Rose Goldberg Cook*

The daughter of poor immigrants, Rose Goldberg Cook was born and raised in Camden, New Jersey. To help her parents support their six children, Cook sold produce on street corners by the age of 12. She dropped out of school before completing the tenth grade.

At 16, she married an ambitious young clerk, Harry Cook, who worked in a meat market. They dreamed of one day owning a large meat processing and packing business. That dream began to take shape in 1933 when they opened their first meat market. Cook was just 21, but she took on the major responsibility for the store in addition to raising their two small sons.

The market was so successful that the Cooks opened a second one in 1936, this time with a packinghouse. But a year later, the market burned down in a fire. Cook walked 14 miles to the store to clean up the mess because she couldn't afford the eight-cent trolley fare.

Hoping to reopen the store, Cook went to her bank for a loan, offering her wedding rings as collateral. The loan was granted, and Bluebird, Inc. was established with the store's relaunch in 1940. The business flourished. Ten years later, Cook's husband died, but Cook continued in the business and learned all facets of meatpacking and processing.

By 1963, Bluebird had moved to a larger plant and within five years was shipping two million pounds of meat weekly. Cook remarried in 1960 and took the company public in 1968. Over the next decade, she acquired three other meatpacking businesses, making Bluebird the nation's largest meat processor. She sold her business in 1980 and retired.

Always involved in charitable and civic causes, Cook kept a box on her desk. Each morning when she arrived at work, she put some money in the box. With each phone call that brought good news about her company, she added more money to the box. At the end of each week for 20 years, she sent the contents of the box to Little Sisters of the Poor.

Of her Horatio Alger Award, Cook said, "It was an honor to be selected for this prestigious award. Starting a business and making it work isn't easy, but with hard work and dedication, I believe anything can be accomplished. My award is the physical symbol of how I made my dream come true."