5 Wild True Stories About Fast Food Tycoons

5Little Caesars’ Owner Secretly Paid Rosa Parks’ Rent

 

Despite peddling the most universally loved food in the world, pizza magnates themselves tend to be as unpalatable as a slice with pineapple and hemorrhoids. Order at Domino’s and you’re giving money to Tom Monaghan to build his gated community cult in a Florida swamp. Give money to Papa John’s, you’re giving money to Papa John. Hell, it seems that there’s only one pizza chain in America where you can enjoy authentic Italian pizza and authentic Roman ethics, Little Caesars.

Mike Ilitch, Motor City native, pizza tycoon and lifetime fan/part-time owner of the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers would have been the first to point out that this isn’t a story about Little Caesars but about a civil rights legend. In 1994, Rosa Parks was attacked in her Detroit apartment by a burglar who must’ve turned to a life of crime after failing his civics classes. No longer safe in her home, the 81-year-old icon wanted to move to a place where junkies didn’t beat up historic seniors for $50, which in Detroit would raise her rent by about a grand. But the veteran activist didn’t have that kind of money, spending most of her pension on medication for her ulcers, heart problems, and chronic insomnia from a lifetime of having to sleep with one eye open. 

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She also still owed the state of Alabama a bus fine.

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Coming to her aid was longtime friend and judge Damon Keith. Keith pleaded with all his affluent friends for funds so that Park’s civil rights legend wouldn’t end the way it started, with her hanging around a bus station. And while many Detroiters delivered, the fundraiser came to a quick and cheese-crusted full circle with a single call from Mike Ilitch. The deep dish dictator (the good kind) had read about Mrs. Parks’ predicament in the paper and had reached out to settle the matter — with payment in full. Ilitch promised Parks that he would cover her steep rent at the secure Riverview Apartments indefinitely, writing a $2,000 check every month. And he kept his word right until her passing in 2005, having spent well over $400,000 of his pepperoni money to make one of the bravest black women in history feel safe. 

5 Wild True Stories About Fast Food Tycoons
Source: Pinoy Daily News