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In Memory of
Mr. Allen Shainsky
 (Petaluma, California)

With our greatest sadness and feeling of loss by learning his sudden death, we, MLT,  wish to dedicate this Special Coverage to Mr. Allen Shainsky who passed away on June 23, 2000. His positive impacts on many people who had the pleasure of knowing this great person are well expressed in these messages received from both U.S. and Japan. All original messages are written either in English or in Japanese but we are listing them here without translation due to little time available for translation as of this writing.
 (from the Editor)  

(Index) 

E-1 From local newspaper, Santa Rosa.............

E-2 Shainsky family memorandum......................
 1) In memory of Allen Shainsky from PPP web site
 2) To All Employees and Business Friends
 3) To Employees, Customers and Vendors

E-3 To Mrs. Marcia Shainsky from Mr. S. Hosoi...

E-4 Chicken Charter Special Edition......................
 1) by Dave Martinelli
 2) by Albert
 3) by Loveda
 4) by Carolyn and Dan
 5) by Suzy

E-5 From Japanese Friends....................................
 1) by Mr. Y. Nakamori
 2) by Mr. Y. Miyama
 3) by Mr. N. Wanatabe 

E-1 From local newspaper, Santa Rosa

Allen Shainsky

Allen B. Shainsky, owner of Petaluma Poultry Processors and Lakeville Growers for more than 45 years, died Friday after a brief illness in Santa Rosa. He was 69.

Shainsky was a lifetime Sonoma Country resident. His family has been involved in Sonoma County poultry production since 1920, and the continued the tradition for much of his life.

“He took over for my grandfather, for his father,” said Shainsky’s son, Michael Shainsky. “He has been in chicken business since he could walk. He drove the pickup trucks on the ranch when he was 9 years old.”

He took only a short break from the poultry business while attending the University of California, Berkeley, from which he graduated in 1952 with a degree in poultry husbandry.

In the 1980s his company was forced to streamline business practices after facing stiff competition from larger corporations such as Foster Farms and Zackey Farms. The closing of the chicken killing and hatching facilities on Lakeville Highway forced 125 people off the company payroll.

Later, Petaluma Poultry Processors built a new processing plant in Windsor. One of the most famous chicken products Petaluma Poultry Processors now offers is Rocky, a free-range and hormone-free chicken. Ahead of its time, Petaluma Poultry Processors has been working for 15 years on an organic chicken.

An Army veteran who fought in the Korean War, Shainsky also served as a president and board member of the Burbank Center of the Arts. He was a member of the B’nal B’rish, the Congregation Beth Ami and Congregation Shir Shalom.

He loved to play golf, and he and his wife traveled all over the country to play the game. His son said he was a deicated family man. “He was a very honest and moral person. To him, being honest and telling the truth was critical.” He said. “He loved life; he always had a twinkle in his eye.”

He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Marcia R. Shainsky of Santa Rosa; his daughter Lauri Shainsky of Hillsboro, Ore; his son, Michael Shainsky of Portland, Ore; his sister, Muriel Robbions of Sonoma; two grandsons; and sevral nieces and nephews.

His funeral service will be at p.m. Tuesday in the chapel at Santa Rosa Memorial Park Cemetery, 1900 Franklin Ave., Santa Rosa. Rabbi Bridget Wynne will officiate. Interment will be at the Jewish section of Santa Rosa Memorial Park.

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E-2 Shainsky family memorandum

 1) In memory of Allen Shainsky from PPP web site

Allen B. Shainsky

Allen Shainsky, owner and president of Petaluma Poultry Processors and Lakeville Farms and the father of "Rocky the Range Chicken" and "Rosie the Organic Chicken" passed away June 23, 2000 after a brief illness in Santa Rosa, California.

Mr. Shainsky, grew up in Sonoma County was involved in the poultry industry for most of his life. Allen was born on the family chicken ranch in Sonoma and was active in the family business from an early age. He received a degree in poultry husbandry from the University of California at Berkeley and joined the Armed Forces upon graduation. He returned to Sonoma County in 1955 to raise his family with Marcia, his wife of 47 years, and to build his poultry business.

Petaluma Poultry Processors will continue to operate producing the highest quality and best tasting organic and natural chicken, just as Allen would have wanted. The Shainsky family will maintain majority ownership of Petaluma Poultry Processors, while co owners Darrel Freitas and David Martinelli will be responsible for day to day operations of the company.

