The Baker Knew Best
How my dad’s first boss gave him the ingredients for success… or why I serve potica for dessert on Christmas
My dad, James Edward Rapinac, was 12 the first time he reported for work at the Sunrise Bakery.
The year was 1947. Young Jimmy was sharing a home with his Croatian grandparents, two uncles and an aunt in Hibbing, a mid-sized mining town in northeastern Minnesota. Hibbing lies in the heart of the Iron Range, a stretch of red earth known for its vast ore deposits and open-pit mines.
The Rapinac family lived in Park Addition, a working-class neighborhood across the railroad tracks from Hibbing’s handsome downtown. At the end of the street, Bennett Park’s lush lawns beckoned children and adults alike to relax and recreate. The park boasted gardens, picnic areas, playgrounds, baseball diamonds, a golf course, a bandstand, an ice rink, and even a small zoo.
Beyond the park rose the mine pit’s jagged skyline, often obscured by dust. The sharp whistle at shift change or the occasional boom from a mine blast punctuated the low rumble and clanks of machinery. My dad’s grandfather, Frank Rapinac, had retired after three decades in the mines to take a job as a high school janitor. But Uncle Carl still worked in the pits as an electrician, leaving his work boots, coated in red dust, at the back door after his shift.
Jimmy attended Park School – aptly nicknamed “the Glass Schoolhouse” – with the descendants of immigrants from Italy, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Croatia, Slovenia, and a smattering of other countries. Later, he would attend Hibbing’s renowned high school. (I’ll save that story for a future post.)
From the Rapinac family home, the Sunrise Bakery was a quick trip down 3rd Avenue, a two-minute walk at most. The shop perched at the edge of a cluster of businesses that included a glass company, a photo studio, and two taverns. Flat stucco and brick facades stood shoulder to shoulder, front doors opening onto the sidewalk, second-story windows peeking over the street.
Every day after school, Jimmy dropped off his books at home and followed the aroma of freshly baked bread to the bakery. He checked in with his boss, Vince Forti, tied an apron around his waist, and got to work stacking batches of glazed donuts onto trays, sweeping up spilled flour, taking out the garbage, and any other tasks Vince asked him to do.
Without his job at the bakery, Dad later acknowledged, his life could have easily taken a wrong turn. His mother lived in California with her new husband, and his father was out of the picture. His extended family provided a loving home but minimal supervision. Vince took Jimmy under his wing, doling out advice and encouragement along with the basics of baking. He led by example, demonstrating his strong work ethic and commitment to his business and family.
Vince was the oldest child of Sunrise Bakery’s founder, Giulio Forti. A trained baker in Rome, Giulio left his native Italy in 1910 at the age of 47 for Minnesota’s Iron Range. His wife, Virginia, followed two years later. In 1913, they bought a bakery on Pine Street in the booming town of Hibbing.
Guilio’s shop, Forti Bakery, sold Italian and Viennese bread to the growing ranks of miners and their families in Hibbing. A horse-drawn wagon made deliveries to the mining locations. He and Virginia started a family, which would grow to four children: Vincent, Santi, Ada, and Geno.
In the 1920s, much of the town was forced to move to make way for the expanding Hull-Rust mine. Giulio relocated his bakery and his family to Park Addition in the new South Hibbing. Homes and businesses quickly sprouted along the newly paved streets.
Giulio’s shop, re-baptized the Sunrise Bakery, began offering donuts, pastries, and ethnic goods in addition to his traditional breads. Motorized delivery trucks replaced the horse and wagon.
During the depths of the Depression, Vince, the eldest child, dropped out of high school to help run the bakery. In 1938, an ailing Giulio was forced to retire his rolling pin. Ada, Santi, and Geno soon joined their brother at the shop. In 1943, the family patriarch died, leaving the business he built in the capable hands of his children.
Vince began updating the bakery’s aging equipment. Ada decorated elaborate wedding and birthday cakes. Santi and Geno, after serving in the Pacific in World War II, helped in the kitchen and delivered to surrounding Iron Range communities.
My dad worked at the bakery five days a week through high school and junior college, including twelve hours on Friday nights. Alongside Vince and his family, he fried dough, filled Bismarks with jelly, frosted Long Johns, and baked loaves of Italian bread and hard rolls. Three of his cousins and two of his aunts came to work at the bakery, too.
After junior college, Dad left the Iron Range behind to stake out his future. He served two years overseas in the Army, eloped with my mom, Judy Omtvedt, welcomed their first child, and earned a university degree. After graduation, he returned to Minnesota to take a job with a defense contractor in Minneapolis, 200 miles south of the Iron Range.
But Dad never forgot his roots – or the Sunrise Bakery.
When I was a kid, we stopped in at the shop on every trip to Hibbing. Vince and his daughter, Ginny, always greeted us with warm hugs and wide smiles. Then they would lead us to the back of the bakery, where we watched workers roll out dough and pull long racks of golden bread from the scorching ovens. After each visit, we left with sacks of fresh hard rolls and assorted pastries, compliments of the owner.
By that time, my dad had climbed the ranks at his defense job. He traveled all over the world, schmoozed with military brass, and drove a fancy Cadillac. But when he walked through the doors of the Sunrise Bakery, he was young Jimmy Rapinac again, back at his first job. His voice deepened with respect when he talked to his former boss.
I recently came across a letter my dad sent to the Hibbing paper after Vince’s death in 2000. In the article, he reminisced about his Sunrise Bakery years. His words revealed the depth of his gratitude and admiration for the man who helped him mature from a boy to a young man.
