
"They only teach people with the
idea that they will go on to college,"
he said. "Students are never taught
how to get a good living out of
working, and there are now a short-
age of people who want to work." 11]

2/20
1998

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