Allen will be missed by the people he mentored and by the industry in which he played such a major role, but he will be missed mostly by the people that he loved and loved him. Allen is survived by his wife Marcia R. Shainsky, daughter Lauri Shainsky and Michael Shainsky, as well as two grandchildren and several nieces and nephews.

Allen we all love you and miss you!!

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 2) To All Employees and Business Friends

Memo to All Employees and Business Friends
June 24, 2000

It is with deep sadness that we announce that our President and founder, Allen Shainksky, passed away on June 23, 2000 at age 69. Allen had been hospitalized since June 3 with a series of medical complications. Despite a successful surgery earlier this week, the double pneumonia that Allen had contracted at the beginning of his hospital stay proved to be too much.

We know that everyone who had the pleasure of knowing this extraordinary man will deeply feel his loss. Allen was a life long Sonoma County resident with a self-proclaimed “passion for poultry”. He was an extremely astute businessman, an active community supporter, corporate visionary, and personal mentor for many of his long term employees. Allen called himself the father of Rocky, but to many employees in the PPP family, he was our second father.

Allen leaves his wife Marcia and two grown children, Lauri and Mike. Services for Allen will be held on Tuesday at 1:00 in the chapel at Santa Rosa Memorial Park, 1900 Franklin Avenue, Santa Rosa.

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 3) To Employees, Customers and Vendors by the Shainskys

To our Employees, customers, and Vendors
June 29, 2000

We want to thank everyone for their support of Allen and our family during the events of the last few weeks. Allen was fortunate to have assembled a group of top-flight employees who cared about him deeply. Please know that Allen thoroughly enjoyed working with all of you and that he seemed to learn as much from all of you as you did from him.

While Allen’s passing was a painful shock, he of all people would have recognized that “life goes on”. In this regard, we want to assure all of the employee, customers, and vendors of the Petaluma Poultry family of companies that the business operations of the organization will continue in the same positive fashion that they have in the past. We are confident in the management team that is in place and we look forward to working more closely with them in the future as they lead the company.

Darrel Freitas will be assuming Allen’s title as company president as well as Allen’s duties as Division Manager of Live Division. Marcia Shainsky will be meeting with Darrel and Dave Martinelli, Allen’s business partners, on a weekly basis. The daily operations of the compnay will continue to be led by the Division Manager group already in place.

Again, we thank all of you for your supports and look forward to continue working with you in the future.

Sincerely, Marcia, Michael, and Lauri Shainsky (signed)

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E-3 To Mrs. Marcia Shainsky from Mr. S. Hosoi

July 14, 2000

A sad news of Mr. Allen Shainsky

Dear Mrs. Marcia Shainsky

I was so shocked and confused when I first heard the news of his death. I did not want to believe such a news and almost two and half weeks have passed after attending his funeral in Santa Rosa but I can still neither overcome the sad fact nor know how to express my feelings to you.

Mr. Allen Shainsky has been a kind of my father and a mentor of my business all the time. The last time I talked with him was the early June when he came back from the vacation in Hawaii. He appeared a little tired at first but after some discussions on our business issues he became energetic and we ended our conversation with his big smile as usual.

When I first met with him five years ago, he listened intently to my words, of my dream to promote his chickens in Japanese market. He gave me a chance to sell his chickens in Japan. Since then, I have been working very hard and doing everything we could do so as to develop the market in Japan for the Petaluma chicken products. We have made a pamphlet specially arranged for Japanese customers in our own language and also ran a variety of sales campaigns at 5-star hotels as well as at quality supermarkets. We also opened our Internet web site, “www.organic-mlt.com” in 1998 featuring English version with Japanese for PR and so on. I believe that all such efforts have resulted in a recognition of “Rocky chickens” in Japan as a very delicious chicken meat. Allen appreciated our efforts and achievement and he has authorized MLT to represent Petaluma chickens in Japan.

I do remember the day when I made crucial questions to Allen. I asked him whether he had any intention to sell his business in future. His answer was simple by just saying “NO!”. But I continued to ask him what his thinking would be if any large foreign capital/investors may show an interest to his business. His answer was “Definitely NO! Even if someone offers an exceptionally good price to my business, my answer would still be NO!” Then, I made a final question to Allen if the worst comes worst assuming a situation when he may pass away, he suddenly interrupted my conversation and told me “Don’t worry, Hosoi, I will definitely never sell my business.”