“Vince was a boss, mentor and friend to me,” he wrote. “I owe a lot to Vince and his family for teaching me the value of work and holding a responsible job in my early formative years. Without Vince and Sunrise Bakery, I probably would have never graduated from college.”
My dad was far from the only one who benefited from the baker’s patient guidance. Vince recruited countless lost souls, believing anyone could succeed with a dash of direction and discipline. Sunrise was more than a bakery – it was a place that shaped lives along with its beloved loaves of bread.
In July of 2025, I made a pilgrimage to Hibbing with my husband to research my family’s history. At Checco’s Tavern, a neighborhood watering hole a couple doors down from the old bakery, we met Vince’s nephew, Daryl “Butch” Forti. Over mugs of Hamm’s beer, Butch shared his memories of growing up in a family of bakers.
One of Butch’s favorite anecdotes is hurling snowballs at my dad, who was 10 years older, behind the bakery. More than 70 years later, the story still makes him chuckle. I learned that the two kept in touch up until my dad’s death in 2016.
Sunrise Bakery’s iconic shop, which anchored Park Addition for more than a century, is an art gallery now. But the business continues to evolve, guided by the fourth generation of Fortis. The current store on Hibbing’s 1st Avenue still crafts Giulio’s original breads and pastries from scratch in addition to home-made pizzas. The bakery has spun off a wholesale production facility, a deli, and the Iron Ranger restaurant in St. Paul, Minnesota’s capital.
For decades, Sunrise Bakery has been famous for its potica, pronounced “po-TEET-sa.” The sweet pastry, tightly rolled with fine layers of dough smeared with ground walnuts, honey, and butter, traces its roots to Slovenia and Croatia. Vince’s wife, Anna Maras, who grew up in a Croatian household like my dad, introduced the traditional dessert pastry to her Italian family.
As long as I can remember, my family’s Christmas Eve dinner always featured potica for dessert, shipped directly from Sunrise Bakery to wherever my parents were living at the time. On Christmas Day, we cut more slices off the roll for breakfast.
The tradition continues, with potica joining two of its Iron Range sister specialties, porketta and wild rice casserole, on my holiday table. It’s a way to honor my family’s past and the people and places that shaped their lives. Including Vince Forti and the Sunrise Bakery.
At the end of my dad’s letter to the editor, he recounted a conversation with his old boss. I’ve edited their exchange slightly:
“When you worked at the bakery, Jimmy, did you learn anything?” Vince asked.
“Yes, Vince,” my dad replied in his typical deadpan delivery. “I learned that I did not want to be a baker.”
“If that is all you learned,” Vince said with a smile, “then your time at Sunrise Bakery was worth it!”
This post is part of the Genealogy Matters Storyteller Tuesday Challenge:
FAMILY FOOD
Links
Iron Ranger restaurant website
MNHS Podcast: Eating the Iron Range: A Cultural Culinary History
Sources
“Sunrise Bakery: Where it all began,” Hibbing Daily Tribune (Hibbing, Minn.), April 3, 2014.
“Sunrise Bakery named Business of the Year,” Mesabi Tribune (Virginia, Minn.), February 16, 2023.
“Nuts about doughnuts,” Hibbing Daily Tribune (Hibbing, Minn.), April 3, 2014.
“Fourth generation taking over the reins at Hibbing’s Sunrise Bakery,” BusinessNorth (Duluth, Minn.), February 19, 2018.
“Sunrise Bakery,” Preserving the Past, The Hibbing Historical Society Newsletter (Hibbing, Minn.), Minn.), Third Quarter 2018 Special Edition.
“Forti family given Lifetime Achievement Award: ‘Sunrise’ a Hibbing staple for nearly a century,” Hibbing Daily Tribune (Hibbing, Minn.), February 7, 2010.
“Happy 118th Birthday, Hibbing!!: Two New Members in Hall of Service and Achievement,” Hibbing Daily Tribune (Hibbing, Minn.), August 14, 2011.
“Park Addition in the early years,” Hibbing Daily Tribune (Hibbing, Minn.), January 18, 2020.
“Eating the Iron Range: A Cultural Culinary History (episode 205),” Minnesota Unraveled, Minnesota Historical Society, December 4, 2025.
“Remembering Vince Forti and his impact on my life,” Rapinac family collection, December 27, 2000.
1940 Census: Incorporated Place: Hibbing; Township: Stuntz; County: St. Louis; State: Minnesota.
1950 Census: Incorporated Place: Hibbing; Township: Stuntz; County: St. Louis; State: Minnesota.
Names included in this article:
Kristin Rapinac Graessle (1966- )
James Edward Rapinac (1935-2016)
Frank Rapinac (1879-1953)
Carl Joseph Rapinac (1908-1992)
Giuilo Forti (1863-1943)
Virginia Ricci Forti (1882-1958)
Vincent James Forti (1913-2000)
Santi Forti (1916-1990)
Ada Evelyn Forti (1918-2002)
Geno Nellus Forti (1921-2007)
Judy Omtvedt Rapinac (1937-2024)
Daryl Julius Forti (1945- )
@Kristin Rapinac you absolutely nailed the Iron Range! And what a wonderful collection of memories around food. As a MN hockey family, we spent a good amount of time in that area - and made such great memories.
I love this! What a great story. My mother's paternal side is Croatian so I remember relatives making potica. It's not a skill that was passed down, sadly. But I love potica!