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TROPICANA & THE L’ORANGERIE

Made to Flourish

The Anthony T. Rossi Story

It is the Hebrew month of Tishrei in Beulah, the season of gathering, and there is a sweetness beginning to return to the air. Citrus season is coming. Oranges are appearing again, and it makes me think of something John Bunyan wrote in The Pilgrim’s Progress when his pilgrims finally reached Beulah:

“The air was very sweet and pleasant.”

Maybe it smelled like oranges.

A L’Orangerie is a French word for a sun-filled glass shelter or conservatory where citrus trees can flourish even when the conditions outside become harsh.

Tishrei is also the month of Sukkot, the biblical Feast of Tabernacles, when God’s people built temporary shelters to remember how He protected and provided for them in the wilderness. In side the meaning of that celebration is an important detail for our story: the etrog, an ancient citron and one of the earliest members of the citrus family, something like a first cousin of the orange.

My heart resides in Beulah, but there is another place woven deeply into my story: Bradenton, Florida, where the orange has become one of the great symbols of our  city and state. The orange blossom is our state flower. Oranges have appeared on our postcards, roadside signs and license plates for generations and orange juice is our state beverage.

Few things seem more naturally Floridian.

But ironically, oranges are not native to this land.

The Spanish brought citrus to Florida in the 1500's, and it flourished so completely in our soil that orange trees began growing wild and free beneath the Florida sun.

A few hundred years later, the pilgrim in our story today would travel more than 5,000 miles and eventually find his way to Bradenton too.

That is what makes this particular pilgrim’s story especially "juicy" to me.

His journey began at the turn of the century, in 1900, in Messina, Sicily.

His name was Anthony T. Rossi.

Anthony was just eight years old when the devastating 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami shattered his hometown, claiming the life of his older brother. The tragedy left him with profound questions about God, Heaven and the afterlife, questions that would follow him into adulthood.

At twenty-one, seeking a fresh start, he boarded a ship bound for America with just twenty-five dollars in his pocket. He had little formal education and spoke barely a word of English, but Anthony possessed something that would serve him well wherever he went:

an insatiable curiosity.

He took whatever work he could find, helping mechanics, driving taxis, running a grocery store, and trying his hand at farming and restaurants. When Anthony didn’t know something, he learned. He read, watched, asked questions and let experience be his teacher.

One day, Anthony walked into a public library looking for information about agriculture.

But a book called The Life of Christ caught his eye , and that led him to read the Bible.

He had gone in searching for ways to tend the soil in the New World.

And there, the Ancient of Days cultivated the fertile ground of his heart.

By the 1940s, Anthony had found his way to Florida and eventually to Bradenton. He grew tomatoes, ran restaurants and began packing Florida citrus into gift boxes. Soon his company was supplying sliced Florida citrus to New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. 

The flawless fruit went into the boxes. The smaller, blemished oranges were left behind. But Anthony didn't care about a perfect exterior; he knew the sweetness inside was identical. He crushed what the world rejected and turned it into liquid sunshine.

At first, fresh juice was delivered locally on routes much like milk, but it had one stubborn problem: it spoiled quickly. So Anthony did what he had always done. He learned. He studied refrigeration, processing and transportation, convinced there had to be a way to get fresh Florida orange juice much farther from the grove.

What followed helped revolutionize the orange juice business. In 1954, Tropicana introduced flash-pasteurized juice, extending its refrigerated life without turning it into frozen concentrate. Then Anthony put orange juice on the move. The S.S. Tropicana carried it north by ship, and in 1970 the famous Great White Juice Train began carrying it by rail. Something once limited by distance could now travel hundreds of miles to breakfast tables across the country. Children drank it before school. Families poured it at breakfast. Hotels and restaurants served it by the glass.

A fruit brought to Florida from somewhere else had flourished here so abundantly that its juice was now nourishing people near and far. And even as Tropicana grew into one of the best-known names in orange juice, Anthony reportedly still tasted the juice himself every day.

Even the name Tropicana has a family thread running through its history, with Ana connected in company lore to Anthony's grandmother.

Grandmothers have a way of leaving their mark, don't they?

Mine's name was Beulah.

Anthony never seemed to believe that the ideas, opportunities and success were his alone. His faith increasingly shaped what he did with what had been placed in his hands, and he credited God with directing his life. In 1981, he established Bradenton Missionary Village, a home for retired Christian missionaries who had spent years serving the Lord in places far from home and under every imaginable condition. Anthony gave them somewhere to rest, live and be cared for as they grew older.

In a way, he had created an L'Orangerie of his own, a place of shelter where people who had spent their lives bearing fruit could continue to flourish. His own words were wonderfully uncomplicated:

“We are here to please the Lord. We don’t try to please man. We try to get along with man in the best way possible, to love one another, but not to be better than anyone else. Pride is a sin.” 

God is our L'Orangerie. We are citizens of Heaven living in a world that is not ultimately our home, moving through seasons we cannot control. Yet He can shelter us, nourish us, teach us and make us fruitful no matter what wilderness we find ourselves in.

An orange from another land flourished in Florida. 

The boy from Sicily flourished in American soil, sending liquid sunshine across his new homeland and creating jobs for thousands.

And as missionaries went out into the world to bear fruit for the Kingdom, Anthony made sure they had shelter when they came home.

He sent the fruit out and later he would welcome the fruit-bearers home.

And because one man kept learning, kept working and kept following God, the fruit of his life reached tables he would never sit at and people whose names he would never know.

We were never promised perfect growing conditions, but we were made to flourish.

“Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age...”
Psalm 92:13–14 KJV

Until next Tuesday, may your blessings be doubly fruitful 🍊🍊

...and your burdens be light. ☀️☀️

Michelle Driscoll

Inspired by today’s story, meet L’ORANGERIE · THE FLOURISHING CAP™ — a little reminder to bloom wherever the King plants you.

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