Posted on 01/25/2006 7:20:47 PM PST by Theodore R.
Adeline Tancredo, congressman's mother
Adeline Tancredo's sauce propelled son into politics.| Print By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News January 25, 2006 Adeline Tancredo, whose spaghetti sauce recipe launched a political career for her son, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, died Tuesday in Westminster after suffering a stroke last year. She was 92. Mrs. Tancredo lived in Denver for most of her life, the daughter of Italian-American immigrants.
When she was 16 years old, she went to work for $1 a day as a clerk at Joslins Department store on 16th Street in Denver - a site that is now a Courtyard by Marriott hotel. She worked there for the next 45 years.
A Catholic, she married and had three sons. Every Sunday night she served up spaghetti with a homemade sauce, and her special recipe eventually would propel son Tom into politics.
In 1976, Tom Tancredo was a teacher at Drake Junior High in Arvada when students in his government class dared him to run for political office.
He agreed, and then he tried to think of his first campaign gimmick in his ultimately successful bid for the state House. He decided to print fliers with his mom's spaghetti sauce recipe on one side and a "recipe" for good government on the other.
"We had no money, of course, and we were just trying to figure out . . . something to hand out to people that was inexpensive that they wouldn't throw away," the congressman said Tuesday.
He said his mother was embarrassed by the idea at first. "I'm not sure she wanted to emphasize the ethnicity," he said. Still, she let her son jot down the ingredients as she cooked up a batch of her special sauce.
Later, she and her husband, Gerald Tancredo, would go door-to-door, passing out their son's fliers and campaigning on his behalf.
She often told her son: "Tommy, I don't know about politics. When people say, 'What does he believe in?' I say, 'I'm not sure, but he's a very good boy.' "
Three decades later, Tancredo is in his fourth term in Congress, and he has told the same story about his mother while stumping in Iowa for a possible 2008 presidential race.
If not for her spaghetti sauce recipe and his parents' campaigning, he figures he would not be where he is today.
"I couldn't leave my job. I couldn't have campaigned," he said. "I relied on them entirely."
Mrs. Tancredo was a longtime member of St. Joan of Arc Church in Arvada.
"She certainly was the most spiritual person I've ever known," Tom Tancredo said. "If there was ever a direct conduit to the Lord, she was it."
In May 2005, she suffered a stroke that left her partially paralyzed.
She was treated at the Life Care Center nursing home in Westminster. Her condition deteriorated over the weekend, forcing the congressman to cut short a tour of New Mexico stumping for immigration reform.
She died Tuesday morning at the facility.
She was preceded in death in 2003 by her husband, Gerald.
She is survived by three sons, Jerry, Ralph and Tom Tancredo, all of Littleton; two sisters, Rose Franks and Eleanor Galterio, both of Arvada; 10 grandchildren; 17 great- grandchildren and four great-great- grandchildren.
Arrangements were pending and were being handled by Horan & McConaty.
Prayers for Tom and the Tancredo family.
condolences to the congressman and family
She must have been quite a woman. Sorry to hear of her passing.
Condolences to Tom Tancredo and his family
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