RUDY BOSCHWITZ

Head of the U.S. Delegation to the 61st Session
of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights

Rudy Boschwitz was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1930. Being an immigrant, Rudy can never be President, which led Bob Dole to remark, “He’s the only Senator I trust. He can’t run for President.” As an afterthought, Bob would add: “And at last count Rudy was the only Senator not running for President.”

Rudy’s Dad came home the day Hitler came to power, on January 30, 1933, and told the family they would leave Germany forever. They went from country to country seeking admission to the U.S., finally arriving two and one-half years later on December 23, 1935. They settled in New Rochelle, New York.

Rudy attended Johns Hopkins University and New York University, completing college at 19, and receiving a law degree at 22. After a couple of years in the U.S. Army, he practiced tax law but soon found legal work too confining. “So I decided to become a client instead.”

He joined his brother in a plywood manufacturing business in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1957 (“my New York friends thought I had lost my sanity…moving to Oshkosh!!”), and came to Minnesota in September 1963, where he started Plywood Minnesota in an old railroad building in Fridley.

Fifteen years later (by which time the company had grown to 68 stores), Rudy ran successfully for the U.S. Senate. He served there from 1978-1991, whereupon the voters returned him to his business. “It wasn’t part of the plan, but it was in the midst of a recession, and I was able to be of some help to my sons who were running the business and this was their first recession.”

In the Senate, Rudy was a member of the following committees: Agriculture, Foreign Affairs, Budget, Small Business and Veterans’ Affairs. Rudy was elected by his Republican colleagues to the leadership of the Senate, the only Minnesota Senator other than Hubert Humphrey to attain a leadership position in this half century.

Rudy was President Bush’s emissary to Ethiopia in the spring of 1991. His mission resulted in Operation Solomon, the rescue of the small Black Jewish community of Ethiopia and their dramatic airlift to Israel. The negotiations also brought a simultaneous end of the decades-long civil war in Ethiopia. In a Rose Garden ceremony in June 1991, President Bush awarded Senator Boschwitz the Citizen’s Medal for his achievements in the Horn of Africa. “I have truly lived the American Dream, but that was one of the high points,” said Rudy. “Our achievements in Ethiopia were a major league mitzvah (‘good deed’ in Yiddish).”

Rudy and his wife of 48 years, Ellen, reside in Plymouth, Minnesota. Rudy and Ellen and their four sons, Gerry, Ken, Dan and Tom are all actively engaged in operating the family business, now called Home Valu. They have two granddaughters and four grandsons. “The Senate was both challenging and rewarding,” says Rudy, “but our family all working together is our greatest success.”