Strube - Chicago Tribune

Robert W. Strube, 1918-2010: Fresh-produce maven helped found Greater Chicago Food Depository
Helped turn his father's vegetable business into leader in world of wholesale produce


Robert W. Strube spent his life surrounded by fresh food and made it his mission to do everything he could to see that people didn't go hungry.

Mr. Strube was one of the founders of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, started 30 years ago in a stall he set aside at his South Water Market headquarters. It now stockpiles food in a 268,000-square-foot warehouse on the Southwest Side and serves a half-million people in Cook County each year.

Mr. Strube, 91, died on Thursday, Jan. 14, at his Glencoe home, said his son, Robert Jr. He had suffered from various maladies, but an exact cause of death was not clear.

"This guy understood there was a hunger issue, and he had the vision to see something like the Food Depository could go a long way toward addressing it," said Michael Mulqueen, executive director of the facility from 1991 to 2006.

Mr. Strube's Chicago roots were deep. Strube Celery & Vegetable was opened in 1913 by his father, Frederick, in the city's original produce market on Water Street downtown. The business made the move to South Water Market in 1925, and Mr. Strube began working there at a young age.

After graduating from Lake View High School and serving in the Army, he took over the company from his dad in 1946 and became a leader in the tightly knit world of wholesale produce. He served as president of the South Water Market Association and for many years was the host of a regular segment, "Produce Report," on WBBM-AM radio, offering his expertise on the season's best fruits and vegetables.

Amid the abundance of the market, and the frequent waste inevitable in the produce business, Mr. Strube made efforts to donate surplus to food pantries and church groups that could get it to those in need.

But nothing took hold on a large-scale basis until he and about five others started the Greater Chicago Food Depository in 1979. The first year, the depository supplied about 40 food pantries with about a half-million pounds of food, Mulqueen said. Growth was exponential, and the organization moved to a succession of bigger warehouses.

Mr. Strube was an enthusiastic and occasionally blunt fundraiser who didn't mince words when asking for cash, Mulqueen said. He'd lead potential donors through the colorful South Water Market, charming society matrons and others with stories from the all-night operation.

"He was very gruff, loud, no-nonsense; he was a businessman," Mulqueen said. "But he had a heart as big as all outdoors."

Mr. Strube's goal was to end hunger in the U.S. by the millennium, his son said. Although that wasn't achieved, the whopping success of the Food Depository filled him with pride.

"The fact ... it's expanded so much beyond what he ever anticipated, he was extremely proud of that," his son said.

Strube Celery & Vegetable is run by Mr. Strube's two children, and fourth-generation family members also are working for the company.

Mr. Strube is survived by his wife of 68 years, Helen; a daughter, Janet Fleming; six grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren.

Visitation is set for 3 to 8 p.m. Monday at Donnellan Family Funeral Home, 10045 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, and for 12:30 p.m. until a service at 1 p.m. on Tuesday at North Shore United Methodist Church, 213 Hazel Ave., Glencoe.