Late Redenbacher daughter recalled
This week ahead should have welcomed the 42nd Annual Valparaiso Popcorn Festival with the much-anticipated Popcorn Parade on Saturday, royal events led by the Popcorn Queen and the traditional crowds converged on Valparaiso’s downtown. For the first time, the festival was canceled — as announced in July — because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adding to this sad turn of events, late last month we lost the last of Orville Redenbacher’s beloved three daughters.
Gail Rosemond Redenbacher Tuminello, age 80, of Valparaiso, died Aug. 24. Her “pop” Orville and mom Corinne were proud of her, and she always remained in Valparaiso. I interviewed her at her beautiful farm on the outskirts of Valparaiso near the fairgrounds many times. I smiled last week when I read in her obituary mentioning about her love of “entertaining, discovering new recipes and having hubby Jim be the bartender at their many events.”
In addition to being survived by husband Jim, her legacy also continues with daughters Julie Jones (Dennis) Gallant, Lori Jones (James Ratner), Pamela Jones (James) Bertoli and son Eric Jones (Debra Fadden) and many grandchildren. Orville died at age 88 in September 1995. Orville’s first wife Corrine died at age 62 in 1971, and Orville remarried to Nina Reder, who died in May 1991 at age 91.
According to Dykes Funeral Home, a “celebration of her life” will be held on a future date. Gail was preceded in death by her sisters Sue Redenbacher Gourley and Billie Redenbacher Fish Atwood, the latter who was the oldest of the daughters, and died in November 2015 at age 86 in San Jose, Calif. Billie is also the mother of Gary Redenbacher, Orville’s grandson who famously appeared in TV commercials and marketing campaigns for Orville Redenbacher Popcorn.
Orville and Gary Redenbacher were two of the first “celebrities” I interviewed.
When I started my college freshman year at Valparaiso University in 1988, I joined the campus newspaper The Torch as a staff reporter, and my first assignment was to meet Orville at the Porter County Airport on a Friday afternoon as he arrived by private plane for the festival weekend.
In addition to interviewing the Redenbacher clan annually for three decades, my other favorite memories of the annual Popcorn Festival are those associated with writing about the elaborate and created floats constructed entirely of popcorn and showcased in the parade.
For decades, HuntWesson Corporation, who eventually purchased the brand from Orville, would spend as much as $30,000 to have professional floatbuilder Cathy Brown of Valpo dream up and design incredible popcorn covered creations. Redenbacher’s popcorn brand is the exclusive brand of popcorn sold at the Walt Disney theme parks, and in 1994, the Popcorn Festival heralded “Popcorn and Disney” as the year’s theme.
Brown’s float that year featured 150 pounds of “cracked corn,” 100 pounds of unpopped popcorn, 30 bushels of popped corn, 100 pounds of flour mixed with 45 gallons of glue to hold everything together once “sculpted.”
In our farm fields of Starke County, popcorn is grown by some of our neighboring farmers, including Phil Brown, who sends his harvest to Gutwein Popcorn in our neighboring town of Francesville. Gutwein Popcorn has the prestige of being the exclusive provider of popcorn to the Indianapolis Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, at least when there are thousands of hungry fans in the seats during a non-pandemic season.
While ham, asparagus and Swiss cheese are the usual ingredients associated with quiche, one of my personal favorite quiche recipe uses fresh sweet corn, something we are still enjoying from our own late garden patches for the start of the new month.