We have been discussing how effectively we can develop and promote our export business to Japan this year by adopting aggressive marketing campaigns particularly with an increase of Rosie production and sales. For example, we are to invite Mr. & Mrs. Shainsky to Japan where we may organize seminars of “Petaluma chickens/organic business”. The guest speaker is of course Mr. Allen Shainsky. We also planned, in addition to seminars, to have a cocktail party inviting our valuable customers, government officials and media people so as to make them well understand about Petaluma chickens of its value. An idea to have our own booth for Petaluma chickens at Foodex, the largest foods convention in Japan, in spring 2001 was also on our agenda. Also he was really glad to know that we would start distributing Rosie based organic chicken soup in Japan with Allen’s picture on the label, shortly. And I have much more good memories of our talks and there are still a lot of things planned that we are going to do together.

But all of sudden, he has disappeared........................

I miss him so much and no words are enough to express my feelings today. Like I said before, he was my mentor. He was my father. And he was my best charming friend. Although my task to recover such a big grief appears not possible, however, I am now determined to develop a stable and strong distributing system of Rocky and Rosie chickens in Japan. This is what I have promised to Allen who may have his big smiles in the heaven. And once I could achieve such a goal, Mrs. Shainsky, I do wish to invite you, your family and Allen’s sisters, if they may want, to Japan in order to show what both of Allen and myself have been dreaming about together in the past years.

Lastly, I wish to offer my deepest condolences with my promise that I will do my best to be your best partner of Petaluma Poultry for the Japanese market. And I do believe that this would be the only way for me to show my gratitude against what Allen did for me for a long time.

Sincerely yours,

Shunichi Hosoi (signed)

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E-4 Chicken Charter Special Edition

 1) by Dave Martinelli

Allen had a self-described “passion for poultry”. He would jokingly state, with that twinkle in his eyes that Mike referred to, that he grew up in a chickin house. He said that he would follow his father around at a young age learning the business and asking questions always asking questions. Indeed, for those of us who worked for him, such an image is not hard to imagine.

One of Allen’s greatest gifts was his ability to show an intense interest in the activities of his employees. It has amazed each of us how he could be so knowledgeable about all of our different activities, so persistent in asking questions about what we had accomplished, and so genuinely interested in the projects we were doing on his behalf.

On occasion this intense interest would manifest itself as the Shainsky Mind Meld. First as a naive young loan officer, and later as a PPP employee, I would often find myself being subjected to this experiences. Allen had this incredible way of leaning forward at his desk, cocking his head to one side, and absolutely forcing his gaze right into the very narrow of your brain. For of you who have ever experienced this, I am sure you know exactly what I am talking about. Allen’s interest level was so high and all of his energy was focused on you and the words coming out of your mouth. He probably also secretly enjoyed the fact that if it turned your brain to much and completely intimidated the hell out of whoever he was talking to.

The beautiful thing about Allen was that he was intense and very intimidating, but had a hard time understanding how he could intimidate people. I used to suggest to him that he accept the fact that at times he scared the heck out of lots of his employees. On intellectual level he fully understand, but on an emotional level he could never understand why people would be intimidated by someone who cared so much about others.

He genuinely loved people, his employees, his customers, his vendors. He really enjoyed being around them and interacting with them on their level. It didn’t matter if the person sold one pound of chicken, worked on the ranches, or sold him grain. Allen loved to spend time talking with the people.

Now the other side of Allen talking to people, were people listening to Allen. If Allen wasn’t getting his point across in a meeting he would say, “you’re not listening to me”, which if you ever worked with Allen you would know is the most improbable thing he could ever say. Not listening to him??? First there was that voice. Allen’s voice could cut through wind, closed office doors, static phones, and probably even the concrete in the plant itself. Allen’s voice was truly unique, often imitated but never duplicated.

After Allen’s voice come his message?what he was saying. I have worked with a lot of first class number crunchers over the years, but no one, and I mean, no one, could do math calculations in their head faster than Allen. He was also a consummate problem solver; his problems, the company’s problems, your problems, your customer’s problems, your vendor’s problems, etc. Allen used to blend his math skills and problem solving skills to produce a running stream of innovative solutions to whatever issue you were discussing with him. Allen would articulate all of the possible solutions to a problem and distill them down to the one or two things he wanted you to do about it.

Third and lastly, Allen was not ambiguous-you always knew where he was coming from. He may bounce around on 17 different topics in the course of a conversation, but you always left a meeting knowing his response and true feelings on a subject. People have asked how we will know whether our decisions will be consistent with Allen’s wishes. Fortunately, there wasn’t much ambiguity from Allen in the 6 years I have been here, or the 29 years that Darrel has know him.

