John and Rosalind Holahan will be remembered for many things: They were among the founders of Camp Friendship, they started what today is the National Association for Retarded Children (Arc), and John is credited with creating the General Mills cereals Lucky Charms and Total.
The couple was killed in a car-truck crash in Orrano on Wednesday, Aug. 23.
They were returning from a trip to Richfield to visit their daughter, Shannon Kilkenny, 51, who died on Friday, Aug. 25, of cancer.
“That was pretty much my immediate family,” John Holahan Jr. said in an article in the Star Tribune. “This is a terrible tragedy for all of us.”
Services for the Holahans were held on Monday at St. Ignatius Church. Services for Kilkenny were held on Tuesday in Minneapolis.
The Holahans were “one of a couple” of people who started Camp Friendship, said Ed Stracke, executive director of the camp for children and adults with mental and physical disabilities.
“It goes back to the 1940s … they dedicated their lives to get (other people) all the services they could not get for their son.”
John Holahan is credited with creating Lucky Charms cereal, and he also created the cereal Total.
“Putting vitamins in cereal was his idea,” Stracke said, noting that Lucky Charms is General Mills’ second leading seller yet today behind only Cheerios.
The Star Tribune also reported that for years he would share that story with home economics students at Annandale Middle School. He would recall stumbling upon orange marshmallow peanuts while brainstorming in supermarket aisles in 1963. About taking them back to the lab, cutting them up and then sprinkling them over Cheerios.
“I knew we had a winner,” John Holahan would say later.
For the students, the presentations offered a lesson in creativity and marketing: a leprechaun, “pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers.”
The kids would ask John Holahan to autograph Lucky Charms boxes.
Rosalind Holahan was a founding member of Camp Friendship’s Auxiliary. The couple also went on to help for Arc (the National Association for Retarded Children).
“John and Roz embraced the lives of young people … whether is was talking about the dedicated counselors at Camp Friendship, speaking with children at the local schools about inventing cereals like Lucky Charms and Total, encouraging budding musicians to continue their passion for music,” Stracke said at the services held on Monday.
The couple was married 60 years in June. They mvoed to the Annandale area in 1966. They lived a short distance from Camp Friendship on Clearwater Lake. John Holahan retired from General Mills in 1978.
Their obituaries appear on page 2, and Stracke’s excerpted address is on page 4.
Be the first to comment