What I will personally miss the most about Allen was his incredible energy level and absolute love of what he did. He came to work every morning ready to take on the world in a positive assertive manner and I found his love of the business to be completely infectious.

Some of you have expressed a sadness that Allen did not retire sooner, but those of us who worked closely with him know that Allen loved his work too much to ever retire. For him, it had long ago ceased to be about making money, or selling chickens. For him, the passion was in the day to day challenges that the business brought in mentoring and guiding his younger staff, and in leaving a business legacy for his community.

Allen was a complex man. Brilliantly astute in business, fueled by an inner drive to always do it better, strong and assertive and intimidating. But also a man who was truly loved by all his employees who saw that twinkle in his eye, who related to his plain spoken country charm, and were inspired by his intense love of live. For the employees of PPP, it was our sincere pleasure to work with Allen and follow his vision.

God Bless.

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 2) by Albert

In memory,

I have been involved with Petaluma Poultry in one way or another since I was fourteen years old. From raising chickens for Abe Tanenbaum to working at Petaluma Poultry for the past eighteen years. I always knew who Allen was but didn’t know the man himself. I was usually nervous when I was around him because I didn’t know what to expect. In the past few years as our company got more and more involved in safety I got to know Allen and realized what an interesting man he was. He had a great sense of humor and at the same time was one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. 

Whenever Allen was in our meetings you could always count on a few good laughs. When Allen spoke he had everyone’s full attention. Not only because of who he was but because everyone wanted to hear what he had to say.

I will always remember how much Allen supported me while I was chair of the SSC. He knew it was hard for me and always let me know I was doing fine. What I will remember most was the day he called me into his office and told me how proud he was of me for what I had accomplished. I was in shock for awhile. After that I don’t think a freight train could have stopped me.

I hope he knew how much that meant. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to know Allen Shainsky.

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 3) by Loveda

I have know you for almost 20 years, it will be hard not seeing you here but I know you are watching us from a better place. I will miss you.

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 4) by Carolyn and Dan

Allen,

You have touched so many people in so many extraordinary ways. You will be remembered fondly with respect, and love. Thanks for being a positive impact in our lives.

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 5) by Suzy

During my tenure at PPP, I have had many occasions to listen to Allen’s words of wisdom. I liked to tell you about one particular time, because it was influenced my life a great deal.

A few years ago, I was going through a rough spot with a coworker. Allen somehow heard. He called me into his office. I was sure that I was about to get scolded by Allen for something or other.(If you have every been there, you know what I mean) He asked me to sit down. He told me that he was aware of the situation and gave advice about how to work through it. At the end, he said; “You are a strong woman. Men will have to learn to deal with that! My mother was a strong woman. My wife and sister are strong women. I like dealing with strong women.”

I have thought about being a “strong woman” every time I have found myself in an impossible situation. It has given me the strength to make the difficult decisions and be who I am today.

He will never know what a positive impact he has had on my personal and professional life.

And I will never forget him.

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E-5 From Japanese Friends

 1) by Mr. Y. Nakamori - Kakiuchi Fontis Co., Ltd.

I was deeply surprised to receive the news of Mr. Shainsky's death. He was the man to open the entrance door of the food business of Kakiuchi & Co.,Ltd. and MLT Trade Int. When I visited L.A to study the healthy and organic chicken in his farm was much impressed by his speaking and eager attitude against his job. So I felt the confidence our business will be absolutely successful in future. I guess the big hole was made in the hearts of his partner and each company' people. Anyway I would like to express my condolence to his family connection and friends.

from his dear friend, Y. Nakamori

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Dear Sean,

It's a great regret that we lost a person whom we definitely need for 21st century in the field of producing and marketing genuinely valuable poultry products for the consumers in Pacific rim regions. He was one of a few people who knew the diffrence between a quality-oriented food and a price-oriented one and was dedicated to prove by himself "he is right." Let us stay on the track Shainsky built to satisfy the people who love Rocky chicken in the region.

Steve Yoshihide Miyama

(Note: Sean refers to Mr. Hosoi)

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Attn: Mr. Hosoi,

Ｉ am ｄｅｅｐｌｙ  shocked and saddened to learn sudden news ｔｈｉｓ time.

Ｉ ｓｅｎｔ ｔｅｌｅｇｒａｍ ｏｆ my ｓｙｍｐａｔｈｙ ｆｏｒ passing ｏｆ Ｍｒ.Ｓhainsky. 

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